With the recent move of Bucketworks, Milwaukee Makerspace found a (slightly damaged) large projection screen in its possession (which you can see in the photo above.) So for the recent Fix It Milwaukee event, I went to work trying to repair it.
I started by getting out the digital calipers and making some measurements, as well as sketching some views on paper and writing down the dimensions. (I guess all those years of Drafting classes paid off!)
Modeling this in OpenSCAD was a little tricky, only because I often get in over my head in OpenSCAD. It’s a fun challenge though… Some people play video games, I like trying to model difficult objects.
Because my primary goal with the first print was to do a test fit, I used only a 10% infill. I started the print at 9pm and didn’t want to stay up too late to let it finish. (Yeah, in theory the hot bits should all cool down when a print is done, but RepRaps do start on fire occasionally, so if I can avoid leaving it on all night long, I will.)
It definitely looked how I imagined it should look. I did not model the holes for the pins, as I figured I could do that later, or just drill them out. Again, my main goal was to test the fit of the Aluminum pole into the hole.
The Aluminum pole fit great! It fit so well in fact, that I couldn’t get it out, and resorted to breaking it apart. Snug is good, but too snug is not good. I’ll increase the size a bit and try again. It might actually be good to have a snug fit and avoid the pins for the replacement. Once I get the hole right I’ll do a print with more than 10% infill, which might be strong enough to not break apart.
Oh, and since I did this at Milwaukee Makerspace where we like to over-engineer things, I had at least two people tell me we could easily cast these in Aluminum. :)
