Thursday 12 July 2018

Ring Box part 2


In my last post, I showed the process of building a small wooden engagement/wedding ring box. Obviously it needs some lining to be fit for use.

The original sketch had a note next to it about an LED in the lid which I definitely wanted to do, but there's some space constraints to consider, namely where to fit batteries in the box while still keeping the traditional ring box appearance.

To create the padded sections, I used some leather offcuts, rolled up with the suede side exposed. The front "pad" is literally just that.

The rear pad has rolled from a 'L'-shape piece of leather, like in the illustration. When rolled, this creates a small hollow in the tube, where the batteries will reside.

Electronics
The circuit is very simple. A white LED in the lid of the box will be powered by two G3A batteries (v. small cell batteries), and triggered by a normally closed reed switch. (i.e. putting the switch near a magnet breaks the connection).

The reed switch is carefully placed in the hinge near a small magnet (hidden under the leather), so that when the lid is closed, the magnet holds the reed switch open.


G3A is not a common type of battery, I just happened to have a lot that I recovered from some recycled electronics. As a result I couldn't find a battery holder for them, so I adapted this CR2032 design from Thingiverse.

The battery holder. View on Thingiverse.

The LED itself is just mounted with hot glue, angled down toward where the ring will be situated. The wires run down the inside of the lid to the hinge, where the reed switch is positioned.


On the base side of the hinge, is the small magnet which triggers the reed switch.

All of this is covered by another strip of leather, which is glued - suede side up, to the inside of the lid, and runs down to the hinge, overhanging it into the base (see photo). This overhang is tucked behind the leather roll containing the batteries, hiding all the wiring, but meaning it is still accessible should the need arise (to change the batteries, for example).


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The finished box

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A moving shot to try and illustrate the sparkling of the ring under the LED light.




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