Another living hinge box

INCREDIBLE!

That is a real head turner, well done!

5 Likes

Don’t stop! I love all these living hinge boxes of yours. This one is absolutely unique!

4 Likes

That’s one of my favorites! :grinning:

2 Likes

Superb design! Looking at this inspired a whole stream of designs and options…curved hinges, those great screws (I have some for my banjo strap!). Now only to wait about a month for my unit. Thanks!

1 Like

Is there a generator of sorts for living hinges, or some sort of math formula, or do you just try random patterns? How do you decide which will be the one for use for a particular application?

The only piece I’ve made with a living hinge was pretty basic, and just followed something I’d seen… but I’d love to know if there’s deeper thinking behind it all.

Whoa, that’s rad! Makes me think of folded spacetime, a tesseract or wormhole

2 Likes

Unfortunately, my schedule requires that I take a break for about a week. Going to be traveling. And just when I’m about to get three shipments of materials.

I’m just guessing. My first pattern was just lines separated by a space that was half the length of the cut. Then I staggered each row so the next line’s cut was centered on the above line’s gap. Then I ran several 2 to 4 inch by 1 inch tests moving the rows closer together until I got good flexibility. However, 1 kerf lines leaves you with a rather stiff bend. The second pattern (which I used above) cuts elongated diamond shapes that are about 1mm tall by 20mm wide. This provides much more flexibility. The trick is removing enough material in your cut to allow the cut edges room to move while retaining enough material to maintain strength. If that made any sense…

Like so:
hinge1

11 Likes

I had the same thought as I was assembling it. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

You are definitely the hinge man.

I can only imagine what effort it took to get those curved edges to line up. Superb!

Whoa! It is really stunning!

Wow!!! that is fantastic. Definitely keep sharing, these are super inspirational. I’m about 2 weeks from golden e-mail and am getting more and more excited with all the amazing things people are making. Thanks for sharing!!!

There was a post in the not too distant past that contained links to some of the math behind living hinges and a deeper discussion of them. I’ve searched for that post, but I haven’t found it yet. Too many posts. :slightly_smiling_face:

Are you thinking of this one?

I have some reservations of using the K-factor for living hinges, since it was designed to address the Poisson effect mainly in plate bending, if I’m not mistaken. Not sure it applies to a lattice.

1 Like

Nope. Although that is a fine post. Also I guess I was using too long a timeframe for my ‘not too distant past’ comment. It was probably about 6 months to a year ago. It was around the time that @marmak3261 was playing around with living hinges with his PRU. It’s probably stuck in a 150 post topic that meanders all over the place.

1 Like

Actually that part was easy. Since I was just doing a proof of concept and not trying to get a perfect size/shape, I just had to make sure to have a smooth curve. It’s just a simple spline to a midpoint. The tension in the bend is what supports the top and that same tension causes the curves to naturally line up. By stretching and changing the depth of the curve I could make it taller and thicker/thinner. I thought if I were to do another one I’d make it tall enough to put a thin flower vase inside. Or make one a little wider and put a light in it.

1 Like

I am super picky about laser printed boxes and storage but yours look amazing! <3 Awesome job!

Fabulous design! Very unique.

1 Like

It’s like an optical illusion… in 3D… Awesome!