FreeCAD for Beginners #50 Battery Holder Parametric Model #freecad #makers #cad #design

[Music] thank you in this video we're going to take a look at creating a holder for these batteries I am invested in black and Decker's 20 volt system I have several drills and various tools that use these batteries I have six of those batteries and I need to put them up on my pegboard so get them out of the way but leave the option to charge them so we're going to do something very simple 3D print something that will hold the batteries let's see how it looks so for this model we're actually going to create something like this let me just turn off that battery this will be the finished model I'll show you how we get there it's pretty straightforward and I'll show you how we print it and create it and all that good stuff the battery here is just a mock-up of the batteries so that I can see that it fits together properly if you look in there you can see it's fitting in quite nicely with a little bit of clearance everything should be good and of course the battery has some radioi on it as well so it's going to fit even better into those corners so let's turn the battery off let's see how we get to this model as usual I'm going to show you quickly my free CAD version it's still the same as I used in the last video it's 0.20.2 and it's this revision 29177 uh in the git so I haven't updated it I haven't been back and looked since the last video I'm going to probably go back at the end of this week and take a look but for now we're using this version so we're gonna do the usual thing I normally use my my macro the startup macro which many of you have and have seen if you have that you can use it but to save people getting confused I'm going to do it the long way so we're going to create a file we're going to create a we're actually in part design so if you create if you open your free Cad and it comes up to a screen which shows you some quick start stuff you want to get into the part design workbench you can close all that quick start stuff you don't need that so then we're going to do a part we're going to create a body and we're going to pop a sketch in there we're going to do it on the XY plane and simply that back plate is a centered rectangle and drop that in like that and he has a couple of holes in it so I'm going to pop those in and of course what do we know we so from a geometry standpoint it's a centered rectangle so if I change this side it's going to change both sides because it it automatically gets the Symmetry constraints applied to it I'm also going to take that hole and that hole and I'm going to make them equal and then I'm going to also make them sit on the same um access this way so that they're in Alliance and now if I move one they're both going to move together and then I'm going to make them symmetrical so I'm going to take that that hit the center line and make those symmetrical so now I have two holes that are equal size and if I move them they are moving together so I need a dimension that goes from the center of that one to the center of that one because they're going to be on centers for my pegboard and my pegboard is actually centered it has one inch centers so you got to go whatever's nearest to inches to get those centers right um and then I need a dimension for this diameter and I always use this now with this newer version it decides whether or not it's a an arc or a circle that it's constraining and it always works perfectly I love that I'm gonna make mine 6.5 millimeters because I want it to be in clearance and I know those things are just over five or something and then I'm going to do a dimension that goes um across this whole thing and I'm going to do a dimension this way as well so it gives me the outside shape so the only Dimension I need to do is from here to here so there you go so now we're completely dimensioned I am going to change that to an eight millimeter Dimension just like a little bit of Gap here this one I think needs to be 200 so this one is going to be 100 and then I'm going to modify this one to 177.8 and that's the size of my piece now I'm going to add some radii here I could do it here in this sketch or I can just add a radius afterwards in the model which is what I'm going to choose to do so I'm going to close that and then we're going to Pat it I'm just I'm only going to make it three millimeters thick I don't think it needs to be any thicker than that so that's the back plate done and now as I said I'm going to add radii to these Corners here but I'm not doing that until last we're going to do everything else first so the next bit we've got to do is the the piece actually holds the batteries so we're going to do a new sketch so make sure that body is our Active Body we'll create a sketch and this sketch is going to be on this plane here and I'm going to go back and just turn that part on because I want to be able to see it and then I'm going to go in here and I'm going to create that part and I just noticed something where I'm going to change so let me just close the sketch quickly we're going to change this pad so that it is reversed because I want the I want the bottom of the pad to be at the bottom of this line here doesn't it's not super important but it's just something I prefer so now when I create this part I know it's going to look something like this should try and get those to be horizontal and I'm going to use my sectional View which gives me a section through here so I can see this part here and that's all good and now I'm going to do is actually going to make that horizontal I should have and that should be vertical okay so now we've made that pretty then I'm going to give this a dimension across here I'm going to make that three millimeters as well and then I'm going to make this I'm actually leave this at four and a half and then I measured the battery so I know how far this has to be so I will add the dimensions per the measurements and we'll be able to set this up so just bear with me one second okay I changed my mind on this guy I'm going to make that 3.5 make it a little thicker and then I'm going to give this a dimension from here to here of 1.5 and then I have a dimension that goes across here of 17 millimeters so I know that that fits in properly and then I need a dimension that goes from here to here it's going to be 29.8 so make sure that thing is correct and then I'm going to need another dimension just to lock in the left and right but that's going to come off this T piece so let's draw the T piece next so T piece is going to go across here go up here out here up here across there down there come back this way and touch with that and we're just going to make sure everything is horizontal and vertical as it's supposed to be then of course with this one I can say that this and this ah let's go with that one and let's just get rid of that one for a minute let's say this one and this one or in line there we go and then this one and this one can't reach it put that on the matter so now that's locking that guy up that way and then of course we want this and this to be symmetrical around there there you go okay so then that that so now that should lock that guy up it should lock it up this way and the only thing we need to worry about is getting a distance here so we can do