Saturday, June 28th 2025
I have a lot of small cables, sorting and organizing them has been a nightmare. I stumbled across a solution, a 12in Yukon Zipper Bag at Harbor Freight. The bag was perfect for my needs. It includes a grommeted hang tag and vinyl label window. I designed a model for to make labels for the bags. I now have all my cables now organized in bags, hanging up in our office space. I decided to take my work a step further and share with the community a parametric generator these tags. For those who may not be aware of parametric generators. They're 3D models that allow you to customize them without needing to know how to use a CAD program. You can find my creation over at Maker World.
Categories: 3D Modeling
Tags: 3d-printing
Sunday, June 22nd 2025
Have you ever struggled with holding development boards while trying to soldering wires to them? I created a simple fixture that helps solve this problem. Plug in your USB C development board into the fixture you're working on and let the tool do the holding. The side ears allow for clamping the fixture to a work table or surface. Note this model does require additional hardware (see bill of materials) and assembly. Once assembled, the connector will need to be glued in with CA glue. You can find my creation over at: Maker World. Enjoy!
Bill of Materials
- USB C Male Connector x 1
- M4 x 20 Screw x 2
Categories: 3D Modeling
Tags: 3d-printing, electronics
Saturday, February 20th 2021
I've been working on a larger project. Which I hope to post on here in the coming weeks. I find that sometimes it best to break projects into smaller pieces. Little milestones make bigger projects flow a lot better. The enclosure for my new project requires a holder for OLED display. I've never modeled anything like this before. So I decided to do a small project out of modeling a holder for it. Here we are now. I present to you my holder for a 128 x 32 OLED display.
I used TinkerCAD to create this model. It's a fairly simple concept with a hidden feature. More about that in a minute. The model consists of two prints, the holder body and bezel. The OLED display I'm using is a 128 x 32 sized display. It uses a I2C connection which requires four pins. Here's where the hidden feature comes in. I wanted to keep the holder a modular as possible. In the sense that the display could be easily pulled out and reused if needed. In order to that I had to come up with a design that kept the OLED display as stock as possible.
On the back of the display I soldered a standard breadboard friendly header. This allows me to plug this directly into a breadboard if I wanted to experiment with it. This got me thinking. What if I could make some sort of socket that allowed me to plug the display in and remove it as needed? Then it hit me. I could use female headers like on a Arudino board. To keep it simple, I used premade female dupont wires. All you have to do is push the four dupont connectors from the back of the holder. I modeled the rectangular hole with a fairly tight tolerance. This forms a friction fit. Then you can install the display from the front. Slide the bezel into the front of the holder and you're done.
If you would like to download and print this model for yourself then click the link below. I'm looking forward to doing more projects like this. Keep an eye on this space!
Thingiverse
Categories: Maker
Tags: 3d-printing, electronics, soldering, thingiverse, tinkercad