Radioactive Sample Box V2 (2 sizes)

A few years ago, I published a radioactive sample box which I had designed to hold my trinitite collection. ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:48031 ). At the time, I was relatively new to Sketchup. As a result, it's clunky and polygonal, the top has way too much material in it, and the interface between the top and bottom was less than perfect. In short, it's functional but ugly.

So, I redesigned it in Cubify Design. It's the exact same dimensions , but the top and bottom mesh brilliantly now. I reduced the wasted material in the top, and I added grips to the top. The edges are a bit more rounded as well. Overall, it's a 100% improvement over the original. I also made a 50mm tall version of the base, if you want something a bit more compact. You can see a comparison of the original design and the new one in the second pic above.

The top and bottom parts are provided separately (rad_box2.stl and top.stl, and rad_box2_50mm.stl). Rad_Box2_plate.stl is a plated version with the 100mm tall base. rad_box2_50mm_plate.stl is the plated 50mm version.

Notes:

If you are printing this to hold mildly radioactive samples, print both parts at 100% infill. I didn't use supports on the top, and the trefoil printed just fine without it. Higher density plastics provide better shielding, so you should probably print this in PLA to block the largest quantity of radiation.

Without going into all of the details around radiation shielding, 100% infill will block all alpha particles and a good percentage of beta particles. Plastic actually works better than metal when blocking beta particles, because beta particles can induce temporary radioactivity in certain metals. But, it all depends on how energetic the beta particles are, so it likely won't block all of them. You can always add some lead foil shielding to make it better. But, this is not exactly intended for laboratory conditions.

This will do absolutely nothing to block gamma or X-rays! If you think otherwise, maybe you shouldn't be playing with radioactive things in the first place :)

If you're printing this just as a container, 10-20% infill should be fine. The top and sides are particularly thick, so reduced infill will help to keep the plastic use down quite a bit. The test print included in this post was made with Pet-G and 10% infill, and it is really lightweight.

Category: Hobby