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Box Maker Guide

Make a printable box from its outside size, with round corners, compartments and a push-on lid if you want them.

Freev1.10.0 · 2026-11-09
Make a box

Boxes bigger than your printer

Box Maker makes boxes up to 600 × 600 mm (and up to 300 mm tall). When the box is bigger than the bed of the printer you picked under the 3D preview, it cuts the box into pieces that fit and lock together. You don't have to do anything: design the box at its full size.

What you see

Above the 3D preview, a note says how many pieces it takes on your printer, for example "prints in 4 pieces". Apart shows the pieces pulled apart; Together shows them assembled. The top drawing shows the cuts as dashed lines. Pick a printer with a bigger bed, like the Bambu Lab A2L (330 × 320 mm), and the box may fit in one piece again.

Where it cuts

  • The fewest pieces that fit, keeping 8 mm clear of the bed's edges.
  • When a divider runs all the way across near a cut, the cut moves onto it, so the seam hides in the divider (each piece gets half of it).
  • With a lid, the lid's cuts move at least 15 mm away from the box's when the bed allows, so the lid bridges the box's seams and holds it square.

How the pieces join

Every joint has the same shape from the bottom of the piece to the top, so each piece prints open side up with no supports, and the next piece slides down onto it from above.

  • Walls: where a seam meets an outside wall, both pieces have an 11 mm block inside the wall. One has a dovetail tongue, the other a matching slot.
  • Floor: puzzle knobs along the seam, about every 55 mm, drop into matching holes.
  • Fit: the gap around tongues and knobs is the one you pick for the lid: Firm 0.1 mm, Snug 0.2 mm or Easy 0.3 mm. Snug suits most printers.
  • With a lid, the wall blocks stop under the lid's rim so the lid still goes on.

Printing and putting it together

  1. Download the 3MF: it holds every plate, each set up for your printer (PrusaSlicer gets one 3MF per plate in a ZIP). Or download one STL per piece.
  2. Print every piece standing on its floor, open side up. No supports, no brim.
  3. The numbers under the floors give the order. Lay piece 1 down, then slide piece 2 down onto it from above so the tongues and knobs drop into their slots. Then the rest in turn.
  4. For a box that stays together, run a thin line of glue in the slots before you slide each piece in. Without glue it comes apart again.
  5. Lid pieces are lettered on the inside. They print flat, rim up, and join the same way.

Limits

  • The height can't be split, so the box must be shorter than your printer can print.
  • A seam needs room for a joint block at each wall, so the box must be at least 28 mm across where it's cut.
  • Up to 64 pieces; for a small printer and a very big box, pick a bigger printer or make the box smaller.

Last updated 2026-11-09