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

  • Juki / Arrow Sewing Table Insert Filler

    Mary’s Juki TL-2010Q sewing machine sits in an Arrow Gidget II sewing table with a clear acrylic insert filling the opening:

    Juki TL-2000Q in Gidget II table
    Juki TL-2000Q in Gidget II table

    Before the insert arrived (it had month of leadtime), I hacked out a temporary cardboard insert:

    Juki temporary table insert
    Juki temporary table insert

    Although it may not be obvious from the picture, unlike my cardboard insert, the acrylic insert does not fill the tabletop hole to the immediate right of the machine:

    Custom Inserts are U-shaped, designed to fit around all 3 sides of your sewing machine

    Shortly after the insert arrived I hacked a temporary filler, for which no pictures survive, to keep pins / tools / whatever from falling to their doom. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because she wanted the machine positioned an inch to the right of its intended spot to leave enough space for a finger to reach the bobbin hatch latch.

    I then promised to replace the ugly cardboard filler with a less awful acrylic filler and finally got it done:

    Juki TL-2000Q in Gidget II table - insert filler
    Juki TL-2000Q in Gidget II table – insert filler

    The stack of cardboard prototypes show iterative fit-and-finish improvements, with the odd shape on the top serving to measure the machine’s 25 mm corner radius by comparison with known circles.

    The insert filler is made from smoked gray acrylic, because I have yet to unpack the acrylic stockpile and may not, in fact, have any clear 6 mm acrylic, so we’ll regard this as a final prototype pending further developments. It did, however, confirm the laser survived the move, which was pretty much the whole point.

    The end of the machine is not a straight line. Part of the iteration was measuring the curve’s chord height to calculate the circle’s radius, which turned out to be 760 mm:

    Juki Insert Filler - end chord circle
    Juki Insert Filler – end chord circle

    With that in hand, a few Boolean operations produced the filler shape:

    Juki Insert Filler
    Juki Insert Filler

    A pair of silicone bumper feet stuck to the side of the Juki hold the left edge of the filler at the proper level.

    For the record, the smoked acrylic came from a fragment of a Genuine IBM Printer stand I’ve had in the scrap pile since The Good Old Days:

    Etsy listing - Vintage IBM Printer Stand
    Etsy listing – Vintage IBM Printer Stand

    The LightBurn layout as an SVG image: