Designing a tool holder

[DarrellS]

Can anyone help me with the best way to go about creating a design for a holder for small pliers?

Most of the small tool sets I have came in either a case with molded sections to put the different tools in, but the pliers did not.

I tried laying them out on white paper and taking a photograph and then converting that to black and white and filtering it until just the outlines were visible, but this did not work well for me. After sending the final image to shapeways to get an stl, I was never able to get the dimensions perfect to where the tools would fit in the "cutouts".

Thank You!

[Geoff]

Darrell, the only advice I can give you that isn't biased, is get something like Blender, or sketchup that's free.

Youtube a random tutorial like "how to make a screwdriver in blender" or similar...

I'm an idiot, and If I can do it, you should find it easy.

[repman]

Darrells
You could try getting some foam and just cut round the shape with a craft knife and then pick out the foam with your fingers to the correct depth.

[3dkarma]

Download and install Sketchup (free).
Take a photo of the pliers from as near vertically above as you can manage.
Import the image into sketchup. Measure your pliers and use the scale and measure tools in Sketchup to scale the image to the same size.
Draw around the edge of the pliers in Sketchup - leaving 1 or 2 mm margin around the outside.
Draw a rectangle around the pliers in Sketchup and use the extrusion tool to create your holder.

[curious aardvark]

Darrells
You could try getting some foam and just cut round the shape with a craft knife and then pick out the foam with your fingers to the correct depth.

lol what I was thinking. While you can design and print a holder, sometimes the old fashioned approach is easier and quicker :-)

[Marm]

Sorry for the necro, but....

When I've had to make a mold of something real, I've scanned it on a flatbed scanner, with a high precision ruler next to it.

I then import the jpg into sketchup and scale the image to match the ruler. Make sure you only grab the corner, or else it will only scale in one dimension.

Zoom in real tight on your object and using the line draw (pencil) trace the outline of the object. Then scale that up your desired amount so the object will fit inside of it.

Place the new object on top of the extruded base of your case, then extrude the rest up. Viola, pliers case.

Takes me about 20 minutes to get the object shape into sketchup, then just a few minutes more to finish the item.

[joealarson]

I have a video that may help doing this sort of thing in Blender:

Part 1:

[joealarson]

This one was running a bit long so I decided to split it into 2 parts. Part 2:

[bford903]

lol what I was thinking. While you can design and print a holder, sometimes the old fashioned approach is easier and quicker :-)

Few pieces of wood and you can make this:
Plier Holder.jpg


Or, with a piece of wire you can make this:
Plier Holder2.jpg

Both work well to hold pliers. Both can be adapted to hold smaller pliers.