I made the clamp to hold my extra pair of hands in place yesterday. It took about an hour.
I started out measuring the base of my hands and making a 3D model in OpenScad.
To start my cuts I set my blade to take out approximately half of the height of the base of the hands. I put a mark on a scrap board and used it to set my saw.
Then a marked two scraps the same width as one of the legs...
And cross cut them at the set depth (mindful of my thumb. I didn't want to chop it off today).
Then I checked my depth against the base of my extra hands.
I made adjustments to my saw depth and cut it until I got it flush. Next, I went back to my model and looked at the cut lay out.
And marked my wood.
I did the cross cut first. I used a long piece of wood because I like my thumbs.
I went a little past the line to make sure my channels were deep enough. It is alright if they aren't as deep towards the line as I am about to cut the channel along the grain of the wood.
To mark the channel for the back of the base I line the back of my extra hands with the line, put a mark and marked it with a speed square.
Then I cut the channel to my marks. It is important to have a square edge to work with for this step.
I used one of the scraps from my first steps to check my depth with the extra hands.
I cut out the top part from the edge. I turned it around and marked the hole for the neck. I adjusted the saw to the table for a full cut and notched out the neck hole. I used the full board to make this safer.
I used a jig saw to finish out the notch. Then I cut my pieces out of the larger board and dry fitted it.
It also helps to put the hands in it at this point to see if it fits the way you want it.
When I was satisfied I started the gluing process. First I glued the risers on the base with Gorilla Glue...
And clamped.
I only left it clamped for 30 minutes since I was clamping the top part along the same axis. Then I glued the top part with more Gorilla Glue and clamped.
Then I drilled the hole to hold the front clamp on. The finished product holding the hands should look like this:
Here is the open scad code for the exploded view:
//Base
rotate([180,0,180])
translate([-4,0,0])
difference(){
cube([4,2,0.75]);
translate([1,-0.01,-0.00005]) cube([0.5,2.01,0.375]);
translate([2.5,-0.01,-0.00005]) cube([0.5,2.01,0.375]);
translate([-0.05,1,-0.00005]) cube([4.1,1.1,0.375]);
translate([2,0.5,0]) cylinder(r=0.1875);
}
// Front clamp
translate([0,-1,0])
difference(){
cube([4,1,0.75]);
translate([1,-0.01,-0.00005]) cube([0.5,2.01,0.375]);
translate([2.5,-0.01,-0.00005]) cube([0.5,2.01,0.3751]);
translate([2,0.5,0]) cylinder(r=0.1875);
}
// Back clamp
translate([0,2,1])
difference(){
cube([4,1,0.75]);
translate([-0.05,-0.05,-0.0001]) cube([4.1,1.1,0.375]);
translate([1.5,0,0]) cube([1,0.5,0.75]);
}
translate([0,1.25,.5]) cube([1,1,0.75]);
translate([3,1.25,.5]) cube([1,1,0.75]);
Thanks to my helper, Paul, who took the action shots....
