hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3749.txt

Episode: 3749
Title: HPR3749: Making your own parts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3749/hpr3749.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:55:12

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,749 for Thursday the 15th of December 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Making Your Own Parts.
It is hosted by Delta Ray and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is 3D printers are useful for making your own custom parts and I talk about
the parts I've made.
Hello everybody, I'm Delta Ray and I'd like to talk about 3D printing.
So I just printed a little part that I needed to hold up a homemade pop filter for microphone
arm that I have so I just recently bought a new microphone and a boom arm because I was
going to do some podcasting and I found that I needed a pop filter but I don't know.
I thought why spend 30 bucks when you can actually just use some pantyhose and a code hanger
and kind of fashion a pop filter but then how do I connect it to the actual boom arm.
So this is where the 3D printing part came in.
I thought I could take advantage of this little gap that's in between the hinge that the
microphone goes into and the boom arm attachment.
There's like a gap and there's kind of like a curve where the screw holds the microphone
to the boom arm and so what I did was basically just go into blender 3D and then you know
started with a cube and then well first of all go back.
So I had to use some, the first thing you want to do when you do this kind of thing is
you need to be able to take accurate measurements and what I use for this is a micrometer digital
micrometer device which you can find online or like probably in a hardware store would carry
them but basically it's a way of being able to take exact measurements of something down
to the hundredth of a millimeter.
It's basically just like has a little fine adjustment wheel and so you can take like
inside and outside measurements of areas so basically I went in and I determined you
know what the height and width need to be of the part overall and then how far the center
of the turning access for the microphone need to be and so on.
So once I had all those measurements I went to blender, started with just a cube and then
worked from there.
You know blender blender isn't really known for its accuracy like for being able to make
CAD stuff but if you you know if you try you can actually make something work so if you
press like the N key in blender it'll bring out a little side info window and that will
give you the ability to enter precise measurements.
So you can basically click on a point and then kind of give it the exact place where
you want to go and one thing to keep in mind is that if you actually scale anything or
something like that you want to make sure that you apply all transformations to the object.
There's just something you have to do before you save it and export it and try and export
into a 3D printer.
Otherwise you end up with something that's kind of messed up, the dimensions will be kind
messed up.
Anyways getting back to it so to be able to cut complex parts you know to make complex
parts you don't necessarily have to do all the sophisticated modeling and stuff like
what you can do is use Boolean operations to basically you know start with a cube and
then cut like an arc out of it and then cut like side notches and stuff out of it.
That way you can make a more sophisticated object out of just simple shapes and so that's
what I did to be able to make this little part and it took a few iterations to get it
right but in the end I wound up with something that works pretty well and I'm going to have
to put it up on Thingiverse or one of the 3D printing sites so that you know to share
it and yeah so basically it's a little piece that goes in between you know the microphone
and the boom arm attachment and then the code hanger there's a hole in the top of
this little piece where the code hanger fits inside the hole and then it just kind of
sits there and holds the panty hose in front of the microphone and acts as a pop filter.
So I mean this is one of the things I love about 3D printing.
Sure you can make lots of cool little figures and there's lots of stuff available online
but if you need to make something that's like a one off you have some kind of need and
you want to make something of your own that's unique or you need to replace a part that
you can't get or something like that 3D printing is something that you should look into
for being able to solve this kind of issues.
One of the first uses I had for my 3D printer that I've only had a 3D printer for two
years but one of the first things I did was we have a refrigerator of course everybody
has a refrigerator right but we had a refrigerator that has like shelves that tilt up and stuff
and so there's these brackets that you know allow the shelves to be tilted up and one
of them broke I can't even remember when probably like four years ago or whatever.
