This is an audio over Ethernet snake adapter. It is used to carry four channels of audio over a single Ethernet cable.
We have a recording studio in our home. This precipitates microphone and instrument cables running everywhere. To reduce some of the clutter and keep things more organized I have started a project of installing connection points at different locations in the live room. Audio cables are bulky and long cables are expensive. A great alternative is to use Ethernet cable which can carry four channels. It is much easier to run one inexpensive, thin Ethernet cable rather than four bulky expensive audio cables. All you need is a box on each end to break out the signals and give you the proper connectors.
I used one of the online box creation tools to get the basic design and added the cutouts on each end. What I wanted to share is the way I secured the bottoms of the boxes. I wanted to keep the bottom covers removable so that I could gain access without having to destroy the box.
For each side there are two thin strips glued together and then glued to the bottom cover. One has screw holes and the other has cutouts for nuts. When glued together it creates a place to mount the nuts and keep them from spinning when you put the screw in. The nuts are glued in place.
Next iteration, you might try putting tabs on the nut-capturing layer that pass through the bottom face of the box and add a passthrough slot in the same position on both of the glued vertical risers for a peg or tab to run through… it would let you snap all the pieces in place very precisely, take that last bit of alignment error out of the picture. Done tightly enough, you wouldn’t need glue at all, but reinforcing with glue wouldn’t be a bad idea since it’s a structural part.
I considered adding tabs for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Where I ran into trouble was doing it in InkScape. I normally use Solidworks for all my 3d design work. InkScape is so cumbersome by comparison and lacks the parametric stuff. This was my first exposure to importing SVGs into Solidworks and it just became a big frustration so I abandoned it for another day. I have several more of these to make so I will probably go back and try the design mods in Solidworks again.
My trick for Inkscape is that I have a file with slots and tabs that I know work 100% for common materials. I cut and paste them between docs. That way I can dial in the cuts once and reuse them over and over.
I go 3D program → svg file → Inkscape; never considered the reverse. I make the parts in a 3D modeling program and then clean up the svg export (if necessary) and add style features and/or rearrange layout for the glowforge’s bed limitations with Inkscape.
In this case the PDF file was initially created by makeabox.io. So I started with the PDF file. Solidworks will not import a PDF file so I opened the original file in Inkscape and exported it as a DXF. Solifworks will open it but the file is a collection of short line segments that are not joined. At that point I realized I had some work to do to create a 3D part from the initial PDFand I put that venture off for a later time. I think there will be value in finding a workflow for this. I just need to spend some time to figure it out.
