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Wedding Coaster Jig/Fixture

Weddings are expensive. My fiance and I are extremely fortunate and grateful to have our families helping out with the cost of it, but even still the cost can be a strain.  The main reason it is so expensive is the number of guests... multiply most numbers by 200 and you get a larger number. My boss at home wants wedding favors. The problem with buying most favors is you either spend a lot of money on something nice/useful or cheap out and buy something lame for about 200 bucks. I wanted to make something useful, personal, and somewhat affordable.  Scoring points with the future wife is always good too. I decided personalized coasters was a good idea. Using engraved cork backed with oak seemed like a good balance between quality and economy - I'll have to make 250 of them. Luckily for me my coworker had a drill press I can borrow which I'll attach my hole saw blade to. I've never done any laser engravings though... I decided to get a Meterk 1500 mW laser engraver. All
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Recent posts

Cable Receiver Bracket

A coworker of mine needed a way to hang his cable receiver to his mounted television. Got the dimensions and printed him a set of brackets - seemed to work well. The filament used was white. He spray painted it black and says it adhered well to the plastic.
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What's the Challenge About

Design and build functional plastic parts using a desktop 3D printer. Ideally I'll make a part a month but we'll see where I land. The parts will range in complexity since what I make will mostly depend on my need. My hope is that readers get a sense for how useful these printers can be. On top of that the market for entry level machines is quite competitive, $200 USD at the time of this post. Maybe that price point and seeing the devices I make will inspire you to find a place for a desktop 3D printer in your home! Full disclosure though I have an ulterior motive - to nerd out. I believe you can learn a lot by asking questions even about simple designs. I've structured my write ups so that all the good stuff is up front: the parts in use, how it was made, and generally how well (or not so well) it worked. The latter half will be used to talk about why the design was chosen and why certain features work the way that they do.
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What I Work With

The CAD programs that I use are OnShape and Autodesk Fusion 360 . Cura is the 3D printing slicer that I use. The printer I use is my Monoprice Select Mini V1 printer .  All in all I have been very satisfied with this machine and highly recommend it to people just getting into the hobby or that were on a budget.
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Modular Bin

Final Product Single Modular Bin  Multiple Modular Bins What Did We Learn? Heat set inserts work great, but they scare me Buying a  heat set insert extraction tip  may not be worth it Brass is soft Adding a pin/slot feature was nice for installation to account for "play", but there are ways to achieve better alignment Dovetail joints are cheap to add for 3D printing When three legs is enough and when it isn't How to recover from a clog  How It Works This design is straightforward. I have two plastic parts which I joined together by using heat set inserts and socket head cap screws . Below is an exploded view of the assembly. Once fastened, the assembly is flipped over exposing the opening for the bins and allowing the socket head cap screw heads to act as feet. If more bins are needed, the exact same assembly can be printed, fastened together, and then joined via the dovetail joints. How It Was Made Design The bin base was s
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