Cereal Box 4L Silica Gel Holder

Silica gel holder designed to fit to the top of the common 4L cereal storage boxes.
62
233
3
3198
updated November 20, 2023

Description

PDF

This is a silica gel holder that's intended to be mounted at the top of the 4L style cereal box container that's common for filament storage.  I use the Wildone brand boxes, but they're sold under several names.

This holder will hold about 250g of silica gel.   I use the Dry and Dry color indicating silica gel beads which have a diameter of 2-4mm.

This holder consists of two parts, a base, which is intended to be glued to the lid of the container and a mesh that's intended to be glued to the base.    It's recommended that you use mesh-1mm.stl, since that has smaller gaps in the mesh and will lead to less silica gel escaping.  The mesh-1.5-old.stl is the original design that is no longer recommended.

To assemble these I do the following:

  1. Print both parts
  2. Test fit parts to ensure good tolerances.
  3. Apply hot glue to base and lid.  See the included diagram for where to apply glue.  I apply hot glue liberally to the base where the blue color is shown and to the container lid where the red is shown.
  4. Let hot glue set
  5. Apply glue around edges of mesh and snap it into place on the base.  You may need to place something heavy on top to keep the mesh flat.  I use superglue for this, but I suspect many different types of glue will work fine.
  6. Attach lid to container securely and pop open circular lid on the top.
  7. Fill lid with desired amount of silica gel and close the circular lid.  
  8. Shake the container vigorously.  Silica gel will usually have a small amount of broken beads included and this will allow them to drop into the bottom of the container and then throw them away before using the container for filament.

 

Version 1.1

  • Updated so that gap in mesh spacing is 1mm instead of 1.5mm.  This should reduce the amount of silica gel fragments that will slip through.  The old design is still available as mesh-1.5mm-old.stl.
  • The Fusion 360 file attached now has the mesh spacing as parametric, so you can adjust it if desired.

Tags



Model origin

The author marked this model as their own original creation.

License