When I bought my 3D printer a little over 3 years ago, I convinced my wife that it wasn’t just yet another useless gadget. I told her it was a tool which would help me solve problems I didn’t know I had. This week, I solved one of those problems using Fusion 360 and a few meters of white filament.
In our bathroom we have a soap dish mounted to the wall. Since soap bars are pretty “previous generation”, we never use it for soap. In stead, it’s the spot where we charge our electric tooth brush. But since the soap dish doesn’t have a flat surface, the toothbrush has the tendency to drop on the floor every 42 minutes. Time to fix that!
The soap dish exists of two pieces: the glass dish, and a chrome look wall mount. Let’s take out the glass dish …
Now we end up with just the chrome holder, which can be put to good use in the 3d printing project. After some necessary cleaning … :-/
With my calipers I took a few measurements of both the chrome wall mount, as well as the tooth brush charger.
With those measurements I was able to make a 3D drawing in Fusion 360. And match them together the way they should end up.
This allows me to design the intermediate piece which will keep the two parts together. The notch in the back allows me to wire the power cable trough the hole of the wall mount, and keep everything tightly in place.
After one and a half our of printing, I once again surprised myself with the absolutely fascinating wonders of 3D printing. Seeing your own design come to life is extremely satisfying.
The 3D printed mount fits tightly in the chrome wall mount, and the toothbrush charger snaps into place. The charging toothbrush has no place to go and the bathroom looks a lot cleaner. If this doesn’t impress the lady, I don’t know what does …
By the way, it turns out the bathroom is the perfect place for functional 3D prints:
The ‘temporary’ shower head mount i designed and printed over 2 years ago is still holding up perfectly …
And the shaving mirror frame which snaps onto the shower rail is by far the most convenient saving mirror I ever owned. I designed this one after I dropped my old one for the 10th time, which broke the frame and left me with the mirror I used in this 3D printed frame.
Now, what shall we 3D-print-fix next?