As mentioned previously, the LED holes in the lids can be difficult to print and really are not that useful. The power LED is so bright it will shine through most PLA. Depending on your printer, plastic, and screws the tolerances may be different for you. For a variety of reasons you might want to go back to the original Blender files to customize the project.

We are currently working on a complete tutorial to be titled “Building Better Boxes with Blender” which will be a general tutorial on Blender 3-D aimed at someone with no CAD experience who wants to use it to create objects for 3-D printing. The notes we’re providing here will assume that you have a minimal knowledge of Blender and can make your modifications as needed.

There is a separate model for the Power Boost 500C versus the Power Boost 1000C. Both the box and the lid are included in the same file. When you load the file, your screen will look something like this…

In the upper right corner is a window called the outliner. You can click on “Box” or “Lid” to select them. There are also “hook objects” which control the dimensions of the box. The dimensions are the same for the 500C versus 1000C except that the “X Dim” values should be negative for the 1000C version. Here is a table of the values for the various battery sizes.

Below is a brief YouTube video that shows you how to modify these values and how to export the blender model as an STL file. In the second half of the video it shows you how to disable the modifiers to the lid that add the holes for the LEDs to shine through.

We are working on a complete tutorial on how this project was created step-by-step. Check back soon for future installments of "Building Better Boxes with Blender".