So we've been without this bracket for a while and online this bracket sells for like
30 or 40 bucks or something like that just for like a little plastic piece because you
know it's unique and they know that they've got you but I thought well why don't I try
to actually make a part and print out the 3D printer and you know kind of practice
my skills. So I mean I didn't I've used a CAD program before but this was really the
first time I really tried using free CAD. Free CAD is a CAD software that is available
for Linux and open source platforms as well as Windows and Mac but so I went through
some tutorials learned how to use free CAD and then basically used to pair my crometers
like I did with with this piece I just made to measure out all the pieces of the bracket
that was still intact so basically I had to take out the shelf take out the bracket that
wasn't broken and then measure that and kind of you know draw out the measurements and
stuff like that and then reproduce it inside a free CAD and once I had that inside free
CAD I could just export it and then import it into the 3D printer slicing software and
then print it out. So the you know sure it took me hours to actually make the part but
I gained some experience using free CAD so that the next time I need to do this kind of
thing it won't take as long and I could probably make something more complicated and that
has happened you know since I since I did this two years ago I've used free CAD more you
know several times to make custom parts and stuff and it's not too hard and you know you
can use Blender for the same thing. The reason why you might use free CAD instead of Blender
is to get more accurate measurements and to be able to go back and adjust those measurements
later a little bit easier with Blender you wind up with objects that when you apply like
modifications you can't undo that but with free CAD you can kind of go back and you can
adjust measurements if you need to so that's kind of the major difference between those two
programs in terms of 3D printing but they both have their strengths like if you want to make
sculpts or something like that then Blenders is the thing to use you wouldn't use free CAD
for something like that. And another thing you know custom part I made was I was I have like my
own green screen for like zoom meetings and stuff like that and I've I had these lights that I
would put up behind that would actually light up in the video and but they would be attached to
my green screen and so the way I have my green screen set up is I just you know I I do everything
kind of custom and on my own I just have like a a cuff bowl of boards that I set up that basically
rest on a shelf and then I made a special pole that actually holds up the board and so I wanted
to be able to hang stuff off this off this board these clips for these lights and so I made custom
clips that actually kind of wrapped around the board and came down and had a hook that I could put
these lights on to and so that was you know an example where I was making custom print you know custom
objects for a specific purpose but you know you're making stuff that you would never find in a store
because they'd never manufacture something like that because it's a one-off thing right maybe you
know maybe this pop filter mic holder could be useful for a lot of people because I'm not the only
one with this microphone this boom arm and actually it's not even the boom arm itself it's
the whole the part that I made goes with mostly with the microphone and the microphone adapter
so anybody with that microphone it would work for for those people so another thing that I made was a
I have a eight-of-fruit macro pad which is basically this 12 key RGB key
macro pad that's programmable and you can make a do whatever and it just acts like a little keyboard
and also has a rotary encoder and push button rotary encoder and a a little LCD screen on it
but the thing is is that the way these things are sold they lay flat and if I just have them
have it up on my desk I can't see the screen you know so what I did was I made a custom
holder for the macro pad that tilts it up at like a you know 35 to 40 degree angle I can't
remember what exactly but I did this in free CAD so you know the angle would be easy easy to see
and and customize if I wanted to and so I was able to make a macro pad holder that actually tilts
it it up and then on the bottom of it I could just you know find some rubber feet to put on the
bottom to kind of keep it in place another option is to use like hot glue and run the hot glue
around the bottom to kind so that it kind of stays in place when you when you press on the keys
and it works pretty well so you know that's another example of where you can use custom parts
if if you look online at websites like Thingiverse you'll find that people have actually made lots
of custom parts and custom tools and stuff like that one of them I saw that I don't think I've
ever seen in a hardware store was a maybe they make them but it's a drill hole dust catcher
and basically it was it was a way of lining up your drill hole when you need to like drill into a
wall or something like that and it had a little tray that was underneath it that was attached to
this drill hole alignment system that would catch the dust as you drilled into the into the wall
and I thought it was pretty clever and there's all kinds of stuff like that online so I'd encourage you
to you know if you have a 3D printer to try your hand at making some kind of custom part for your own
needs because I think that that's one of the big strengths of 3D printing and if you don't have a
3D printer you know you might take a look at the options out there if you have some kind if you
have ever wanted to be able to make like you know some custom thing for yourself then 3D praying
is the way to go they've become pretty cheap and it's not too hard to get into just take some
practice at the beginning to get used to how to do things and you have some failures and everything
but in the end you'll you'll get better at and things will work out so good luck thanks and see you next time
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