3D printed fractal vise - The coolest tool you didn't know you needed

with the magic of 3d printing i was able to make this 100 year old fractal vice that morphs to grip almost any object in this video i'll show you how you can too [Music] we've all been there youtube recommends a random video that really picks your interest you end up watching it and it's incredible that's how this project started with this video from hand tool rescue this is a very entertaining video and i highly recommend it at the start it showcases a really cool vise that conforms to the objects that it's holding it then goes through a tear down and complete restoration fixing some of the broken bits and remaking others after the vise receives a special coating and is reassembled we get to see it in all of its glory morphing to grip a variety of objects and holding them quite securely my mind was blown i had no idea such an incredible tool existed and i just needed to have my own there's no way just to buy one however so i knew i would need to make my own fortunately i'm in a room surrounded by 3d printers i started by heading to thingiverse to see what was already available this design by cleric matched the description but it was a work in progress and as yet it hadn't been printed it was also only a partial mechanism intended to be used as soft jaws this designed by borgie seemed a lot more promising there was even an included video that went through the design process and how it worked i'd recommend checking out this video after you see mine because you might actually prefer this design over the one i've come up with i wanted to make one immediately and this was still a work in progress without any source files but when it's done it looks like it would be an excellent design this final design by agmc mll was uploaded after i'd finished designing my own and offers a different take using the fractal vice as a bench mechanism definitely worth checking out to get my hands on a fractal vice immediately i would have to design and print my own but honestly i kind of wanted to do that all along so i wasn't too disappointed before we get looking to my design let's cover exactly what fractal means this is going to be a very simplified definition as fractals can be mathematically defined perhaps most famously with the mandelbrot set which when animated shows that when we zoom in the same patterns tend to repeat over and over just at an increasingly small scale this is very mind-bending so let's look at some simpler examples let's consider this fractal pyramid by rick2 overall its exterior shape is indeed a pyramid and we can highlight it as such but you might notice that this pyramid is made up of five smaller pyramids and if we zoom in on that it's made up of five stacked smaller pyramids again and you guessed it if we continue to zoom in this pyramid is also made up of five smaller pyramids and if we zoom in once more those pyramids are made of smaller pyramids the same geometry repeated on smaller scales what's fascinating is that fractals are found quite frequently in nature such as this broccoli where the overall shape is repeated in smaller and smaller versions our fractal vice follows this idea we can see that the largest arc has two arcs inside it of exactly half the diameter and each of those have two arcs inside them of half the diameter and finally our jaw teeth have arcs half the diameter again so that's why it's called a fractal vice and here's how i designed my own when starting out i had some criteria i was trying to satisfy starting with my vice functioning just like the original vice and wrapping around unusual objects secondly i wanted all of the pieces to be constrained something missing from the thingiverse designs and by that i mean that they move but they can't rotate so far that the vice disassembles itself perhaps my biggest goal was to have no support material needed for printing and this is challenging because of the double dovetail design there's always going to be one supported edge when the piece is laid flat on its side and if we put it on its end we have very steep overhangs that will be compromised i also wanted to use minimal plastic if we look at this nano vice the whole body is made up of printed material which is fine on this scale but for a larger vise i only wanted the essential pieces to be 3d printed finally i wanted my design to be 100 open source when i started i created a series of variables that would drive the whole design this means that editing them would change the virus to suit that specification without any redesigning this sketch drives the whole design and each of the circles is exactly half the size of the previous one when it came to getting the proportions right the original patent was actually linked from the hand tool restoration video i've linked it below if you'd like to check it out but i didn't actually use this for my design instead i just paused the hand tool rescue video and used what i could see as the basis for my version my plan for avoiding support material was to cut each of the segments in half this means i can have the dovetail arrangement that makes the design work and if we look at the section view we can see this is preserved just in smaller pieces splitting the parts in half worked beautifully for sticking to the bed and still being