Wed 28 October 2009

Keyvolution

I somehow managed to lost the key for the sliding door to my kitchen. It probably fell into a trash bag, which I sometimes hang on the knob of said door when they are full and ready to throw away.

Of course I have newer locked the door until now, but robbed of the possibility to do so, I was overcome by a sudden urge to be able to lock the if need should arise.

The boring way to get a new key, would probably have involved taking a picture of the lock, show it to a locksmith and hope to find a fitting key.

But since we have build a 3D-printer a couple of month ago and "missing" keys had been printed successfully already, I wanted to try to design and print a new kitchen key.

After measuring the dimensions of the keyhole I started designing the new key in HeeksCAD. After only 3 not so perfect key designs I managed to print a really nice looking, working, new key for my kitchen door.

Here you can see a progress of the design:

keyvolution

From left to right: First design in HeeksCAD | final design as .stl in HeeksCAD | Printpath preview in skeinforge with raft and support structure.

The printed keys:

keys

Read more...

Thu 01 October 2009

Open-mindedness

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