Author: Pete Prodoehl

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Wire Spool Holder

I use these spools of silicone wire and they come in a cardboard box with a hole to feel the wire through and every damn time the wire goes back into the box and I have to open the box and feed it through again and wow it’s a pain! This is an attempt to solve that…

Like some of my other designs I wanted a modular thing. The wire comes in six spools/colors but rather than one huge print each spool has its own holder. This makes sense to me. I thought about ways to interlock them, but eventually decided to just add screw holes and mount them all to a piece of scrap 1/4″ plywood that was near the laser cutter.

The hole the wire feeds through is just right for this wire. YWMV (Your Wire May Vary!) The OpenSCAD file allows for adjusting the hole. An X-ACTO knife or drill bit could also be used to fine tune things.

Advantages of this design? It is stackable. I can put stuff on top of it. (Maybe more wire spools?) I can pick up the whole thing easily. There is not one rod holding all spools, and you can easily remove/replace a single spool.

So far I’m liking this thing. It’s similar to my Chonky Solder Spool Holder. It took about four revision to this before I had the final version.

Here’s the first attempt. It was too difficult to feed the wire through the hole, so the hole got moved up and the half-circle notch was added to allow getting a finger in there to feed the wire through. The bottom lip was also added to allow for mounting to the board with screws.

You can get the STL and .scad file from Printables.com – Wire Spool Holder. Print ’em if you need ’em!

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Headphone Hanger (in OpenSCAD)

I wanted a simple headphone hanger for my office at work and I found a few really nice ones on Printables.com but I wanted one I could easily change the mounting holes on, so I whipped this one up in OpenSCAD.

Does it sort of look like a dollhouse bed? Yes, it does…

Can of some weird seltzer my wife drinks for scale… Also, I made it parametric so you can make it longer or shorter if needed.

Here’s a really long one…

And here’s a really short one…

And here’s one that’s juuuuuust right!

If you change the length remember to take into account the full depth of your headphones, not just the band that goes on your head, otherwise they’ll hang at an angle against the wall. That long one could probably hold all of my headphones! (I have four pairs. All of the other ones are Sennheiser but the ones I have at work are some Audio-Technica I got from the dumpster.)

You can get the STL and .scad file from Printables.com – Headphone Hanger. Print it if you need it!

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The (Prusa) Blob

It’s been just over a year since I got the Prusa MINI+ 3D Printer and besides a few minor hiccups at the start it’s been a great experience. I’ve printed hundreds of things without issue in the last 13 months. Sure, there have been a few failures, but they’ve been pretty minor… until now.

A few weeks ago I had some issues printing because I’m in Wisconsin and it’s winter and it gets cold in the basement. If the printer sees a low temperature it assumes something is wrong with the thermistor and won’t print. It’s a safety feature, and probably a good one (though I would like a way to override it.) My “manual override” involved running a small space heater in the tiny room the printer is in. It works, and It’s usually not so cold I need to do it often.

Now, I know a lot of people who get a printer post online immediately “What upgrades should I do first?” and that makes sense if you get a cheap printer where costs were cut. But hey, this is a Prusa! It should be good out of the box. In fact the only modification I did was to add a silicone sock around the heating block to prevent a big blob of filament sticking in the event of a failed print.

So when it was really cold, and the printer wouldn’t print, and I was using the space heater… guess what got the printer printing reliably in the cold. Removing the silicone sock.

No sock, no problem, right? I started a long print and went to work. During the day I checked the camera that points at the printer and noticed the plate had moved. Argh. It’s happened before, so it’s usually just a failed print.

I checked again later and the plate was gone… It was probably thrown free from the printer. No a disaster, but annoying for sure. But wait… can you see it?

I found the plate on the floor and a bunch of useless plastic. Oh, and… The Blob!

Dammit! I heated up the printer and got the large blob loose, but it was all over the place. I grabbed the heat gun from my soldering station and (somewhat carefully?) heated and removed as much plastic as I could. Did I slightly deform the printed fan duct? Yes. Is there still plastic on there. Indeed. Did I put the silicone sock back on, but have to cut it to get it over some of the stuck on plastic. Ugh. Yup.

I haven’t done a full tear-down or clean-up but it’s printing again, and prints look fine. At some point I should probably get it cleaned better… or, you know… buy another printer. ;)

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Sink Tool Holder Plug Repair

We have this sink organizer thing that holds a sponge, a bottle of dish soap, a scrubber, etc. and there’s a little plastic plug that goes into a drainage hole in the bottom of it. Well, there was, but it wore out and broke, so I made a new one.

I modeled one in OpenSCAD based on the measurements of the broken one…

Then I used that to difference it from a block to create a mold I could 3D print using PLA plastic. (I did consider printing in TPU but I had to do some other silicone casting as well so I went this route.)

Here’s the new plug made from silicone. It’s pretty simple, nothing fancy, so I assumed it would work just fine.

Here it is stuck into the hole. It’s flexible so it squeezes in just fine…

Here’s a view from the top where you can see the plug in the hole. Again, a simple project. I’m hoping it holds up because another cast I did with this silicone came out a bit weird.

In this closeup image you can see the lines in the piece caused by the 3D printed mold. They don’t matter for this sort of thing though. (I probably didn’t print the mold at a high resolution.)

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Super-Boring Sanding Block

My friends, this may win the award for the most boring 3D printed object ever. It’s a block. To be more precise, it’s a sanding block. You wrap a piece of sandpaper around it and you sand wood. That’s it. Yes, from the man who brought you the 3D Printed Shim, it’s… Block.

Although, to be fair, this is not a Useless Object&trade, as I actually use it. It probably sees more use than a 3D printed Grot or Grogu or whatever is in fashion nowadays… If you’re interested in my perspective on printing things or using a block of wood or something else, I wrote a whole post titled Printing versus… Not Printing? you might enjoy.

Anyway… gotta run, I’ve got some sanding to do!

Sorry, I’m not even gonna spend time uploading this one. There are hundreds of better ones out there or you could probably type cube([90,70,35]); into OpenSCAD and make your own.

(Although I do recommend MCAD‘s roundedCube instead.)