Marty McGuire

Archive for October 2013

Wed Oct 30

Automatic closet light made with @adafruit Trinket, PIR sensor, and PowerSwitch Tail II.

Vertical Stand for Two MacBooks

Files

laptop_stand.scad
69 bytes. Updated
laptop-stand-profile.scad
1718 bytes. Updated
laptop_stand.stl
44378 bytes. Updated
laptop-stand-profile.svg
2782 bytes. Updated

This work is licensed Creative Commons - Attribution.

Description

I’ve got an old white macbook and a newish retina macbook pro. Typically these live on my desk stacked on top of each other, with keyboard/monitor/mouse plugged in.

My cat likes to sit on top of them because they are warm. She also likes to chew on nearby cables. This is a problem.

So, here’s this Thing to stand them vertically!

Kitty came by looking for her warm spot, but didn’t stay long. My desk is now clearer, but also more lonely.

… success?

Instructions

I modeled this in Inkscape and OpenSCAD. I roll like that.

If you want to make your own changes:

  1. Edit up the SVG profile image to match the thickness of your laptop(s). I just eyeballed the curves for the corners and it mostly worked out.
  2. Make sure you end up with a single path.
  3. Use the Inkscape OpenSCAD Poly extension to export your new profile as laptop-stand-profile.scad
  4. Open up that file and look at the name of the module. It’ll be something like pathXXXX().
  5. Open up laptop-stand.scad in OpenSCAD, render and save the STL
  6. PRINT THAT SUCKER.

I printed my copy on a Replicator Dual with 0 extra shells, 10% fill, 0.2mm layer height. It took quite a while.

My Replicator is semi-enclosed, but I had some issues with cracking. Since I don’t care too much about the aesthetics, I just hit it with a heat gun to fuse the cracks together afterwards.

Stupid magnet tricks.

Fri Oct 25
📕 Finished reading Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) by Ann Leckie ISBN: 9780316246620
Mon Oct 21

Finally got this project fixed. Board was fine. Tape was fine. Wire insulation not fine.

Thu Oct 10
📕 Finished reading Crux (Nexus, #2) by Ramez Naam ISBN: 9780857662965