Parametic Simple Stepper Mount (Q42990)

This is a simple stepper mounting bracket, generated to your exact specifications. This model is not interesting. HOWEVER, the .scad file IS interesting! If you are an OpenSCAD user, put on your thinging cap and let me take you back to thingiversity. OpenSCAD supports minkoski sums. This is basically taking one shape, and moving it all along the perimeter of another shape, to get a new shape. This is a brilliant way to add tolerances and to stretch shapes without changing the features like happens with scale(). Imagine you have a stepper mounting hole pattern, four holes equally spaced around one large center hole. Imagine, as is common, you'd like to add tolerances to the mount; perhaps make a sliding space. You might imagine an easy way to do this would be to simply create the hole pattern, then extrude it's 3D shape the distance of the slide shaft. And that's exactly what you can do with a minkowski sum! You just take the bolthole pattern and minkowsi() it with a cube of the dimensions you want; for example: minkowski() { BOLTHOLE_PATTERN(); cube([10,.01,.01]); } This will extend the bolt holes 10mm in the X direction and tolerances of .01 in the Y and Z directions. SO... this is also the best and easiest way to add quick tolerances to your models so they overlap properly and you don't get coincident planes. Here's some more information on the theory: http://www.cgal.org/Manual/latest/doc_html/cgal_manual/Minkowski_sum_3/Chapter_main.html Enjoy!