Design of the Week: Yet ANOTHER Machine Vise

By on February 27th, 2017 in Design

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 An entirely 3D printed vise
An entirely 3D printed vise

This week’s selection is the 3D printable vise system by Pinshape contributor Christoph Laimer, a.k.a. “TheGoofy”. 

Zurich-based Laimer has produced an amazing 3D model that not only works functionally, but is entirely snap-fit together and requires zero additional components. 

Laimer explains: 

This is a quite robust 3d-printable machine vise. It’s 100% 3d-printed – no screw or other piece of hardware is needed to hold the individual pieces together. Pieces clip and snap together. It’s a demonstration that it is very important to consider forces and material properties already when designing a mechanical object.

You can see a full color 3D representation of the vise design in this Autodesk Fusion 360 online view.

Laimer advises printing the 9 components with 35% infill only, but with three perimeter shells, with a layer size between 0.1 and 0.15mm. He also recommends using no support material. 

 All the pieces required to assemble the 3D printed vise
All the pieces required to assemble the 3D printed vise

The STL files are freely downloadable from Pinshape, a terrific site to find interesting 3D printable models. 

But before you run off to print and assemble the vise, I strongly recommend you watch Laimer’s video explaining how to assemble the vise components. And it’s not because you need that explained: no, instead you will find an extremely valuable explanation of how best to 3D print not only these vise components, but ANY mechanical component on an extrusion-based 3D printer. 

Laimer offers several other very interesting 3D printable projects that you can find on his website. 

Via Pinshape and Christoph Laimer

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!