Mary has been doing Ruler Quilting and wanted a pencil guide (similar to the machine’s ruler foot) to let her sketch layouts before committing stitches to fabric. The general idea is to offset the pencil by 1/4 inch from the edge of the ruler:
That was easy.
Print three to provide a bit of cooling time and let her pass ’em around at her next quilting bee:
Her favorite doodling pencil shoves a 0.9 mm lead through a 2 mm ferrule, so ream the center hole with a #44 drill (86 mil = 2.1 mm) to suit:
The outer perimeters have 64 facets, an unusually high number for my models, so they’re nice & smooth on the ruler. Even though I didn’t build them sequentially, they had zero perimeter zits and the OD came out 0.500 inch on the dot.
The chamfers guide the pencil point into the hole and provide a bit of relief for the pencil’s snout.
If I had a laser cutter, I could make special rulers for her, too …
The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:
| // Quilting Ruler Adapters | |
| // Ed Nisley KE4ZNU October 2016 | |
| //- Extrusion parameters must match reality! | |
| ThreadThick = 0.25; | |
| ThreadWidth = 0.40; | |
| HoleWindage = 0.2; | |
| Protrusion = 0.1; // make holes end cleanly | |
| inch = 25.4; | |
| function IntegerMultiple(Size,Unit) = Unit * ceil(Size / Unit); | |
| //---------- | |
| // Dimensions | |
| ID = 0; | |
| OD = 1; | |
| LENGTH = 2; | |
| Offset = 0.25 * inch; | |
| Template = [2.0,2*Offset,3.0]; | |
| NumSides = 16*4; | |
| HoleSides = 8; | |
| //---------------------- | |
| // Useful routines | |
| module PolyCyl(Dia,Height,ForceSides=0) { // based on nophead's polyholes | |
| Sides = (ForceSides != 0) ? ForceSides : (ceil(Dia) + 2); | |
| FixDia = Dia / cos(180/Sides); | |
| cylinder(d=(FixDia + HoleWindage),h=Height,$fn=Sides); | |
| } | |
| //---------- | |
| // Build it | |
| difference() { | |
| cylinder(d=Template[OD],h=Template[LENGTH],$fn=NumSides); | |
| translate([0,0,-Template[LENGTH]]) | |
| PolyCyl(Template[ID],3*Template[LENGTH],HoleSides); | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=2*Template[ID],d2=Template[ID],h=Template[LENGTH]/3 + Protrusion,$fn=HoleSides); | |
| translate([0,0,Template[LENGTH] + Protrusion]) | |
| mirror([0,0,1]) | |
| cylinder(d1=2*Template[ID],d2=Template[ID],h=Template[LENGTH]/3 + Protrusion,$fn=HoleSides); | |
| } |
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
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