Inspired by a hand-made cigarette box that I found once in an antique market, I wanted to recreate this contraption using the fablab facilities.
The problem (and part of the charm of this object) is that there is no way to open this box without breaking it. It simply presents cigarettes each time one attempts to open it by sliding the top surface up and down. Its mechanism remains enclosed and mysterious, resisting interpretation and reproduction.
In order to figure out its inner geometry and the steps to assemble it, I started by creating a carton maquette.
Once I had a working prototype from carton I deconstructed it to make the calculations that produced the correct measurements, technical drawings and assembly plan.
My next prototype was made of scrap mdf. I applied the press-fit joinery technique in the design of the box and the shopbot to cut out the pattern. Some parts of the inner mechanism however still had to be made by hand and adjusted by trial and error as it was difficult to calculate them precisely. For this mdf prototype, I did not use the dog-bone fillet option of the shopbot as I thought that I could create a better fit by filing the corners straight. This was not the case however, filing all these corners straight by hand was not only tiring work but the result was also quite imprecise. Another thing I learned from this mdf prototype was that I needed to leave more space between the inner and the out box in order for it to slide smoothly and present cigarettes seamlessly with a fluent movement of the hand.
So I adjusted the technical drawings to include dog-bone fillet (which made a much better fit), more space between the moving parts and also incorporated some extra elements of the design which were now clear to me.
I made the final object using the old sacrificial layer of the laser cutter which is covered with random patterns and smells burned. The material now has a new life as a decadent and introvert cigarette box.
