{"id":1667,"date":"2011-09-03T13:31:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T17:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/?p=1667"},"modified":"2024-06-03T14:43:20","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T18:43:20","slug":"making-a-custom-bottle-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/making-a-custom-bottle-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a Custom Bottle Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently posted an improved bottle opener<\/a> design to Thingiverse. Unlike the mighty bottle opener<\/a>, this is one that I’m proud to give out, and people are happy to receive.<\/p>\n

Because I did the model in OpenSCAD, it turns out to be really easy to create personal, one-of-a-kind gifts for my friends. In this post I’ll go through the steps I took to make an opener for my friend deWit. He skis, and he’s pretty good:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ok, maybe he’s really good. Anyway, this has been my favorite skiing picture since it was taken a few years back. I thought it might be nice to capture some of this awesomeness in opener form.
\n<\/p>\n

Step 1: Get the image into Inkscape<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe first thing I did was use the Windows snipping tool to copy into Inkscape just the section I wanted.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Trace<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nUsing the Bezier tool I then created a rough outline of what I wanted to print. This was going on a pretty small area, so I couldn’t get that much detail. Also important to note, I only used straight lines. No splines; they don’t seem to work in the upcoming steps.<\/p>\n

Step 3: Save as DXF<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nHaving served its purpose, I deleted the image to leave just the outline. I then saved the file as a DXF into my OpenSCAD directory.<\/p>\n

Step 4: Import into OpenSCAD<\/h3>\n

This was the only painful part. Getting the DXF into OpenSCAD is a simple matter of calling the linear_extrude function. The problem is that the scale, position, and rotation of theDXF were way off. As a result I also needed to add scale, rotate, and translate commands to get the DXF stuff into place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The code selected in the image above moves the part by [-89,86,thickness], rotates it 90 degrees, and scales by 70% on the x and y axes.<\/p>\n

Once I was happy with the placement I exported to STL and moved over to ReplicatorG.<\/p>\n

Step 5: Check the GCODE<\/h3>\n

Just because I drew this outline didn’t mean that that’s exactly what would get printed by the Makerbot. We’re working with a 0.5mm stream here, and some details may have been lost. Luckily you can visualize the gcode before the part gets printed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Skeinforge profile, I made sure that SkeinLayer was turned on. This brings up a tool path visualization after the gcode is generated. Going to the last layer showed me the tool path I was interested in:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So here we can see that I lost some important detail. The ski-poles and backpack straps are missing. Time to tweak!<\/p>\n

Step 6: Tweak<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhen I traced out the poles and straps I made them too thin. As a result Skeinforge just ignored them. By editing the nodes on my path I was able to make the tin spots a little thicker. I then repeated steps 3-5 and was rewarded with this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOK! Printing time.<\/p>\n

Step 7: Print!<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Aaaand done. Pretty cool right? Maybe not as cool as hucking air off the wall at Kirkwood<\/a>, but I’m pretty happy with the results. As you can see the detail is pretty poor, but that’s the nature of the medium and the size of the canvas.<\/p>\n

This one is really pushing the limit of what you can fit into that tiny space. Here’s two more that I did that might give you a better idea of what can be accomplished if you choose an image that doesn’t require as much detail:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve been having a lot of fun making these. It’s feels great to be able to give an inexpensive gift that’s personal and useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently posted an improved bottle opener design to Thingiverse. Unlike the mighty bottle opener, this is one that I’m proud to give out, and people are happy to receive. Because I did the model in OpenSCAD, it turns out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mechanical","category-projects","tag-makerbot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7190,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions\/7190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}