“I’ve dabbled in wiring together my own little electrical projects over the years, mostly in the form of paperclips, aluminum foil, and cardboard cobbled together with hot glue. I recently bought a 3D printer (the Creality Ender 3) and went looking for a printable model that would let me create more reliable electrical components using the same common household metal. Most recently I needed an on-off switch that I could wire into a standard 2-pin computer fan being powered by an AC wall adapter.
To my dismay, I could find only one printable model that didn’t require ordering special metal parts for electronics (Hackaday), and the last update to that project revealed that it stopped working after some light use in 2016. But I thought the core function of their design looked promising, so I decided to take a shot at creating a similar simple electrical switch.
After a couple days in Sketchup and several iterations, I’ve designed a (so far) reliable electrical switch that, besides the printable plastic housing, only requires about half of a large office paperclip for the conductive components.
Supplies:
Tools:
3D printer
Pliers
Wire snips
Materials:
Large office paperclip (or equivalent 1mm dia. [18 AWG] conductive wire)
6-7g 3D printer filament. I use a cheap PLA
The printable model consists of 3 parts:
Body
Top
Slide
Optional:
Superglue or your preferred equivalent
Metal file or sandpaper”