The purpose of Handybox is to benefit several types of projects with one standard part, accompanied by several other standards that have a well-established ecosystem and many available components near you at brick-and-mortar stores. I Hope you benefit from the concepts here - even without building any handybox designs you will find some techniques that save time in CAD, prototyping, wiring, or creating new concepts for designs.
To be populated as I create videos to explain features.
<iframe width="703" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VLrEtrU10ow" title="Build a DIY power supply for powering electronics - using openBox" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>Components, methods, and considerations for organizing wires in projects. It's best to watch this before you design, so you can discover parts to integrate in your project plans.
Main components around which the other parts are designed.
- EMT Conduit
- Handybox electrical boxes with 1/2in knockout holes
- Switches, 22mm, toggle switches
- Outlets, ordinary 120v North America standard
The large box is uploaded as a "configuration" of the solidworks model, in grabCAD. It's a square box, sometimes sold with 4 tabs for 2-gang configuration.
Mount your boxes to your DIN rail, multiple orientations & box sizes.
This bracket is parametric, with configurations shown in the animated GIF. The narrow option has 1-in spacing for the 1-gang box and the wide option matches the 1.5in spacing of the square boxes found in local stores.
A feature for electrical and for mechanical function
Version 1 is adapted for fixing anderson connectors into the wall of a panel.
It can be adjusted for different hole sizes, or different center features. You may wish to use it as a grommet, or adapter for a 10mm pushbutton, or 100 other items. The idea is that a new user gains a new function but retains the investment of the code behind the nicely made parametric part. The feature tree is easy to navigate, so you may update the design without knowledge of all the original design considerations. (just like open source software).
Every good design begins with an evaluation stage. If you want to invent something that helps the community, start by searching for benchmarks.
- existing products that perform the function you want
- existing parts that contain the geometry you'll design
- industrial parts that are often more robust than consumer goods
- unrelated market categories which solve equivalent functions
In the benchmarking process for an OpenBox-related design, start with the catalog & technical drawings below.
Below I've attached a catlog for only the Raco design collection since it took some digging to find what I needed. There are several other brands worth exploring but we need to start somewhere! If you find a key resource for which you base your open source design, please let us know and we can post it here as well.
Raco Catalog ► download (100mb)
The catalog has great ideas for attachments, conduit, and box styles.
Online you can find datasheets for hundreds of boxes and attachments but the first few drawings I used to build the initial models are combined in one PDF for you to grab below.
Handybox tech sheet ► raco pdf
see material properties, dimensions, & more
