I somehow managed to lost the key for the sliding door to my kitchen. It
probably fell into a trash bag, which I sometimes hang on the knob of
said door when they are full and ready to throw away.
Of course I have newer locked the door until now, but robbed of the
possibility to do so, I was overcome by a sudden urge to be able to lock
the if need should arise.
The boring way to get a new key, would probably have involved taking a
picture of the lock, show it to a locksmith and hope to find a fitting
key.
But since we have build a 3D-printer a
couple of month ago and "missing" keys had been
printed successfully already, I wanted to try to design and print a new
kitchen key.
After measuring the dimensions of the keyhole I started designing the
new key in HeeksCAD. After only 3
not so perfect key designs I managed to print a really nice looking,
working, new key for my kitchen door.
Here you can see a progress of the design:
From left to right: First design in
HeeksCAD | final design as .stl
in HeeksCAD | Printpath preview
in
skeinforge
with raft and support structure.
The printed keys:
Read more...