that okay so we want this and this to be equal so I'm going to select that I'll select select that I'll make those equal then we want a distance between here and here because that's the important part for us our struggling this like that top there or closer there we go we can give that a dimension from my measurements that has to be 46. and then literally we're going to just create the same thing on the other side now we could use some mirroring and all those kinds of things here but to be honest with it being so simple I don't think we need to do that um I am going to just do this I'm going to take that point at that point and set them horizontally so they have the same height and we're going to create this side so it's going to be somewhere here okay so we pretty much have the second part done now we're just gonna tie these by geometry and this is kind of the novel part of this is everything is going to be um similar so I don't have to do a lot of dimensioning across the other side and of course if I make this at this point symmetrical here and then I make this point and this point it's magical that will lock this guy up that way and then the last thing I need to do is to make this and this arm equal and that will lock everything in so basically I have all of this done by just dimensioning this part and then that keeps everything set so now we have that sketchfully constrained we're going to close that one and we will Pat it and what we're going to do is we're going to do a pad in two directions two dimensions and uh pad First Dimension which is going that way we want to come down to level with this face so to do that we will make it 50 millimeters as that piece is 100 millimeters tall and then the other way we just want to we just want to be 10 so that's that's plenty that way because we want the battery to sit up here with the bottom part sticking out there and then these holes are going to go onto the pegboard so that is going to be our model and then all we need to do is we're going to put some radii on there one thing we will do is we'll go into this pad and we'll say refine equals true well that will do let me tab away from it is if you look there it got rid of those lines because they were coincident lines basically and then what we're going to do is we're going to apply some radii so what I want to do is I'm going to put two millimeter radius on that piece there so I'm going to select a point sometimes when you select in if you zoom in you get better onto the line you can select this whole face or that whole face and it will do radio around the edge but I generally I don't do that I want to get in on the line so I'm going to add a radius there of two millimeters and then I'm going to do that also I'm going to say add I'm going to do it here as well and I'm gonna do it here as well and I'm going to turn this thing around I'm gonna add here add here a little tricky to get those lines to be fair and the closer in you get the easier it gets I guess yeah less distance to move and then we're going to put those same two millimeters up on the Outer Edge I think so I'll make those two millimeters as well so we'll do that edge and we'll do that edge and these ones I think we're going to do one and a half because they they slide into the battery so I'm going to say okay for that and I'm going to get this Edge I'm going to go put it one and a half for this and I'm gonna add all those other faces all those other edges I should say edges edges edges around a little bit Edge that's all my edges there I want it looks good I'm gonna say okay to that so that's the outside edge of that and then as I said I'm going to add um a radius on these edges of five I think five of the edge a little hedge and then we're gonna get so that's all bows and there we have it that's going to be our model and I'm gonna 3D print that and then we'll take a look at it once it's 3D printed and see how the battery sits in it and make sure everything works well but this is a good example of how to do a sketch minimize the amount of Dimensions that you need but get everything put together simply and breaking it down into very simple pieces I don't want to do anything complex so I don't want to try and sketch this whole surface here and then change it after that and cut Pieces away there's no need let's just keep it simple and we can create some cool models without having to do anything crazy so let's have a look at it once it's 3D printed and we'll see how the battery fits so here's the great news is it all fits in perfectly and they hang beautifully so they've got two batteries in there now they sit nicely there's a good distance between them they sit in there and there is one problem remember this guy so I want this guy to clip on there so that we're not coming in I can plug them in and do charging that's my plan well that doesn't quite fit now here's the beauty of um parametric design I'm going to change it make it fit print another one and I'll see you after that okay so here's what I decided to do I am going to go back into my original pad bring that back into the middle and I'm gonna have to delete this constraint because I'm going to make this be shorter by 15 mil so let's do that let's go ahead and we are going to take this constraint here we're going to take that one and we're going to delete it there you go then we'll delete that one and then I'm going to apply a constraint across here so I'm going to keep it symmetrical this way now what I can do is I can delete this dimension and I'm going to Dimension it from here to here keep that as 50. I'm going to Dimension it from here to here I'm gonna make that one 35. close that and now it hasn't updated yet because this is coming down 50 if you remember so I'm going to go to there I'm going to go here and we'll change that to 35 and then we'll let it do its update and now everything looks good so that's basically what we're going to do is I've shortened this bottom part so the battery is going to sit in the same height but it's going to stick out a bit more at the bottom so that I can connect the charger so that's the beauty of parametric now this one it wasn't just a simple Dimension change I had to change a couple of things about the way it was made but not difficult and now it is going to work exactly as we want it to so I'll print it and I'll let you see so this is the final product it actually works pretty well I like the way it holds both batteries has the two holes so I can put it straight on my pegboard and as you can see I can get the charger connected while it's hanging there should work perfectly so if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel of course you can always join and become a channel member or you can join our patreon all the links are below I appreciate you taking time to watch the video I look forward to making the next one we're going to do a couple of uh laser ones next I think I'm going to do uh one with the mon Port laser and then one with the auto laser and we'll be done see you in the next one

Channel: Adventures in creation

Views: 2,544

Keywords: FreeCAD, CNC, CAD, CAM, CNC routing, Design, DIY, woodworking, 3D printing, maker, creativity, art, crafts, Blender, Inkscape, Prusa Slicer, OBS

Id: hjgwaerAeXE

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 04 2023