Vernier Caliper Case Insert by Cargy

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

My neighbour gave me this gorgeous Rabone Chesterman vernier caliper a few years back, and I have found it to be one the tools most likely to be in my hand when I'm in my woodwork shop.
It's a really top quality tool. Made back in the days when we still made decent stuff in the UK, it came with a lovely vinyl wallet case, with a shaped foam lining to protect the delicate instrument inside.
(Some of you may recognise the remnants of the old "Selected for the Design Centre London" sticker on the front of the wallet. This variation seems to date it to somewhere in the 1960s, so I reckon the tool is at least as old as I am)
But the years had taken their toll on the shaped foam, and it was now just a crumbly memory of its former self, with a few glue stains to show where the rest of it used to be.
But, thanks to the wonder of 3D printing, I have a custom insert, shaped to hold the caliper snugly, and with far greater protection than the original foam.
The 'pillowing' on the face is an artifact of the orientaion in which I had to print it to be able to fit it on my build plate. It was necessary to lean it back at a 15 degree angle with the long side on the plate, and then rotate the design across the build plate at 45 degrees. This meant that it just fitted on nicely, and it also meant that no support was necessary to print it. I (inadvertantly) didn't even give it a brim!
Printing it in vase mode was an option, but I felt it was perilously close to the maximum height, and I didn't want to risk a print fail if anything were to obstruct the print head in the last stages of a relatively lengthy print.
If you are blessed with a larger build area, you should just be able to lay it flat and print it in the sensible way.