Tag: 3dprinting

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3D Printed Sign Handle

Sign Handle

Sign Handle

I designed a sign handle I could use for the protest signs I’ve been making lately.

Sign Handle

It’s a handle and backing piece. The two pieces bolt together using 8-32″ bolts (or 4mm bolts) and clamp around the sign. If you have concerned about wind you can hot glue the backing piece to the sign to add some solid support.

Sign Handle

I made the back piece larger & taller and glued it in place after a particular windy day! (You can see a little bead of hot glue sticking out of the top of the back piece in the photo above.

Sign Handle

The handle part is hollow, but you can print the whole thing without support. This is one of those prints that is more functional than beautiful, and as long as it works I don’t care how nice it looks. (I mean, it still looks good of course!)

Sign Handle

My signs are typically around 18″ x 12″ and I use cardboard of varying thicknesses. The only thing I don’t like about it is that I didn’t have the right size bolts so I had to cut some down to not stick out too far. (If the bolts stick out too far they could cause damage, and uh… well, no one wants that, right?)

Sign Handle

You can get the STL files from Printables.com – Sign Handle and you’ll need to make your own sign! (Or find some here!)

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3D Printed Sign Letter Stencil

Dana and I went to the “No Kings” protest last weekend, and I asked if she wanted one of the signs I made, or if she wanted to come up with something. She didn’t have any ideas until Friday night, so I rushed to get a sign made for her Saturday morning. Here it is! If you haven’t seen Daniel’s comments, check it out.

To make the sign I started in Inkscape with an Tabloid (11″x17″) canvas, and typed out the words. My plan was to 3D print the letters and us them for the stencil.

The red squares represent the size of the print bed on my 3D printer. I could not print the whole thing in one go so I broke it into two sections…

Here’s the first section. I brought the SVG into OpenSCAD and extruded it 1.5mm tall. Once I did that I exported an STL file I could print.

With the letters printed in black filament I put them down on the tabloid size foam core board to act as a stencil. With the letters being 1.5mm tall they had enough weight I didn’t need to worry about the paint blast blowing them away.

Spray Spray Spray! Paint goes on, letters (in place) stay. I let things dry for a bit…

Then removed the letters. A sign! I did think that it might have been fun to just glue on the 3D printed letters, though that would have added a little more weight to it. Still, ideas for the future… especially with multi-color printing. But again, I wanted to make a sign fast.

For good measure I added a 3D printed handle to the sign. I tweaked a design someone else threw together but I’m working on my own version now.

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HP Z420 Drive Caddies…

3D Printed Drive Caddies

3D Printed Drive Caddies

This TrueNAS project has had some setbacks, including RAM, but I’ve made progress!

3D Printed Drive Caddies

Since I am loading up this machine with drives I need some way to hold the drives in place, so once again 3D printing is the solution. I didn’t want to design a drive caddy as I assumed there would be some out there already, and there are, so I started looking, My results are below.

3.5″ to 5.25″ Drive bay adapters – Universal
I like this one. It does require a few bolts, but those bolts do allow you to secure this into the case, which can be a nice advantage. It’s got a lot of hole pattern options as well. It definitely feels solid since it gets bolted onto the drive.

3.5″ Hard Drive to 5.25″ Drive Bay Adapter
This is an interesting design! It uses no hardware and (for my print) snaps into place using the screw holes in the hard drive. It you don’t have hardware or don’t want to use it, this is nice. IF the fit isn’t tight it should still stay together once inserted into the computer. (I did need to print with supports.)

3D Printed Drive Caddies

3D Printed Drive Caddies

HP Workstation Rack for 2.5 HDD-SDD
This one is pretty good for holding a 2.5″ drive with bolts through the bottom. The one issue I have is that it’s a bit too long, at least for my computer. I could probably do a quick tweak on it in OpenSCAD to work for my needs though. It does need bolts on the side to slide into place.

