Category: Projects

I want to test out an idea for a startup over the holidays, and expect to be doing a lot of printing. So today’s thing is an auto bed leveler for my 3D printer. The new Marlin firmware supports bed leveling, but unfortunately I built the printer a while ago using Generation 6 electronics – which does not have suitable pins to break out for auto leveling.

My solution was to design something borrowing from a switch design I saw a RepRapper called NOPHEAD post a few years back. Basically a magnet keeps a probe shaft retracted normally, but you can easily press on a cap attached to the shaft dropping and activating the sensor.

For my design I added a switch. So now I can G29 auto level the bed, then cut the probe out of the circuit, and retract the shaft, while printing. I also extend the shaft with a neodymium magnet. That way if the probe does drop onto the object being printed, the horizontal shear forces should just dislodge the magnet and not crash the X sled if there is a failure.

A good set of quality scissors are another one of those tools you need rarely, but when you do it is exactly what you need. Today’s thing, thing number 5, is a French fitting to add a reasonable set of scissors to my tool chest. I still need to go rehab the scissors, but they are already an order of magnitude better than the ones I had been using.

So a few years ago I tried French fitting some of my tool chest drawers as an experiment. I was blown away at the difference it makes. By having cutouts explicitly for each tool you know exactly where each tool lives, and can tell at a glance if any of the tools were not put back after the last time they were used.

So thing number four is a French fitting of one of the drawers in my watchmaker’s bench, adding a cutout for the Nibbler. I only use the nibbler infrequently, but when you need it, it is exactly the tool you want. That makes for an ideal tool to French fit, since you know exactly where it is next time you need it, even if that is several months later.

The nimbler is spring loaded, so I added wooden risers to hold it in the much smaller closed position in order to save drawer space.

So with the pliers neatly racked, I realized I wanted a better way to store some of the other hand tools. I use forceps on the assembly bench, and some times on the soldering bench. Just yesterday I was carrying some back and forth between benches on a project, so I figure the next “thing a day”, thing #3, would be a holder for my small 4″ and 5” forceps that could be carried between benches easily.

Some of the things I build for the shop as part of my “see a task do a task” experiment started making an immediate difference in how I work. So I decided to try another experiment. I liked Jonathan Coulton’s thing a week song writing experiment, so I am going to try a build of a “thing a day” from now until next year. I am thinking simple things for the shop that take less than an hour to make.

So here’s thing zero – a tape spool holder. The idea was to stop having to rummage through a tape bin every time I needed something.