3D Printed Baby Gate Brackets
This little project completely justified my purchase of a 3D Printer to my wife. We have a stairway leading to the basement in our house that has a wall on one side and a wooden post/ handrail on the other. Our son Samuel was starting to be very mobile so we knew we had to get a baby gate. Unfortunately, the one we purchased from Amazon wanted you to drill anchors into both walls (or in our case the wooden post) to install it. Sam will one day be able to navigate stairs by himself and I didn’t really feel like causing irreparable damage to the woodwork, so I needed a workaround. Amazon does sell some cheap-looking post clamp thingies but there was no way I was trusting my son’s life to those.
So I CADed up some brackets to fit the 3″ posts and printed them out at 75% infill with 2.8mm perimeters. It took 44 hours of total printing time (22 hours per bracket) but they are SOLID. The brackets were bolted to 1/2″ red oak and lined with weather stripping to prevent marring. Each bracket is bolted down with all-thread using thread-locked nylock nuts (they are not going anywhere!) Now my son is safe, the wood is safe, and my wife realized that a 3d printer is not an expensive toy, it’s a tool that can make real, usable things.
STL file available here (of course, use at your own risk. Also – file is in inches)
Hello, i was wondering if you knew of a alternative to the touch screen from chalk-elec. They sold out and I do not have time to wait for them to re-stock. Oh and would you happen to know of a good cameea to put in the tablet? Thanks
Sorry. I am talking about the Pipad. Wish I would have made my comment there. Hahahahah.
I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet 🙁 Chalk-elec has had some stock recently, I was able to pick up a handful of displays myself the last time, as were a few others. Just keep checking every other day or so. The sain-smart display may work – if it does definitely let me know!
The Raspberry Pi camera would be your best bet I’d think – http://www.makershed.com/Raspberry_Pi_Camera_Module_p/mkrpi3.htm
Regarding alternate displays, I left a response on the other comments on the PiPad post.
What program are you using for CAD? Really cool project!
I use AutoCad Fusion 360 for Mac. It’s free for personal use, comprehensive, and easy to use. Definitely recommend checking it out.
Hey Michael! My name is Kat, and I’m the community manager for Fusion 360. Very cool simple solution to an everyday problem, really like how you’ve shared the process. I’d love to share this project with our community – have you considered posting this to the Fusion 360 gallery? (And thanks for the Fusion shout-out!)
That’s cool. Too big for my printerbot simple
I’ll print it for ya 😉