Are you thinking about getting a 3D printer and your wife or your husband
don't think you need it or maybe your parents don't want to buy you one and
bring it into the house because they don't see a need for it.
Well I fix things all the time with my 3d printer. not just print little
knickknacks. I fix stuff. It's a handy tool and here's a project I want
to show you guys that I designed in Tinkercad,
a free software, printed out on my Ender 3 and fixed a problem. So maybe you
can show them this project and help convince them to let you get a 3D
printer. I'll show you all the details right here I'm Filament Friday.
Filament Friday is brought to you by these patreon supporters. The problem
starts in my basement with this plug plate. The wall itself is designed for
drywall but there was paneling put in place so when I put this on the plug, I
have too much of a gap behind it. So I 3d printed this frame which takes up the
space and this fits inside of it. Let me show you the wall to better explain what
the issue is. Here's the wall in question. You can see that the switch plate is
really really loose and there's this gap behind it you can even get little
fingers behind it which is not safe. So I'm using Tinkercad. Tinkercad.com is a
free software and I use it a lot. And all I'm gonna do is drop a pyramid here
resize it too close to what I need. I'll end up readjusting this in a minute.
Using the ruler tool I get full dimensions then I'm going to use this
block tool which is hollow, it takes away material. I'm gonna lift it up 10
millimeters because I'm going to cut the top of this triangle off. So I'll make it
bigger to cover the whole triangle and slide it just about to the middle. Now I
want the angles to be a little steeper so I'm gonna grab the top of the
triangle pull it all the way up and that looks pretty good.
And then I'll take this hollow box, make it bigger because it's gonna cut the
whole top of this thing off then I'll grab both those, group them together and then
here's the base for my inserts. Now I need to cut out the center of this to go
around the electrical box behind the cover plate and I've got those
dimensions. It's 66 by 106 but I realized I needed to make this a little
bit bigger but I'll show you that in a minute. So here's the cover plate as
another hollow box because I'm going to recess it. So I made the base bigger. Now
I take that same cutout, Center it in the x and y direction, now i'll
group these two together to cut it out. So here I click group, now I've got the
frame. Now I want to recess the top of this for the cover plate. This box is the
same size as a cover plate so I'll drop it on top and then I'm gonna lower it
just a few millimeters to make the recess.
So first its centered and now grab it, grab the arrow, drop it
and I think I'm seven millimeters, yeah seven millimeters off the top and
I'm gonna group these together and that'll form the recess that I want. And
there it is very simple design. And now I just bring it into Cura. I'm gonna slice
it with my magic 0.28 profile so 0.28 layer height, ten percent infill
is all I need. I sliced this guy and it says it'll only take one hour 50 minutes
and to be accurate it took three hours. This thing was way off but it's a real
basic print. I go through the layers this should print real easy. So here's a
time-lapse of it printing on the Ender 3. It fit on the Ender 3 so a sub
$200 printer can print this easy. I'm using my Filament Friday white filament and it
comes out beautiful. Now I'll test the cover plate. It fits in just the way I
wanted so now I just need to remove this and install it into the wall. I use my
removal tool from my Filament Friday tool kit. The back of this thing is
smooth but it's gonna go against the wall who cares.The front looks really
good. So here's the plug. I'll just remove the cover plate and then I'll install
this frame. So here's the frame. It slides right over it. I left enough gap that I
can position this. The cover plate will actually hold this in place it's gonna
pinch it to the wall. So I'll just tighten this guy up and then I'll
position the frame around it so I'm off a little bit there we go snapped in
place and now when I tighten the screw all the way the cover plate will
actually push against this frame and hold it in place. And now that it's there
no more gap, no little fingers can get behind it. Problem solved.
I know this is a simple and very boring, very dad project, 3D print, but it's very
useful. This is something I just can't go to the store and buy and it fixed the
problem, even if it's temporary. That's what a 3d printer gives you. So maybe
it'll help convince them to let you get a 3d printer. And then of course once you
do, in between the dad projects, you can
tinker with it and play with it print all kinds of cool things but then go
back and print this once in a while just to make him happy. So maybe this will
help you get that 3d printer you're looking for. If it does, let me know in