 Hey, what's up folks? Welcome back to another layer by layer in today's tutorial We're gonna take a look at making snap fit cases with live hinges. So let's take a look here So I 3d printed and designed this snap fit case and it has a little top cover with some snap fits and inside You'll see that I have here a piece a reel of washi tape. That's that lovely craft tape And this opens up like this and you see that the three of these Pieces here are all connected with a very thin live hinge so these two halves Connect together like this and then this top cover here You see here that the nubs are on the side of the bottom half of the case and those snap and snap There's a little bit of an opening there, but that's okay But you can see here there's that second live hinge for the top cover and then this very nice curve here So the live hinge here is only two Rather two layers thin So if you're doing a point to layer height when you're 3d printing the FDM machine It's uh, you know, it's it's only point four millimeters thin So the only other stuff here is that it has this the cylinder to hold The tape in place and then you'll note that there's a little bit of a lip here That mates with the inside of the top half of the case There's also some lips here that kind of prevent it from sliding out But yeah, and then there's like this little piece here. That's extra That's if that just kind of makes it easier to open to kind of get your finger in there But yeah, so that's what I'm gonna cover today how to make this snap fit case with live hinges So let's jump into fusion 360 You go into tunnel mode for a little bit and then we'll switch to fusion So I'll have the design file for this very case in the description of the videos to check that out There's some extra bits here like the latch and the internal Kind of cylinder for holding the tape and some little relief holes here So you can see how much tape you have left and then then those walls here But I'm just gonna cover how to do kind of a simple version of this case. So let's do that. I'm making new tab Let's start off with creating a sketch on the floor plane here and let's decide How big we want our case to be let's say it's 50 by 50 just to make it a square I'll start with our rectangle tool. I'm just gonna draw out a rectangle. Let me type in 50 by 50 and Hit enter. So there's a rectangle what I want to do with the rectangles We want to center it with the the center origin of our grid So I'm gonna create two lines that have midpoint constraints so I'll just roll over until I get that midpoint click and then I'll come out here and then Make sure that that is perpendicular with the line I just created create another line and then I'll let's just like just close it there So now I have these perpendicular lines and the last thing to do here is to do a midpoint constraint Of this point with that line And now I have a point that I can move by using the Coincident constraint to go to the center Of the of the origin there. So now that's fully constrained I'll grab these two lines and make them construction lines and then we'll start with the next half of the case So I'll just make another rectangle like that Using the equal constraint I can say want this line to be the same just the same length as that line that line and that line now They're the same they're intersecting. So let me go ahead and push this off a little bit I want to connect these two with a with some more midpoint constraint line So let's do one here and then one here and then I can just say this line needs to be Horizontally or vertically constrained and now I have these two rectangles Cool. So this is going to be the bottom half of the case. That's the top half of the case To create the live hinge. Let's make another line that is perpendicular and Then we'll say this needs to be maybe four millimeters away and Then I can make another one of these with the mirror and then using that first line as the mirror line and hit okay And then so that this so I can select just one of these I'll select that center line and make it also a constraint a construction line Let's give this construction line a length So how thick do we want our case to be let's say it's 12 millimeters Thick so that is going to be the length of our live hinge The live hinge is looking kind of wide So let me make that four millimeters by making that four into two because we're mirroring that so it's really four like that and Then next up. Let's make the top cover. So the top cover is going to be a little bit longer So I just drew it out. It's a little bit thinner or a little bit Yeah, a little bit thinner and then a little longer than their actual two rectangles. So instead of applying dimensions I'm just gonna say I want these two Lines to have a distance of two millimeters And I'll say the same thing here This and this have a two millimeter distance And then I'm gonna create The length of this needs to be the thickness of our case. So it was gonna be 12 plus a one It's gonna be 12 millimeters thick of the case right plus one millimeter of wall thickness plus two millimeters of Distance that is our length. So it's really gonna be 15 millimeters So but that's important to kind of break it out so that you know that your case is 12 millimeters thick You're gonna have one millimeter of wall thickness that you need to kind of offset and then two millimeters of distance for our live hinge So that is the kind of formula that we create for the length of Our top cover because it's gonna be printing upright. So we need to kind of do it that way So let's create some construction lines that will center midpoint center constrain these two Like that and then let's make this that two millimeter length Let's make that a construction line and then let's give this some lines here that we can mirror Let's say this is gonna be four millimeters Wide and then we'll mirror that line With the construction line and then we'll get a live hinge. That's eight millimeters