I have a woodworking project that I needed to clamp together and have a nice
long Dewalt clamp but it's like a half an inch too short. Then I realized that
I can take a couple of low-cost Harbor Freight clamps take the ends off and
connect them with a 3d print but would it be strong enough and what's the best
way to print it? Standing up or laying down? I'll show you how I design this and
the best way to print it on today's Filament Friday. This week's video is
brought to you by these patreon supporters.
Here's the design I created it's very basic very simple I did this in
Tinkercad. It literally took me about five minutes and I didn't need it
anything special at fusion 360 or anything like that so I made this and then I exported
it and import it into cura. Now I'm gonna print this at a 0.28
layer height using my magic 0.28 profile so it's gonna be really rough and also
I'm gonna just use a 25% density and fill density. But because I've got like
three outer layers it's not going to matter it's mostly gonna be solid so let
me slice it here and I'll show you what this looks like inside under preview
mode.So I'll slide down and let's look a little closer effect I'll run this in
animation so you can see how it's gonna print. Now this one I didn't use any
supports because it's small enough it should bridge just fine you can see it
just builds the walls pretty much solid and fills in any gap so this is a pretty
standard laying it down sideways. Now what I want to do is print it standing
up and here it is printed standing up with the same settings but you can see
the layer lines are now going 90 degrees to where they were when it was laying
down. So that's the real test, which is better laying down or standing up? So
that's what I'm going to test with the actual clamps and this is how these
clamps work. You can unscrew the end and there's a bolt inside this cap it comes
off you slide it off and then you bring in the other clamp that I took the cap
off already and now I can connect these two with the 3d print. So the 3d print
slides on and there's a little pin to stop it from going too far but the holes
will line up with the holes in the bar so I'm gonna use those same bolts that
I unscrewed and there's no nut. It's actually, I sized the hole so they would
screw right into the plastic so the plastics acting, kind of cutting threads
here a little bit and I'll tighten these up and then these two will be connected
So here's the finished modified unit I got clamps on both sides to connect her
in between them and I can just press these triggers and it'll climb together
I got two sets of clamps connected with 3d prints and connect it to the wood but
I haven't really tighten anything down yet the difference between these two is
the red one was printed standing up so the layer lines are going this way. Now
the force of these clamps is going to pull outward and when this standing up
one is put on its side the layer lines are actually perpendicular to that force
where the black one was actually printed laying down so the layer lines are
parallel to the force. Which is better? We'll see. What I'm gonna do is tighten
these clamps and see if they survive. Just to be safe I don't want shrapnel in
my eyes I'm gonna wear some safety glasses. So I'm gonna clamp this red one
first let's see what happens. Seems to hold pretty good. I'll clamp one side
and the other. So it broke. It took some force but this one broke at two
different spots. A layer line here and a layer line there. So it didn't split in
the center they basically split right around the hole. Now I'll try the one
that's horizontal to the force and see how it holds up. I can't get it to break.
Now I reversed them. I have a black one that was printed standing up and a red
one that is printed laying down so let's see if will eliminate the plastic used.
Let's see if one breaks and one doesn't. So here's the one in front this is the
one that was printed standing up. Wow that broke right away.
So clearly the red print was better than the black and this one broke right along
a straight line.
Now the black one was printed on an Ender 3 and the red one was
printed on my CR10 mini. I don't know if that has any effect but let's try the
red one now horizontal. Once again I can't break this one. So it turns out it
did fail I just didn't notice. It wasn't in this direction when I loosen this up
you can see how it's sagging here in the center. When I lifted this up I noticed
the layers had separated. The bar not being stiff allowed this thing to pivot
and that cracked the layer line right along here. Didn't pull apart so it still
held the board's together but it split there so it's not a permanent solution.
I'm not sure I can even print that and make it stronger.
But I'll play with it some. Then it occurred to me why can I use a second 3d
print. If I print a small coupling they'll slide over the original coupling
like this. Very very simple and print this, layer lines flat, and in turn at 90
degrees. I can slide it over the original coupling like this so I'll just slide it
over the top to the middle and then I got two more to put on the end. But now
I've got layer lines going one direction and layer lines go on the other and just
to make it stronger like I said I'll put these on the ends and I made these just
a half a millimeter bigger than your original coupling so they slide on
pretty tight. So now I can put this together and we can test it. here's the
finished new version you can see the two bolts are in place and the three little
pieces are holding it so now I can put this on the wood and really crank this
down and see if it's gonna work. I've got the best of both worlds I've got the red
one that was printed laying down so it's layer lines earned parallel to the force
and then the force is trying to split this thing going up and down these
little black pieces are preventing that because they're printed flat and in turn
ninety degrees so their layer lines are in series or in line with the force
trying to split the red one. And when I crank in this guy, I can crank all the
way down I've tried numerous times, I can't get it to split and this thing is
definitely more solid than it was before. Very very solid plus these little
black pieces kind of lift it off the wood so it keeps the red lifted a little
bit so there's less force on it. So overall this is a great combination
printing in two different directions two different pieces that could be printed
together and then slid together to make this clamp. Now this is not an original
idea. IRWIN quick clamps have something very similar and you can buy it on
Amazon but they're like around 12 bucks and they got pins that push in
instead of screw in. And it goes on the end of an IRWIN clamp and then pushes
into the hole and it's it's pretty strong. It's plastic but it's a very
very strong plastic. the problem is these things don't fit my clamps from Harbor
Freight and this part.icular clamp is one of my other big ones it's the same as
the DeWalt it's like a half an inch short so I could have used this if I
took the pads off in the Irwin but I wanted to try this out because there's
other times where I need even longer because I can mix and match these and
make any size clamp I want and I save $12
This couldn't have cost me more than $1 in plastic and I can print new ones if I
break it and have a bunch of them around when I want to make any kind of clamp
size I want. So having a 3d printer, being able to do this, and now I know to make
it strong with these two different directions solves a lot of problems for
me in the future. So I really have all the clamps I need I can now make any