3D Printing Stupid Shit: Pt. 1
29 December, 2023
I often need something mundane and either creative or vigorous to do as an outlet; drawing, chopping wood, doing yardwork, hitting a punching bag, etc. Lately this has been 3d printing objects that serve some purpose around the house. My pièce de résistance is a part that fixes a drawer in the kitchen due to a bent rail.
I was doing some cleaning in my office and decided it would be nice to have some hooks for these hand grippers I have on my desk.
I could have gone to the hardware store, but I felt like being lazy, so I did what any lazy person would do....I modeled some hooks in CAD software and 3d printed some instead. It may sound crazy but the math kinda maths.
This sick retro 8-bit anime themed song came on the rotation during the making of this video and I decided it's the theme song for this vid.
The Math
- The closest hardware store is 2 miles away.
- The average price of wall hooks I see on their store is $3 (for a pack of 6).
- My truck gets about ~15 miles to the gallon.
- Gas is ~$5 where I live.
- 1 spool of filament is 1kg and cost me $30.
- 1 gram is therefore about $0.03.
- 1 hook will print about 6 grams of filament.
$$ costdriving = {((miles/milespergallon) * gasprice) + hookcost} $$
vs
$$ costprinting = {(spoolcost/spoolamount) * gramsused * hooksprinted} $$
If I were to drive ~4 miles to purchase hooks it would cost me ~$4.33.
If I were to 3d print hooks it would cost me ~$0.72, plus I don't have to go anywhere or get dressed.
The choice is clear.
Modeling
I need basically a simple j-hook and plan to use a drywall screw to fix it to the wall. I need 4 of them.
I use FreeCAD (FOSS) for modeling. I keep it pretty simple and get most of this info from youtube. A few straight lines with dimensions, padding, some circles with pockets, and that's good for now. Export this as an STL and load it into the slicer.
Slicing
I use PrusaSlicer to import the CAD file and prep it for printing. I already have this tuned to my printer's Z-offset, some custom macros, and a brim. I export the g-code and prepare the printer.
Printing
I have an Ender 5 Pro. It's a good machine for tinkering. It takes a bit to get it dialed in but you can customize it a lot. Once it's dialed you get great prints.
The printer has been flashed with Klipper to give me some lower level capabilities and higher performance. I'm also using OctoPrint running on a Raspberry Pi which controls the printer via USB serial and has a nice web interface for managing things remotely. The printer is 5 feet away from my desk but it is nice to check on prints when doing other stuff. I mainly use this for the timelapse feature which is a lot of fun.
Results
It took me about 4 hours to print all the hooks. This is the end result. It's not my Mona Lisa but I think it's pretty sick.
