"Rebel Ration Container" 3D Model

[DexAntares]

I've been searching high and low for the Resistance MRE box from Galaxy's Edge. Had to trade an entire Savi's lightsaber just to get one. It should be on the way today. In the meantime I decided to try my hand at designing a replica in TinkerCAD. I think it turned out pretty good, TBH. Just in case I made two versions of it - one with a removable clear tray (movie accurate) and one with the dividers built into the bottom (Galaxy's Edge style). The thing is, they'd be pretty pricey to print out, so I wanted to put out feelers and see if anybody was in the market for a replica like this.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Let me lead by saying I don't think anyone should give their time away for free, and if people are asking you to print this it's totally fair to get compensated for your work in both designing the box and all the work attached to doing the printing.

But I'm curious as to why you feel like this would be "pricey" to print out? It's a box. Okay, you'd need a mid-size printer to get it on the build plate, and sure, printing transparent is tedious (although there's some sources out there saying the on-screen versions are translucent at best, and that's much simpler) but at the end of the day it's still just a box that needs what, 200g of plastic? Maybe 250g? That's like 5$ worth of plastic, plus the electricity and wear-and-tear on the printer.

Now if I was selling them as a replica, I'd be asking for around 20$ to cover off my time and effort of designing the files, setting up the printer (including a filament change, always a pain when a project needs two filament setups), the time needed to pack it all up and send it off. But that's not the same thing as the cost to print it out, so I'm genuinely curious what I'm missing.

 

[DexAntares]

But I'm curious as to why you feel like this would be "pricey" to print out?

Ah yes, I should have specified - I don't have my own printer. I outsource all my printing work to Craftcloud, and printing this as three parts with a translucent lid and inner tray would cost upwards of $60. I even made a version of the bottom with integrated dividers to see if that'd cut down on costs and... no, not by any significant amount. I like to keep products that I sell affordable, and I can't see many people spending over $60 for one of these. Not to mention the cost of shipping and making a profit off of these.

There is one alternative - I have a friend who agreed to take over production of the other item I sell on my Etsy, my Bacta hand sanitizer dispensers. I've sent him an STL of the box, scaled down 50%, to do a test print. I mostly wanna make sure the hinges I made work properly, but doing so may also give us both an idea of the cost involved.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Ah, fair enough. Yeah, I don't see anyone paying 60$ for this either, not when they could hunt around for a tackle box that was "good enough" for most uses.

Honestly, you sound like exactly the target market for Slant3D's Etsy plug-in, where you outsource the printing to them. As I understand it the box wouldn't work as-is, mostly because it would need to be done on two machines as two parts and I don't think their app can handle that yet. But you might want to read up on their offering.

 

[DexAntares]

Honestly, you sound like exactly the target market for Slant3D's Etsy plug-in, where you outsource the printing to them.

I didn't know about that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'm gonna look it up right now