We have a banner stand that is starting to fail at work. The plastic collar is starting to crack. Rather than simply replacing the whole stand, I figured I could make a quick replacement clamp. 10 minutes later thanks to TinkerCAD we have our replacement part model.

Once the stand was disassembled, I  switched out and replaced the collar. It’s a bit brighter than the stock part, but the stand is repaired!

Once I saw how easy it was to create models in TinkerCad, I decided to get caught up with some of our other needs. This is a replacement clip for a hanging banner.

The original clip slides into a channel, the replacement slid right in!

I’ve been wanting to print some of the geared items on Thingiverse for a while. With Valentines day coming up it seemed like an excellent opportunity to try out the Screwless Heart Gears by Thingiverse user Emmett. After reading the assembly instructions the heart came together quite nicely with the help of a hot air gun to help let the printed pins slide in easily.

Completed!

The heart has been assembled and rotated

A view from the top

I found it easier to assemble the larger gears first. It allowed me to better align and mesh the smaller gears.

Working my way down

The top 2 lobes of the heart

The assembly process begins!

Printing one of the 8 gears

A week ago we saw a good condition non-working Ms. Pacman arcade cabinet come across craigslist. After some frenzied emails we had an appointment to pick up the machine. Claudio and I went out and purchased it and donated it to the group. Sonny offered up to take a look at the machine for us, found a prom that wasn’t acting right, so he borrowed a replacement part and low and behold! It WORKS! So now our task is to secure our own replacement part and work on getting the video sorted out. The display has some pretty bad burn in, but it’s playable. We still need to tweak the color a bit. The art and the marquee are going to need some work too. But we’re going to keep working to make it functional and we have some plans down the road to add more functionality! Wiki Project page for this project. Here are some pictures:

Transporting Ms. Pacman

Ms. Pacman Arrives!

Playing Ms. Pacman

Playing Ms. Pacman More!

Working Ms. Pacman