wide Or we can make this six millimeters looking a little thin here. Let's make it eight so that we will be 16 But yeah, as long as it's two millimeters distance. That's pretty good Yeah, and then that's those are our main sketches that we're gonna work with All right, let's hit okay, and then we're gonna start extruding our bases here. So one two and three Let's extrude those with a one millimeter thickness And then the next thing I want to do is I want to create some fillets to these edges that I want to be filleted So I want these four edges to have some pretty big fillets, let's give it five and Then this top cover I want this to have a two millimeter fillet on just these two edges here on the outside So those will have two millimeter fillet next up. We're gonna create our wall Thicknesses so with the extrude command. I'm gonna switch that from the regular extrude to a thin extrude Select these two the top and the bottom half of the case and then we said it's gonna be 12 millimeters So it's really 12 divided by two which is six Six here. So that's how tall they're gonna be and just make sure that the The wall location is going on the inside of our extrusion of our of our of our bases base plates there And then the operation is already set to join so I hit okay We want to open up these walls here So let's go ahead and just select that wall and then do a negative Extrude here so that it cuts it away and I'll do that for this have to Negative two cuts it away. All right So now we have those open tops there because we're gonna have a top here speaking of the tops with that Surface selected. I'll then extrude that make sure it's thin extrude and then this is going to be The Whatever the length we want I think five millimeters is what our or six millimeters, which is the half of our of our case So let's hit okay, and then we're gonna do pretty similar thing where we cut Away this wall here like that. All right, so that is pretty looking pretty good so far Next up we're gonna create our nubs for snapping this cover to the bottom half of the case so For me to do that I'm just gonna select the surface and then create a new sketch that way I create a sketch on that service and I'm gonna project in just one of these edges Just like that and then I'm gonna make my nub my snap fit nub Something like that. Let's make it eight millimeters wide by one and a half millimeters tall and Then I'm gonna have a point two millimeter distance between The edge of this and the tip of that just like that and then I can extrude that Let's say we want it to be three millimeters Here and then I'll hit tab on my keyboard so I can do a tapered angle to negative 45 so that prints without any supports Alright, so now that I have that I want to mirror that feature onto the opposite side of that bottom half of the case So we'll bring up a mirror feature Make sure the object type is set to features so that I can select that extrude from the timeline Select my proof my mirror plane as this plane here And you get a little green preview of where it's gonna go That is where I wanted to go and that is the first snap fit the set of snap fit nubs for the bottom half of the Gaze next up. We'll do one for this Side and the nubs are actually be on the inside of the top cover. So let's select this surface Create a sketch on that surface bring in that line and Because of the way the thing folds over the snap fit nubs actually be tall or vertical this way So we'll use the same dimensions one and a half wide by eight millimeters It doesn't have to be this is just four millimeters or five There you go five and then we'll do that same the distance will change actually so I'm just gonna do Point two on the tip here and Then two millimeters on that side, but I'll show you a trick here on how to kind of line these up So the same extrusion length here three millimeters hit tab on your keyboard negative 45 on the on that taper angle I'm gonna go ahead and show the dimensions for these two nubs so that I can Get a look of them and kind of edit the the distances without having to go into edit sketch mode So now that I have that I will do my mirror. I will mirror that nub on the top cover doing the same The same mirror command and now we have our two nubs on the top cover Cool so now that I have these three pieces before I start creating my live hinge I'm actually gonna save the live hinge extrusion for the very end because what we need to do is we need to kind of test this out With the move command, but before that before I forget I want to add a lip to the top half of the case so that it mates with The bottom half of the case and to do that I'm just gonna go here on this edge here create a new sketch and I will project in this line here from the internal wall and I'm gonna make a series of lines so see if you can follow me So I'm gonna make I'm gonna start off on the tip of that line and go across and go up And I'm gonna make sure that all these lines are perpendicular at 90 degrees. So I'm gonna go across And go down and then at an angle. I'm gonna connect it off to the purple line there So I'll start sketching out the dimensions. So this I want to make it point zero one millimeters That's gonna be the clearance that we want some distance between this lip in the bottom half of the case This is gonna be one millimeter thick and then I'm gonna do a 45 degree Angle right there and then I'm gonna make a line that connects this point to that point and then I want these Lines to be perpendicular So now I can grab this line and make it a construction line and then now it's fully constrained Almost I want the lip to be three millimeters tall. So there we go there So that is basically our profile for the lip. It has that 45 degree angle. So it prints without any Without any supports and it has that point millimeter one 0.1 millimeter of kind of offset so that it can actually fit in between the walls here. So let's Do a sweep command. So we'll do a sweep Select this