Finished: Table corner protectors

Here's the complete set of four tabletop corner protectors I described here. It'll probably be several months before I actually get to try them out, because the table's in use for craft work instead of playing pool.

Work in progress: Table corner protectors

We have a removable table that we put on our pool table when we want to use it for food service or craft work. I recently re-covered it with a padded plastic material because the old stuff had shredded over the years, mainly when it was dragged away and stored in the garage. I don't want the new material to be ruined right away, so I decided to 3D print some removable corner protectors for when it's not in use.

I had made a much smaller protector for a metal edge on my workbench and thought since it was parametrically designed I could reuse the file. Unfortunately the previous design assumed equal thickness on each leg. Due to the table top being effectively "upholstered", the thicknesses vary, and so my first attempt wouldn't stick on one side, and crimped the plastic on the other. A millimeter or two difference is needed between the legs. Fortunately I had recently bought an electronic caliper which made this all so much easier!

I ended up redesigning the whole thing with more variables. I also found a subtlety of CAD design. I had done two simple extrusions for the two legs. Because the resulting file is the union of all the bodies, the thickness of the overlapping center section was always the narrower of the two (i.e. the largest body in space), so it was never going to fit. I had watched a tutorial on Autodesk's web site showing how there are multiple ways to accomplish the same geometry, so I redesigned it in three bodies with a subtracted channel instead of a single extruded profile. My third try fit perfectly!

I realized that all four corners would be different, so I'd need to mark them. Rather than write on them with a Sharpie, I decided to learn how to use Fusion 360's text feature. I did reverse-embossed (subtracted) lettering. Cool! This one is only cut halfway, but I rather like having them cut all the way through, so I'll do the other three that way.

These are some of the largest objects I have printed so far. At low quality, with 20% infill, this one took over 3 hours. (I've had longer prints on other things, but at higher resolution.)

A stand for my Robo3D R1+

For a while I had the printer on my desk, but I needed the space back. After quite a bit of searching I found this little 5-drawer cabinet that is the perfect size, about an inch bigger than the feet of the printer. My tools & supplies all fit in the top drawer.

The manufacturer is Winsome, the product name is Halifax. It's sold by lots of outlets, and the best price and availability I could find was from a furniture dealer named Goedeker's.

Ceiling fan remote control holder

We have ceiling fans in a couple of rooms, but the remote controls lived on the bed or some furniture far from the door, and with no other lights in the room it was pretty inconvenient. So for my first original project I designed a bracket to mount the remote on the wall just inside the door.

This was before I learned about parametric design, so it's all hard-dimensioned in Fusion 360. The first couple of versions were based on combining rectangular components and came out pretty ugly. I had problems getting them to penetrate each other well enough that they would result in good joints when printed.

Then I learned about spline curves and such and totally redesigned it and it looks a lot nicer. I learned about holes and countersinking, and centering and copying features. One remaining issue is that there's a "bridge" between the two sides where the back joins in, and the filament droops a bit. But it's on the bottom and the back, and the remote hides it completely, so I just left it that way.

It turned out the remote in another room (same manufacturer, different model) fits nicely in it, so I printed a couple more for that room. Nice to be able to just reprint them on demand!

I've shared this design on Thingiverse here.

No, I didn't print it in blue for actual use. This is a trial print!

iPhone 7 Megaphone Base

I got the idea for this from a giveaway iPhone base made of rubber that I saw briefly. The idea was cool, but it was so small it didn't have much effect. This seemed like a good first moderately complex project.

This was my first "parametric" design with Fusion 360. The upper part is parameterized so it can be adjusted easily to deal with the wide variety of covers that can be applied to iPhones. The lower part is fixed because it was really complex to design.

The first version had two megaphones, one for each phone speaker. I designed the right half and then mirrored it. Because of the complexity I printed the right half a few times. I got the idea to print it at 1/2 size so I could more quickly evaluate certain aspects. That means 1/8 the total volume, 1/8 the print time.








It came out OK but was a little too tight on my phone, and the sound amplification was not that great.



















Because of the concavity of the megaphone it needed to be printed on its back. I have a hole in the back to allow for the charging cord to come through, and that meant a little support material was needed. This was my first experience with support. It worked out pretty well, since it was all in the back where it couldn't be seen, so little to no cleanup was needed.

I reworked it to use a single big megaphone. This improved the sound amplification and in some ways simplified the design. It also made it bigger and so a little more stable for the phone to stand in.

I finished this in late January, about 3 weeks after getting started with printing and design.

Later I shared the STL and Fusion 360 files here on Thingiverse.