Doorstop Exploration by amarand

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

My mom has a store, and in that store, she has a couple of doors. One door, she likes to keep open with a doorstop. But a standard doorstop doesn't work. Even a larger doorstop she had made out of wood didn't work. So she stuck the two together, and that worked. But it was ugly. You can see the ugly doorstop in the diagram.
When I mentioned that I can 3D design and print things, she sent me a picture of the ugly doorstop, with a diagram showing the height, length and width. After converting from inches to millimeters, I had a plan. Super easy!
I created a single color doorstop, and that's what you see in green. It's super easy to print, and on my printer, the filleted edges print perfectly with no support.
Then, I wanted to really surprise her, by creating a two-tone doorstop that's exactly the same size! Now, I know my printer does dual extrusion, but dual extrusion truly sucks for most purposes, especially as it's implemented in your average printer. So I thought, and the dual-color (50/50) doorstop was the next iteration.
I designed the 50/50 doorstop, and had a few issues with the sizing of the male/female connectors - geometry, switching which one needed to be bigger (female) versus smaller (male), based on margins versus size. Plus, I had a little lesson in symmetry. After printing a few doorstop halves that didn't quite fit together (male too big), or that didn't fit correctly (I flipped on the wrong axis), you have what you see here!
I have four different versions: left, right, male, female. I made them this way so if you want to print two of the same color, and then print the other two of a different color, you can do that on the same bed. For example: left male and left female with one color, and then right male and right female with a different color. If you print it this way, they should fit together well. I don't know if this is the optimal way, but I know it works for me. If you want a single 50/50 doorstop, you could probably print the left female with one color, and the right male with another. Or, you could print left male on one, and right female on another. The main thing is, you have choices!
The difference between the male and female parts are fairly small, so there should be friction, but you may need to use super glue to hold them together permanently. I put two of them together and they were difficult to pull apart. The other two came apart semi-easily. I'd rather have them be slightly too loose than slightly too tight. Please let me know if you need any tweaks!
I have two more ideas: 1) a monogrammed letter in the side. These are the Williams College colors (purple and gold), so a nice big W on the side in the Williams College font would be nice. 2) A tri-color (thirds versus halves) doorstop, with a similar connector scheme. I may or may not end up doing either of these things. If you'd like a custom monogram on the side, please let me know. It's fairly trivial to add in using Fusion 360.