The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Cutting Board Shim

    The kitchen counter has only two useful places for the cutting board and the spot Mary favors puts a distinct swale under one corner. A bit of measuring and solid modeling produced a simple shim to make the answer come out right:

    Cutting Board shim - solid model
    Cutting Board shim – solid model

    The basic shape is union() of a trio of hull() operations forming the three sides, with the text label as a separate object to verify I understood how to build a multi-material object.

    Export it as a 3mf file, open it in PrusaSlicer, slice, print:

    Cutting Board shim - label
    Cutting Board shim – label

    Putting the label on the bottom surface takes advantage of the nubbly finish on the Textured Steel Sheet to make it look like it just grew in there.

    The label is just barely visible from the top, despite extending only 1/4 of the way through the 1.6 mm bottom slab:

    Cutting Board shim - top
    Cutting Board shim – top

    So white PETG needs more than 1.2 mm of thickness to hid a black feature. Today I Learned, etc.

    Multi-material printing produces a Wipe Tower to hold all the extruded junk during color changes:

    Cutting Board shim - wipe tower
    Cutting Board shim – wipe tower

    The curl under the nozzle comes from the final ramming used to shape the end of the filament into a point for reliable material / color changing.

    Although a shim is something of a nuisance, it works perfectly:

    Cutting Board shim - in use
    Cutting Board shim – in use

    Much easier than installing an L-shaped Corian slab with a sink cutout!

    The faded engraving dates back to the early days of the laser

    The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

    // Cutting Board alignment shim
    // Ed Nisley KE4ZNU – 2024-08-20
    //—–
    // Dimensions
    ShimThick = 1.6; // thickness of shim under board
    /* [Hidden] */
    ShimOA = [25.0,25.0,15.0]; // overall size of shim
    WallThick = 4.0;
    ShimRadius = WallThick/2;
    LabelThick = ShimThick/4;
    NumSides = 3*4;
    //—–
    // Build it
    union() {
    hull()
    for (i=[0,1])
    translate([i*(ShimOA.x – ShimRadius),0,0])
    cylinder(r=ShimRadius,h=ShimOA.z,$fn=NumSides);
    hull()
    for (j=[0,1])
    translate([0,j*(ShimOA.y – ShimRadius),0])
    cylinder(r=ShimRadius,h=ShimOA.z,$fn=NumSides);
    hull() {
    for (i=[0,1])
    translate([i*(ShimOA.x – ShimRadius),0,0])
    cylinder(r=ShimRadius,h=ShimThick,$fn=NumSides);
    translate([0,1*(ShimOA.y – ShimRadius),0])
    cylinder(r=ShimRadius,h=ShimThick,$fn=NumSides);
    }
    }
    color("Black")
    translate([ShimOA.x/3,ShimOA.y/3,LabelThick])
    rotate([180,0,90 + 45])
    linear_extrude(height=LabelThick,convexity=20)
    text(text=str(ShimThick),size=6,spacing=1.00,
    font="Arial:style:Bold",halign="center",valign="center");