The other day, I was talking to a friend I met when I was mentoring our high school robotics team.  He is still a mentor.

I asked him what design software they were using.  It's called OnShape and is online and free to use for personal use if you don't mind your designs being available to the public.

The first part I drew up was a replacement for the plastic piece that keeps the dial from rotating on a pair of calipers.

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The black piece was the original part.  I had over tightened it years ago and cracked it at the 90 deg corner.

For the new part, I added a small fillet at that corner and a rib on top.  Should be stronger and will work as long as I'm not an idiot.

Part cost: $0.25

Today, I designed up a new bracket to replace one I hacked out of wood with a coping saw.  The bracket is used to hold my ham radio head unit in the mount I have.  The height of the radio is shorter than the minimum height the mount can hold.

Radio mounted with wood bracket:
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New plastic bracket in mount with wood bracket on back of radio:
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Comparison of the two brackets.  The dowel pins and ramp features keep the bracket from sliding sideways in the mount:
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New bracket on radio:
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Part cost: $0.50

They charge based on the amount of plastic used until you get up to a certain print time then there is an extra cost.

I'm pretty happy with both parts.

Neat that your library does that. Do they run the printers or do you?

Also, design tip...use chamfers on the XZ and YZ planes if it's going to be an overhang instead of a fillet. It prints cleaner due to the angle.

So make these chamfers instead. Doesn't matter for a mechanical part but it's good practice to be aware of how it's going to be printed during the design phase.

The library has a Makerspace that has different services available. Most you can use yourself but they run the 3D printers.

The caliper part took 8 minutes to print.

The mounting bracket was 2.5 hrs from when I submitted it until I got the email saying it was done.

Could you explain the chamfer comment some more?  Not sure which ones you are saying should be chamfers.  Thanks.

Next part is going to be for my camera tripod.  Need to replace another cracked part.

I may have figured it out regarding the chamfer.

If the side shown in the math is the side that would be sitting on the table and would get printed first, all the fillets on that surface should be chamfers.

Makes sense.

The overhang being the overall length and width of the part being wider than the surface on the table.

Op that caliber stop was a great idea. Freaking cool as can be !

Thanks.

I'm pretty happy with how well it printed.

Came up with a couple more parts.

First one is used to hold the legs on a camera tripod.  I had cracked the original one.  This part too too tries (cost an extra $0.75 🙄).  The hole diameters were too small.  The adjusted design works great.  The original parts had threads molded in for the knob.  I used a nut instead.

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The second part is a stand to hold my radio on my desk.  Previously, I just had the radio sitting on the desk.

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This part also cost $0.75.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  Can't think of any other parts I need to draw up and print.

You will.