able to print crisp dovetails without support my first version however had another problem and that the tolerances were too loose the parts rotated but wiggle them too much and they would completely fall out like all of the other key dimensions i'd set up this clearance dimension by using variables so rather than have the same gap the whole way around the dovetail i changed my formula so it would only be half as much on the top and bottom this would still give it room to move but hopefully tighten up the junction and this proved to be effective with ample movement but the parts no longer able to disassemble themselves the next problem to be overcome was fully constraining the parts as you can see rotate them too far and the whole thing falls apart the original vice uses a grub screw down the middle that interfaces with a channel to stop the part from rotating too far instead of doing this i built little stoppers into the geometry by having this rounded section on the end when it rotated too far it would simply touch the parent piece and constrain the rotation naturally this however would make assembly impossible so i turn the direction of my split 90 degrees that means we can freely insert one half of it into its parent holder and then introduce the second piece bolting it to the first and that introduces the stoppers as well limiting the range of movement that was the biggest challenges solved so i could then go forward design the rest and print my own and as you saw at the start it works beautifully i'm going to assume that maybe you want to print your own so here's my printing tips and tricks i printed the majority of my parts on the rat rig v core 3 which i built up in a series tuning it to print really fast and high quality the filament i used is the beautiful x3d pro diamond series pla and i don't see any reason why you couldn't use whatever filament you liked for this crisp accurate parts is a must here so before you print the light i'd recommend printing some of the smaller dovetail pieces to make sure everything will move as it should when you download the parts they'll already be orientated in the correct direction and anything that has a dovetail joint needs to be printed at higher resolution for me i chose a layer height of 0.12 millimeters for any of the parts without a dovetail accuracy is less crucial and i stuck to a regular layer height of 0.2 millimeters one thing to look out for is elephant's foot or warping which i had trouble with printing these parts overnight in winter any inaccuracy in the base of the printed parts is going to ruin the mechanism and ruin the vice's range of motion reprint as necessary until everything slides as it should when your prints are done you want to check them for any imperfections making sure the dovetail joints in particular are clean and free of any stringing or other debris apart from that there's nothing really special so we'll move on to assembly there's a lot of m3 hardware required and i've got a detailed breakdown of this on thingiverse once you've got everything ready here's the correct order of assembly now that we have all of the parts printed and prepped it's time to assemble and you'll notice that a lot of the parts have some false surfaces that need to be drilled through and these were necessary so you could print without support if there's a part where it looks like there should be a hole but there isn't get out your three mil drill bit and open it up following this get some tweezers and remove any debris that might have been created by drilling the easiest method of assembly is to go from big to small when it comes to the dovetail pieces for the arc shaped pieces you'll notice a cutout to insert an m3 hex nut and you can easily do this by putting it on the end of a bolt pressing into place and then unscrewing the bolt with the trapped nuts in place we can then slide one half of the d-piece into the holder if you repeatedly run the parts back and forth the plastic should wear away any high spots almost instantly optionally as you're putting these pieces together you can put some grease in between the mating surfaces again move the parts back and forth to spread it out our aim is to have all of the moving pieces slide quite freely we now repeat this process inserting the c parts into the d parts again pushing in a single m3 nut sliding the c piece into the dovetail of part d and then standing the assembly on its end and snipping some small pieces of 1.75 millimeter filament which will help keep the two parts of c aligned because there's only room for one m3 bolt in the middle make sure everything slides freely and then repeat the b parts work in exactly the same way insert a single m3 nut from behind slide the back of b into the front of c insert two small portions of 1.75 millimeter filament and then an m3 bolt to hold everything together the d parts are small and fiddly and we use them in pairs although only one side gets an m3 nut you can push it in with your fingers and then use a mallet to tap it flush before positioning it on the underside of part c and introducing another d this time with an m3 bolt from above which once you do up should trap the d part on the end allowing it to rotate freely but still be fully constrained you should now have enough to test that your vice is working as it should be