This is an improved version of my '12 leaf Aperture Box' design featuring an opening twist collar. The box has 12 leaves, much like a camera iris, but with the structural rigidity for a functional everyday box. I have also produced the Gear Lid for this box.

I have designed many other iris boxes which you can find on my profile page. I have also produced a general Instructable guide on how to print my iris boxes to a high quality.

Other than the printed parts, this design requires M2x6 countersunk screws to assemble (as with all my other designs) such as these; 36 screws are required in total for one box. Larger or smaller screws may be used if you scale the model appropriately e.g. M3x8 screws at 150% part scale.

There are three types of door design included: The simple 'door' is plain and flat and is used on the blue/green example; the 'star' door creates a pointed star embellishment on top of the container and 'door hyp' creates a hypnotic spiral on the box when opened.

The box is 80mm in diameter, approximately 80mm tall with the standard container and 50mm tall with the short container. There are also two different collars, 1 and 2, with 6 and 12 dimples for twisting the collar respectively (I prefer collar 1 personally).

Part testing

If you can print one of my other 'aperture' designs then you will be able to make this design.

Before printing off all the parts you should make sure the screw joints and sliding dovetail joints work correctly with your print settings.

Print two of the 'Door' parts and test the dovetail sliding. Be careful when adding supports to the dovetails, to only support the outer part (as shown in the pictures). The inner part can be bridged easily, and adding unecessary supports here will likely make it hard to remove them from the parts and add friction to the dovetails.

They should be loose enough to slide easily for the design to work effectively. Try to avoid 'elephants foot' on the base of the doors, as this can reduce tolerances and cause excess friction. If they are too tight then try reducing the layer height or using outer contour XY compensation in your slicer (Ideamaker is a free slicer which does this). Lower friction materials are also important, I used PLA which works great.

Check that the screws fit tightly in the holes on the base of the doors. Also check they turn freely in the links and that the head is flush with the part surface. You may need to scale the parts or use hole XY compensation (Ideamaker also does this) to get a good fit.

Multicolour Printing

To make the box you will need to print: 1x 'Container' or 'Short Container', 1x 'Collar 1' or 'Collar 2', 12x 'Link 1', 6x 'Link 2' and 12x 'Door' of any type.

For multicoloured lids, do a material swap at the appropriate height.

The pattern on some of the containers was formed using the velocity painting technique (more info in my Instructable). The line pattern on the yellow container was Designed by Freepik. The triangular pattern was remixed from a design by rawpixel.com / Freepik. The floral pattern was remixed from a design by GarryKillian / Freepik.

Assembly Instructions

Also see pictures for visual instructions

Take the container and place the collar onto it.

Screw the narrower ends of the six larger links (Link 2) to the holes in the container. The collar should now be held securely onto the box but also be able to twist freely.

Screw the non-pointed ends of the smaller links (Link 1) to the collar.

For attaching the links to the doors it's easiest if you roughly assemble the doors in the open position upside down and place the container and collar assembly on top of them. Now screw the other end of the larger links to the inside holes on the doors.

Now screw the smaller links to the holes on the outside edge of the box doors.

You should now have a working Aperture Iris box! The mechanism may be a little stiff at first but should loosen up over time. A little bit of silicon lubricant could also be used on the dovetail joints to make it work more smoothly.

If you have any questions or problems with this design, I will be more than happy to help.