A recent quilt photo shoot degenerated into me chasing several bright orange clamp jaws across the deck as they popped off their clamps hanging from the photo backdrop scaffold. Most clamps have jaws snapping onto actual rods, but these clamps have molded-in-place “rods” much smaller than the 2 mm expected by the jaws and much more irregular than seems reasonable.
Trace and scan the nose of a clamp:
Curiously, the molded rod is not centered in the nose:
Use LightBurn to coerce a scan of the first sketch into a suitable path, laser-cut some MDF, and glue up a drill fixture:
Align the drill to the center of the off-center hole marked on the bottom layer:
The drilling setup looks casual, but hand-holding the clamps against the rear wall and into the form-fitting nose recess sufficed:
I snipped the plastic “rods” out before drilling the holes, then rammed 2 mm steel rods in place:
They’re really 5/64 inch = 1.98 mm rods from the oil-hardening drill rod stash, but entirely sufficient for the purpose.
With one clamp in hand, though, there was obviously no reason for the rods to be off-center. So I centered the drill in the nose, punctured the rest of the clamps, and pressed 2 mm carbon fiber rods in place:
The rods were cut to 20 mm by rolling them across a pad with firm pressure from a utility knife. That was mostly to get some experience cutting carbon fiber, which is obviously overqualified for the job.
Snap the orange jaws in place and I shall never suffer the embarrassment of chasing them again …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 