as a profile and then a path is going to be This top edge here and then you can see here that that profile now sweeps along the whole curvature Thanks to those fillets and it goes all the way to the end here on the other side So that is our nubbins and now you can start moving things into place. So let's go ahead and move our bodies So let's grab body three body one, which is the top half of the case And I'm gonna rotate it 180 degrees push it Forward to line it up and then push it right where the the lip is going to go inside of the case And I'll hit okay there So you can see here that that is looking good and you can see we have some clearance here between these two surfaces That point one millimeter if you have a printer that needs a little bit more tautness and just add more to that distance And then we're gonna flip this top cover Into place. So we're gonna do 90 degrees push it forward And then push it up And then you can see here that that is that's what's gonna look like Kind of want to have two millimeters of clearance here or just one millimeter here of clearance Like that and then in order to kind of get an idea of what our nub is gonna go in I like to do this trick where I apply a acrylic material To the top cover so that I can actually see through it and you can see here that the nubs aren't lining up So let me bring up that sketch for that nub, which was this one here And I'm gonna change that two millimeter distance to something like one Maybe three until I have a nice Distance here, let's try four And I can go in here and take a look here See what's that distance? I want a minimum distance of two point two millimeters point five right now So let's do four point five There we go, it's looking better and then there you can see we have a Clearance between those two point two millimeters about two point two millimeters. So it looks pretty good I kind of want to extrude this out a little bit more. So let's go ahead and do that back over here we can change that six to an eight and then You can see here that that is longer And I can even make this Maybe seven And you can make it a full to to go to match up these two nubs but their lengths you can make this even one more millimeter Let's say nine And that's looking pretty good And you are gonna have that distance between these two services for the top cover and the bottom half of the case Because of that live hinge needs to have a little bit of relief But that's looking pretty good That's pretty much how it needs to be and then you can look on the inside there If all your clearances match out it should work out pretty good So let's go ahead and delete these move commands because we're kind of get going to start doing our live hinge So bring it back that sketch number one I will select these two live hinge profiles And then extrude them to a zero point four millimeters Not negative, but just zero point four millimeters hit okay And that's going to connect those three pieces together and then to to kind of final finalize this I like to do these fillets here on these edges for the longer Live hinge it's going to be Ah, maybe like four is that look good four five six that looks cool that way it kind of Looks a little bit better and then we can do the same here for this This shorter live hinge for the top cover. Let's do uh one millimeter there And these two over here I'm gonna rotate There we go. Okay So that's pretty pretty much ready to print now. Um If if you're using fdm printer again, you want to use layer height of 0.2 millimeters, which is a bit common But yeah, everything here is pretty much the same as this washi tape one There's just a bigger extrusion And then there's a center hole with the cylinder to hold the tape and then just some circular pattern grills here And also that little lip here that little latch to kind of help you Open it up, but you really don't need it. It's just kind of for aesthetics And uh, there's that lip here Uh, it's kind of helps the the two halves from sliding out of each other But you don't really need that but if you do you can you can add those in there To this area here, but that is pretty much it You can add user parameters to make a parametric or you can just modify You know these edges here and just make sure that Your top cover that you can test it you can always Go back in your timeline and then move the bodies and kind of build that folded Case to make sure that everything lines up all the nubs are lined up nicely But this is kind of a neat design. Um, I think uh, it will be applicable to other things like Here's a smaller version with a little bit of a different shape Um, as this opens up here, you can see I have these little usb C to type a adapters So you can I don't know maybe This just reminded me that kind of looks like the the bubble tape from the 90s So you can have some double bubble tape in there Or whatever and then you can add some more things like maybe a little Thing here to put on your hip like a little clip or something But kind of a neat uh design I think and one other thing I want to mention is that I want to try this out I haven't tried it yet I want to try printing the first two layers. That's the live hinges here print those in tpu filament And do it and then do a filament swap So that this first layer is like that tpu flexible because I think at some point This right here this live hinge looks like it's going to break at some point as I keep flexing it like that over and over again I'm sure it's going to break, but for now it hasn't broken and I've opened it maybe 50 times Maybe more But I want to try that tpu filament swap where the first two layers of tpu and then I switch it to This pla filament so I have that hard rigid snaps But that flexible first two layers So I'm going to give that a try and let folks know how that goes out That's going to do it for this tutorial. Thanks so much for watching Um, I'll see you in the next one, but until then remember to make a great day. Bye folks