Fully printable PCB vise
Description
The ball joint design gives you a fair bit of movement to position your work where it is most comfortable.
The main drive screw has reverse threads on one side to make the jaws clamp your PCB right in the middle of the vise.
The base has a few square holes for magnets to keep it steady on your workbench.
The vise can hold PCBs with a maximum width of 10cm.
Instructions
Please note that the threads are quite tight (at least on my print) and will require a bit of convincing the first few times. Add a bit of water to them to keep the heat down and work the pieces back and forth untill they work smoothly. I made them tight to minimise the flex in the jaws as you tighten them on your PCB.
The "swivel" and "bracket" parts have guide holes for short pieces of 3mm filament to aid alignment when gluing them together. I undersized the holes so you'll have to drill them out a bit if you decide to use them.
The main drive screw needs to be fairly solid or it will become too brittle. I first printed it with a 3.5mm fill spacing and then promptly dropped it on the floor which caused it to break in two...
Update 120427: Added pcb_vise_v2-drive_screw_2parts_left and right which is simply the drivescrew split into two parts to help vertically challenged printers :)
Update 120428: Added pcb_vise_v2-Bracket_2parts_bracket_left and -right (sorry about the long names, they help me keep track of all the parts). There weren't a hole lot of room to add in any alignment helpers here but I hope you can manage without them.
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looks really high quality, nice work! just wondering what the ball joint was like, is it really loose or does it have a stiffness/friction to it?
Thanks :) The joint is quite loose, it will not support the weight of the upper part on its own, it needs to be tightened by the screw. At least it's that way on my print. I guess if you had a rougher finish there would be more friction.
The clearance as modelled is 0.3mm, I made it that way so that it would be easy to reposition.
Very nice design! I have a hard time getting the main drive screw to work because it's an extremely tight fit in the jaws. Am I doing something wrong? Any ideas on how to fix this post-print? Or would it be possible to scale down the thread on the main screw a bit?
I don't know about "wrong" but maybe your machine is slightly less precise than mine or others causing the clearances to be smaller. It IS a tight fit however and will need to be worked on for a while to get smooth (remember to add some water/oil/what have you so you don't overheat the plastic and melt it together).
Why did I make it so tight you ask? :) Well, in earlier versions I had threads that where more loose fitting and I found that it made the jaws flex a bit too much for my liking. The jaws would form a "V" instead of being parallell which I didn't like.
I guess you could scale it a bit to make the
screw thinner but I haven't tried that myself so I can't say if that would work for you.
im having a lot of trouble printing the drive shaft on my thing-o-matic. whats happening is the plastic is somehow getting above my extruder head.... any suggestions?
This is an awesome part! Very well designed.
I'm having a heck of a time printing the jaws (everything else printed perfectly). My problem with the jaws is that the overhangs will curl slightly, and then the small pieces will get pulled loose from the plate. I've tried different layer heights, slowing the print down, and I even printed and
installed a duct to see if that helped with the cooling. Is anyone else having these issues? How'd you get by them?
Thanks!
A tip for slic3r users: Print the bracket and the jaws with 80%-100% infill, since it may only generate one solid layer on some surfaces.
Also a big thanks to Sneakypoo for this awesome model!!!
Do you think it would be possible to make the base such that we can fill it with sand or water?
That's a really interesting idea. I'm sure it can be done but I wonder if the current base has enough volume to be useful. If I were just to hollow out the base there would be some ridicolous overhangs so support would have to be used internally which would make it harder for sand to get in there.
I'll have to have a bit of a think on that one.
this is a great design, but trying to print this ive noticed 2 weak points, the cross on the thumb screw really needs to be a square peg or something a little thicker, breaks the peg off easily, and the back of the Swivel where the lock screw is could do with a little more plastic, over tighten that and the plastic just splits
1 right jaw left and ill have a complete vise :D
That might be a good idea for the thumbscrew but honestly I don't think it will be much of an issue if you use a fair amount of infill. You don't really need to put a lot of force on the thing for it to lock a PCB in place since it rests on the ridges.
As for the back of the swivel. It's actually twice as thick as what I started out with :P It hasn't broken for me yet but I see your point. The good thing about how these printers work is the layers they create as they help lock things in place. Unless your print is super smooth it'll grip quite n
icely without putting too much strain on it. But, if people start reporting problems I'll put up something stronger.
Any chance you could split the bracket in 2? Cupcake build platform is too small to print it. If i can get it split in 2, then i could probably super-glue it back together.
Added pcb_vise_v2-Bracket_2parts_bracket_left and -right (sorry about the long names, they help me keep track of all the parts). There weren't a hole lot of room to add in any alignment helpers here but I hope you can manage without them. Let me know how it works out for you.
Incredibly well made and fun to print! Thanks!
Next time I have to use fresh blue tape though, I warped the frame for the screw but it still fit together with some elbow grease ;)
Is there a way to break up the drive shaft in 2 pieces? My current machine barley prints 100mm high. Advice on how to do it in some softwarepackage would be enough ;)
Alright, pcb_vise_v2-drive_screw_2parts_left and right added. I put a little peg on one of the pieces and a hole on the other. There's 0.3 mm of clearance on the sides and a full millimeter between the two parts, should give plenty of space for a glob of glue.
Hope that works for you, if not, let me know.
Get a bigger printer ;) I'll split it apart for you when I get home from work which should be in about 6 hours or so.
Wow, looks great. Downloading now but my extruder is currently down. Has anyone used this? My only concern is the base. It looks too light/small to hold under the torque pressure of a soldering iron on the far side of a PCB. It looks like it'll flop over. Can anyone comment?
Depending on how hard you press and how far your PCB is sticking out, yes, it'll flop over. That's why I added the holes for the magnets. I wanted to save some printing time and material by making the base a bit smaller (and because I thought it looked nicer :) ).
If you want to I can make you a bigger base, just tell me how big you want it. The current base is just a hair under 10cm at the widest.
Very clever design idea. I'm impressed that it is totally 3D printable.
Want one... Why oh why am I still building my 3D printer, when I could just print the tools I need to do it
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I am printing one. Nice work and I am going to love it.
Two issues: 1. The jaws are hard to print - small footprints of the vertical groove is kept being knocked off. I end up fill all the vertical groves, leaving 2 long horizontal groves. 2. I think by using dovetail joint, glue could be eliminated making it totally printable. =)