3D Printed Drive Caddies

3D Printed Drive Caddies

3D Printed Drive Caddies

2.5” to 5.25” adapter for HP workstation case
I like this one as it’s got space for two drives, though you certainly can put just one drive it in if you want. It’s got a nice little cutout handle to make it easy to slide in and out if needed. I’m pretty sure I had to print it with supports though because of the little rails on the side.

HP Z440 3.5 drive caddy for 2 ssd drives
This one is okay, though I think I prefer the one above over this one. The sides where the drives attach seem a little thin, and the drives could be spaced out a bit more, though this one does have a hole on the bottom for more airflow. This one does not have built-in rails (so not support needed) so you’d need to add some bolts.

I’m still not 100% sure which of these I will end up using as they all have pros and cons. Of course it’s nice to see some variety in design and how people approach the problem of holding a hard drive (or two) in place.

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Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part III)

Did you read Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part I) and Part II where I attempted (and succeeded!) at using CHANGTIKEJI Silicone Mold “Super Elastic Liquid Silicone” to make a gasket (seal) for these 3D printed rugged boxes?

Well, here’s the next installment. In Part II we tried to pour the silicone directly into the groove on the bottom half of the enclosure. Which worked but failed, so I guess it didn’t work. There were other factors at play, so I think it could work in some cases. Nevertheless, we’re going to try to “glue” this existing seal into place using silicone.

So this time we took the existing box and seal which do work fine, but have the bothersome quirk of the gasket not staying in place and falling out when you open the box. I drizzled just a little bit of silicone into the groove in the bottom part, then inserted the seal and put some weights on it to press it down into the uncured silicone. In theory the uncured silicone should stick (somewhat) to the 3D printed plastic, and adhere fully to the silicone seal, sort of “gluing” it into place.

Did it work? It did work, as far as it has not fallen out. It seems to be held in place. I have not tried to pull it out, as I am sure I could do so, but the idea was to just prevent it from falling out every time I open the box, so there is some success there for sure.

But remember this seal was made for a box that had a 1mm gap added in for the seal, so more space to fill means a larger/thicker gasket. I think this made everything a little easier.

As I’ve noted before, there’s a bit more experimentation to be done, but I’ve learned a few things in the process so far, and that’s what it’s all about!

See Also: Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part II) and Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part I).

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Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part II)

If you read Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part I) you read about how I used CHANGTIKEJI Silicone Mold “Super Elastic Liquid Silicone” to make a gasket (seal) for these 3D printed rugged boxes.

But I wasn’t completely happy with the results…

I sort of wish there was a way to “glue” it into place, but you can’t exactly glue silicone, because it doesn’t really stick to anything! I do have an idea for that…

The one thing I don’t like with this one is that it easily falls out. If this is a box you open a lot you’ll probably get annoyed with it falling out on occasion.

So I wanted to try a few thing to solve those annoying issues…

Someone on Mastodon had the idea to pour the silicone directly into the groove of the box. (I can’t seem to find that reply right now!) I thought I should try that. It was not easy. It was messy. And I had to do it twice. The first time I leveled off the silicone with a wooden popsicle stick. Once it dried it sort of sunk down a bit… I did it again, this time dripping (drizzling?) it into the groove just a little at a time with a popsicle stick. That gave me a lot more control versus pouring way too much. (Luckily it peels off when dry.)

One other issue is that once dry the lid would not close! I ended up shaving down the lock just a bit and using some good pressure to close it. Again, I may need to mess around with the TSealHeight parameter to get things just right.

Finally, I tested it for water-tightness by doing to paper towel submersion test and… it failed. So not water-tight, and not a good fit.

Also, while the idea to “glue it in place” by pouring the silicone directly in was a good one… it just came out very easily. Maybe because it was so thin.

Anyway, this was a good test! I have another test that I just finished, so keep an eye out for the next post!

See Also: Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part III) and Rugged Box Silicone Gasket Seal (Part I).

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