Cool enclosure Jigs

Dan0h

Dan0h

Well-known member
Man I wish I had one of these when I got started. Saw this over on Reddit and thought I’d share here.

Cool enclosure jigs

Personally, at this point I’m ok with my system but I totally would of picked this up if I was just starting my build journey. Also, I don’t know this person or if this thing is a piece of gold or a piece of shit, but it looks cool.

AB90E436-7A14-4849-A0BF-5C81960945AB.jpeg
 
I've seen those, they look pretty cool. My only concern would be the material they're made out of.

If they're 3D printed I'm not sure how long they'd hold up against a center punch, unless you just use them for marking with a Sharpie.
 
I've been trying to get my son to print me a couple of these for months now. He needs to put that expensive printer he has to some practical use :p I think they'd hold up well if you make the guide holes to match the center punch diameter.
 
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Creating tooling jigs should be on the radar of anyone doing this for more than hobby purposes. If you're still using a step bit and hand-held drill that just puts you $30 further away from a drill press and a quality set of bits.
 
Blooze said:
I think they'd hold up well if you make the guide holes to match the center punch diameter.
Click to expand...

I played around with the idea of a full 3D printed drill template before settling on the current design with an aluminum (originally FR4) insert.

Because of the cone tip and taper of the center punch (at least mine) the template would have to be pretty thick to do any guiding while avoiding damage.

There's a bit of a tradeoff... if the holes in the template are tight enough to guide the punch tightly the taper will cause the punch to hit the template and wear it out.

If the holes are loose enough to avoid the taper of the punch they aren't doing much guiding, only offering a visual reference.


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Ironically I thought the holes were for a small bit to do pilot holes. But that would chew the jig up really fast.
My blue painters tape and wood working square to mark then punch then pilot then drill system has worked 95% of the time so I will stick with that.
 
The thickness of the template makes a big difference. The faceplate inserts of my templates are thin enough that the punch never makes contact, but similar to what I described above, it doesn't actually guide the punch, it just provides you visual assistance to get the punch where you need it.

It works fine for the majority of purposes but if 0.5mm tolerance is too loose it might not work so great. I can't think of too many situations where that sort of accuracy is required though.


The ones in the first post look cool though, I hope they catch on so I can stop 3D printing the frames for these things. :ROFLMAO:
 
I could pretty easily convert the two piece set I made a while back into a one piece like this, but I
don't think there is a huge advantage with top mounted jacks. It's also bulkier to store and could break.

My (tweakable) Drill/Punch Template

I know there are a couple 3D printed drilling templates out there, but I put something together last night in OpenSCAD, that makes tweaking the dimensions and hole locations, really easy. I've uploaded the .scad file as well as STLs for Tayda's 125B enclosures to Thingiverse...
forum.pedalpcb.com
 
Dan0h said:
This is how dumb I am. I just realized you have this same thing in the tools section. WtF. Lol.
Click to expand...
It's a little different design though. I like how those hug the enclosure.

flemming said:
I could pretty easily convert the two piece set I made a while back into a one piece like this, but I
don't think there is a huge advantage with top mounted jacks. It's also bulkier to store and could break.
Click to expand...

How well do yours hold up to a punch?
I've seen 3D printed drill templates (not for pedals) that have little brass inserts so you can actually use them to guide the drill bit.

This reminds me, I recently had a huge fail with mine... I think the scaling of my 3D printer is out of whack.

I designed the templates using exact mm measurements, then micro-adjusted until they had a nice fit. A couple months ago I decided to send the design off to a fabricator (rather than print them myself) to hopefully be able to keep them in stock and possibly lower the price...

Unfortunately the scaling of their machines apparently doesn't match mine so they're so far off that they're basically useless. I'm sure they're far more experienced than me, so I blame my machine. (or maybe myself for not calibrating the thing)
 
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Robert said:
How well do yours hold up to a punch?
I've seen 3D printed drill templates (not for pedals) that have little brass inserts so you can actually use them to guide the drill bit.
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly a high volume operation over here, but they've been holding up fine. I printed them at 100% infill with 3 shells to make them a bit more rigid. There can be a little wiggle room in the holes depending upon how big the holes need to be to fit your punch so you still have to pay attention to what you are doing. There can also be slight variation in the size of the enclosures depending upon the manufacturer, so I like that I can easily tweak mine to get a good fit since it's done with OpenSCAD. With that said, I've been ordering a lot more pre-drilled enclosures ;)
 
Yeah, the jigs haven't been as huge of a priority to me since Tayda started offering no-minimum drilling.

What we need is for @temol to make one out of bent steel. :D
 
ICTRock said:
Creating tooling jigs should be on the radar of anyone doing this for more than hobby purposes. If you're still using a step bit and hand-held drill that just puts you $30 further away from a drill press and a quality set of bits.
Click to expand...
If you're doing this even as a dedicated hobby, I'd say jigs and templates and drill-press and quality bits are highly desirable.
 
Dan0h said:
Man I wish I had one of these when I got started. Saw this over on Reddit and thought I’d share here.

Cool enclosure jigs

Personally, at this point I’m ok with my system but I totally would of picked this up if I was just starting my build journey. Also, I don’t know this person or if this thing is a piece of gold or a piece of shit, but it looks cool.
Click to expand...

It's not a bad design, but as the owner of a 3d-printer myself, I think that charging $30 is a pretty ruthless shill..
 
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