following up on an earlier post, here are a few more reasons why 3d printers are both cool toys and useful tools.

i live in a pretty humid climate, and using vacuum storage bags (for things like spare blankets and pillows) is quite important; but the dyson vacuum that i inherited from my daughter has this nice-but-unhelpful clicky connector that sucks because it doesn't suck -- there's no flat interface that you can press against the bag valve.

so i spent a little time on designing and printing a sucker adapter (in PETG because i wanted to do more testing with the material).

or this one, from earlier this week: the built-in cupboard in my hallway has a broken door catch (cylindrical post in the frame, claspy catch on the door) and i couldn't find any even remotely similar replacement at the (sole remaining :-( ) hardware chain.

however, calipers and persistence and one failed test-print later i've now got a parametric model and an actual replacement part that works.

on the last photo you can see my newest mod to my printer, a mk52 (clone) magnetic heatbed. the print surface is PEI on a removable sheet of spring steel, which is held to the actual bed and heater by many strong magnets. when your print is done you take off the steel sheet and flex that, rather than prodding and prying with spatula/chisel/knife.

so far it works pretty well, but the bed is made from PCB/fibreglass and prone to warping. i haven't fully bolted the bed down (like official prusa does it) because i like the ability to level things manually, but i may want to change that later; for now i've setup 7x7 grid level compensation with my smoothieboard clone and that takes care of the imperfect flatness.