In the (admittedly unlikely) event you’re in the neighborhood today, visit the Poughkeepsie Mini MakerFaire. I’ll be doing a “Practical 3D Printing” show-n-tell in one of the tiny music practice rooms in the main hallway, handing out tchochkes, and generally talking myself hoarse. The HP 7475A plotter will be cranking out Superforumulas next door, too, because everybody loves watching a plotter.
Usually, I print dump trucks or some such, but yesterday I hammered out the models for two adapters that mate the new vacuum cleaner to some old tools, so I’ll be doing live-fire production printing. I’m sure you can get adapters on Amazon, but what’s the fun in that?
The magic wand that sucks dust off the evaporator coils under the refrigerator slides into the bottom end of this one:
And the snout of this slides into the tiny floor brush that fits into spots the new one can’t reach:
And, with a Faire wind in my sails, perhaps I can run off the bits required for a hard drive mood light:
More details on all those later…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
“I’m sure you can get adapters on Amazon, but what’s the fun in that?”
This is often stated on popular youtube channels where someone makes/repairs something that “you can just go buy it”. Clearly the person stating this is new to the world of making and unaware of the satisfaction it can bring. Often you don’t have the choice of buying it. I recently made a semi-complex obsolete part for a scroll saw from aluminum vs the original from plastic. It took around 8 hours of work in two 0r three sessions to get it fitted, but now it will never break again. The saw was otherwise worthless and hadn’t run in a few years and was simply given to me. Previous attempts at plastic parts from a silicone rubber mold were sent to the original owner and each broke in turn. Obviously it was a poor design.
If you have further interest: (Ed, I realize you may not allow links here. Not looking to increase viewership or have subscribers, just sharing.)
When a broken gadget starts working once more, I sometimes look up from the bench and say “Take that, Entropy!”
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says I can’t break even, but I can push back a bit, once in a while…
Boggle
That’s beautiful work.
The aluminum clamp projects a definite no-nonsense attitude that would never pass a stylin’ design review, but it works and that counts for almost everything as I tally it up. Well done!
Even though the rubber mold and parts came out, I had several surprising and disappointing issues. The first being that the two-part mold unexpectedly fused into a one-part mold even with mold release and had to be cut apart to be used. (This is often a desired mold type, but not in this case). The other was that one half of the mold was not a well degassed and caused air bubble on the surface of the part. Had the parts not broken, I might have remolded everything, but it did answer the question regarding material and cause the final aluminum part to be created.
There are two remaining and similar parts that can now break. They all possess a similar elliptical hole and thin cross section but fortunately do not receive as much stress as the one connected to the motor.