[DIY] Basic Parametric Cooler - 3D Print


Made a basic parametric cooler / lunchbox to have fresh drinks after a bike ride, back at the car.

Note that it isn't an active cooler though. It is simply a double-walled box that can take in ice or a cold gel pack to keep stuff cool for hours.

The lid automaticall locks when carrying the box, or when the handle is in the back. Rotate the handle to the front and Sesame opens.

Can be sized to match different can and bottle types and to hold as many as needed, starting at 2x1.

Several versions were generated, so either pick the one needed, or generate a custom one via Fusion360's parameters. To also hold ice or a cold gel pack just bump the height in the model, or use a larger size.


The Fusion360 CAD model, STEP and 3MF files are on Github and MakerWorld

Feel free to copy, remix, whatever (non-commercially)

Fresh picnic drinks for all !

 


  ______________________________________________ 
 

 

Print

 Settings

  • Any filament material
  • 1.05 flow (overextrusion, very important for waterproofing. Worked w Bambu PLA & Overture TPU 95A, but had to go down to 1.0 with Tangled PLA bc of orange peel)
  • 3 walls, 6 top, 4 bottom
  • Seam in the back (scarf or not, makes little difference)
  • 15% Adaptive Cubic infill
  • Normal Auto support only for the handle, none for the rest
  • if the bottom perimeter chamfers on the box and the lid print poorly with wavy / droopy appearance, set a 24mm (box) and a 10mm (lid) height range modifier with 50mm/s speed for both Outer and Inner walls

Finally, to install the handle just give it a good whack on each side, to push each pivot into the box.



CAD


Key parameters to customize the cooler:

 

Changing the box size is usually best done by changing dimensions in the following order: inside_length, inside width, inside_height.

handle_height should automatically update when inside_width changes.

wall_thickness applies to the whole box and the lid. Increase it for more insulation.

 

The dimensions for a number of beverage containers are already included in the list of parameters:

So to upgrade the model to, say, 6 Pepsi plastic bottles, update the cooler dimensions to a 3x2 setup as follows:

Can even size it to hold a couple of 2015 Les Voleyses Crozes-Hermitaze bottles. Le rêve...

 

Also, fun stuff: playing with filament colors can be done in Fusion360 thanks to the PrintBusters script. It provides some filament colors from Prusa, Bambu and Polymaker as material appearance:




UPDATE: got a couple of requests on how to make room in the lid for an ice pack in the F360 CAD model (no idea how they plan to hold the pack in place?).

I looked into it and the Fusion360 CAD model can fortunately be hacked pretty easily, so here you go:

  1. increase the handle length parameter called handle_height by the amount of lid space needed
  2. replace the lid's existing wall_thickness dimension (in the upper right corner of the original sketch below) by wall_thickness + new lid space (50mm in my example)
  3. add 2 sketch lines (in green below)
  4. set the distance from the new horizontal green line to the top to wall_thickness
  5. change the original horizontal line to Construction (dashed line below, click on Normal/Construction)

The existing sweep operation should pick up the new shape automatically.



Comments

Post a Comment