Lantern Case April 12

Now that Cailey and I have completed the battery holder, we moved onto our next task (the lantern case). Since Cailey was absent, my professor was my temporary partner for the project. Making the case was simple. All we did was use the transform key on Inkscape to resize a copy of the battery holder to make the case.

Outside view of the lantern with the hole for the light to shine. The hole needs to be higher in this model though.

The biggest problem that we had with the outside of the lantern was making the top cover. The idea was to make it look the same as the bottom cover of the battery holder but with more tabs to go in between the hinges. In order to get the dimensions for the lid, we manually traced the battery holder with the batteries inside. The tabs on our first lid as shown below were too close together so the lid would not go in.

The tab on the right side slides in but the tab on the left is not far enough to slide in.

In our next attempt we added 2 dovetails to the lid to keep the case from opening.

The case is marked with the holes for the dovetails to go in.

Making the dovetails on the lid required a lot of free hand drawing; Oscar told me that it would be best not to waste time trying to calculate exactly where the holes should be or how narrow the dovetails should be. After a few attempts we decided to have only 2 tabs on the front of the lantern and the 2 dovetails to hold the case together.

Back view of the lantern. The dovetails and the tabs hold the shape the lantern. I will make the lid wider because it does not completely cover the lantern. In addition to making it wider I will fix the holes on the case for the dovetails because the hole on the left is too pointy.  

Top view of the lantern.

This is a photo of our nearly finished lantern. The hole was slightly drilled to allow the LED to slide in. When it is in this position the light will not turn on.