Printing the Mundane Can Be Rewarding

 

I'm still, after all these years, in awe of 3D printing and what it allows me to create and make. Today is a good case in point, my Prusa mini + is on with a longish job printing a new rear panel for  my uConsole, the uConsole is a great portable computer that runs of 2 18650 cells but they are inside a bolted on aluminium cover, and there is no battery hatch. I found a design for a back cover with a magnet hatch over on Printables and chucked it onto my machine. That's pretty magical but it's the other job I've chucked together in 5 minutes for my other machine I wanted to talk about. 

For ages I have had this really cheap set of USB lights. They are primarily deployed for adding light to take photos of stuff for articles, but often also get deployed as a temporary work light. They have swivel heads and are mounted on pretty light (but OK) tripods and are reasonably adjustable. The one thing that has bugged me about them is that there is nowhere to stow/stash the built in USB cable. I end up wrapping it around the tripod which is a mess, also is definitely shortening the lifespan of the cable, and takes ages to unwind when I want to use them.  

I whipped up a supper simple glue on slot piece. As you know I am an advocate for FreeCAD, but really, what ever tool you choose, it's just so super handy to be able to make even simple items like this in whatever CAD you choose. This took me way less than 2 minutes to create and within 5 minutes from the "I need to keep half an eye on the first 20 minutes of this uConsole job what else can I do" moment it was on the printer. 

20 minutes later and it's glued onto the pair of lights.  The slot allows me to insert a length of hook and loop, which I have in my sewing box, to make a simple tie down system for the wrapped USB cable. Such a handy solution. 

So Yeah! Whilst I might catch your eye making  DIY Tiny Opensource Underwater Vehicles, I flipping love 3D design and print for these little practical doohickeys. Finally, many moons ago I wrote an article for Hackspace magazine about a similar theme  of 3D printing functional things. Was reasonably popular at the time in Issue 36.