and if it is you have the pleasure of assembling another one in exactly the same way and then you can test it on an actual object it's easiest to put this sub-assembly together in order but if you want to change out any parts later on you should be able to swivel the smaller parts out of the way to access the m3 bolts and remove components as necessary we have two working halves but we still need to turn them into a vise to continue you're going to need an eight millimeter lead screw and nut this is the common size found in many 3d printers you're also going to need some eight millimeter diameter steel rods and some matching bearings and they should be 50 millimeters shorter than your lead screw the two ends of the vise are exactly the same with each having a body and a cap piece we need to insert into the cap piece a series of m3 trapped nuts we can then take two skateboard bearings slide them onto the lead screw and align these in one half as well as the linear rods after double checking we have the cap the right way we can lower it into place flip everything over and clamp the two halves together with m3 bolts the lead screw should be free to rotate and the rods held firmly in place we use an identical set of parts and method to put the end pieces on the other side of the vise the middle pieces are very similar to the end with a body and a cap after lining up our lead screw nut and linear bearings everything should sit snugly and that will let us put the two halves of the assembly together once again clamping them with m3 bolts you can preview the motion at this stage if you like but you'll probably find there's too much play in the lead screw to combat this we clamp on a collar on both ends of the lead screw and with this we should finally have a working vice mechanism optional but recommended part is to have the feet printed in tpu this should give them enough flex that they can contort and fit onto the end of the vise aligning the cutout with the collar at this stage you might be able to attach your vise jaws onto the body of the vise however in my case this meant that the opening just wasn't very usable to fix this i designed these simple spaces each of them have two cut outs to fit an m3 nut with the other two holes being used to attach the spacer to the vice using more m3 bolts by installing a set on each end of the vice this should give you an extra 50 millimeters or so of opening install the vise jaws and we're almost ready to go our vise is quite functional at this stage but not very ergonomic therefore our final piece is this two-part handle you can twist it quickly when extended or fold it to 90 degrees when you need to apply more torque that's our assembly complete and the vice is ready to go at this point i was hopeful it would work as well as the original i started off conservatively by clamping a flat ruler which fortunately was a success i then moved on to something more organic an adjustable wrench as seen in the original video and the vice made short work of this next i decided to service my kazoo no problems there this bust meant for 3d scanning is an irregular shape and the vice did a great job on it too a banana would be impossible to clamp on any other vise without destroying it but the fractal vice does a great job in fact anything i threw at it it was able to hold which was immensely satisfying there's no doubt it doesn't work as well as a metal original but it still gets a pretty good grip on objects yet remains easy to use for me a resounding success but you recall earlier i said i wanted to make this completely open source what this means is that not only the stls that you need to print are located on thingiverse but i've also uploaded a step file of the completed assembly the source cad is linked so even if you don't have an onshape account you can use the cad to take measurements and you can also export any of the parts in a file format of your choice and if you do make an onshape account you can make a copy of my file and then start to play with all of the variables that drive the design i enjoyed making this as well as using the final result but what i'm really excited about is seeing where the community takes the design with remixes and customization i have no doubt the original metal version is superior to this but you just can't get one so this democratic manufacturing means that anyone with a 3d printer can have their own if you want it you can make it please let me know in the comments what you think of the design and make sure you check out that original video from hand tool rescue thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3d printing g'day it's michael again if you like the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time you

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 1,623,440

Rating: 4.9261422 out of 5

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print, 3d printed, fractal vise, fractal, tool, open source, assembly, step by step, guide, lesson, tutorial, how to, free, cad, design, engineering, print settings, hardware, bom, grip, thingiverse, pla, rat rig, v-core 3, functional, useful, hand tool rescue, vice, fractal vice, remix, step, stl, support free

Id: eCfw9fd0mHg

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/moldyjim]

I really gotta dig out my old universal vise jaw caps.