Apologies for the (mostly) joke title. I’m sure this is not the “Ultimate” CR2032 Battery Holder (as there are many) but I do think it’s a good one. Read on for my defense of this statement…
I came into the office one day and Josh said “Hey, I found this CR2032 and printed it, what do you think?” Which was… interesting, because I had been working on a design for a CR2032 battery holder. I didn’t finish it, for whatever reason (I probably started designing something else.) Anyway, I looked at the print and thought… I can do better!
Above is the one Josh printed (in front) and the one I designed (in the back). The one he printed had the batteries a bit too close together, so you couldn’t grab one to get it out using your fingers. For my version, I spaced the batteries a bit so you could grab one. (Note the batteries sort of “snap” in place, they aren’t just held in by gravity.)
My design was still not great… but after about a dozen revisions I had something good.
The design is parametric, and with the OpenSCAD file you can choose how many batteries you want to hold, and (slightly) adjust the space between them.
But the real beauty of this design is that you don’t have to space the batteries enough to grab one with your fingers… With this version you pop them out from the bottom! The batteries snap into place to hold securely, and you press them to get them out. (Check out the video below.)
There’s one more bonus feature… If you print two the same size you can use one as a cover.
Add a rubber band (or a piece of tape) and you’ve got a secure battery holder you could toss into a bag with little worry of any batteries shorting out. Neat!
But wait! There’s more to this story… At some point I asked Josh about the file he found, and he pointed me to the Thingiverse page, at which point I said, “Oh, I know the guy who designed this.” and he said “Of course you do.” to which I replied “Yeah, I hired him years ago for some exhibit work, and I’ve worked with his wife to produce Maker Faire Orlando.” and yeah, sometimes the Maker World seems a little small. But wait… also, I grabbed the files Adam posted and realized he did post a parametric OpenSCAD file! It still didn’t have the pop-out feature I added, but it did allow for changing the spacing of the batteries. (Josh just printed the STL example file that was there.)
So to wrap up, you can see the guide on these at learn.browndoggadgets.com, grab the files from Printables or from GitHub, and do whatever you want with them! We now use these at all the events we do when we have supplies out on the table, and they’ve been a huge improvement to just spill out batteries on the table or keeping them in the (difficult to open) packaging.
