3D Printed Acrylic Fixture

Since my last fixture project was foiled by laser cutter kerf, I thought I'd try 3D printing the next fixture to avoid laser cutter kerf spoiling my fixture accuracy.

I started with the same idea as the previous project - just put two pieces together in a right angle joint. This time I put a hinge in the fixture. The idea is that the work pieces can be put in place separately (with acrylic cement already applied to joint surfaces) and then I rotate about the hinge to bring the pieces together.

I could have stopped there, but a single joint doesn't do anything. If I'm using up acrylic, I prefer building something that can be nominally useful. So the ambition grew to building a little box: 5 pieces (four identical for sides and one for bottom) joined together by simple right angle joints. This is only a small box, just big enough to be useful for things like holding little screws, nuts, and washers. It seemed a suitable baby step since most of the projects I have in mind for acrylic (starting with the FreeNAS enclosure) basically boil down to acrylic boxes as well. So the fixture was designed in CAD, then multiplied to create three additional copies at right angles to each other, to create my box building fixture.

The end result demonstrated that, even though a 3D printer does not have cutter kerf to compensate for, it introduces other errors in the system. Maybe expensive industrial 3D printers would have enough accuracy to make this fixture work, but my little hobbyist level printer definitely did not. The corners of the box did not mate together as precisely as it did in my mind. The gaps are too wide and uneven for acrylic cement to bridge.

After this experiment, I decided I should go back to laser cutting and learn how to compensate for kerf and/or design around it.