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Process & Procedure

Designing the ratchet joint was a lot harder than I expected, even with tons of references to previously made ratchets. There's a certain degree of error that the joint can have before it ends up useless. This was a big concern for me, but I went with it anyways.

3D printing the joints went really smooth - I didn't have any trouble and all prints came out within 3 hours. A slight problem that I discovered, however, was that the increased infill percentage (25%) caused the center piece of the ratchet pin to be slightly thicker than expected. This was fixed by filing down both the pin and the opening of the lid. I also found that the prints may have benefited from adding additional ratchet arms (referencing the 4 small arms that hinge on to the cuts in the larger ratchet frame) that were slightly larger.

To create the drawer inhibiting arms, I laser cut 2 basic rectangular pieces and added a small, square opening to allow the pin to fit through / move the arm around.


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