Some things are just beyond your grasp. Handles are here to help.

Tooltown is not always a welcoming place. Machines are stowed in corners at odd angles. Way in the back, we have some old steel cabinets full of drawers. Some of the drawers have small, awkward steel handles. Some do not. You probably know where this is going already.

A clumsy-looking 3d printed handle bolted to a metal drawer — Functional, but fugly.

My first attempt was driven more by a desire to learn how to use FreeCAD’s sectioned loft functionality than anything else, and it shows, but as a working proof of concept it was a success. The next version was all about style and printability: it was designed to be printed flat, so that all the forces would be in the plane of the filament layers when in use, and quickly. This iteration was cleaner, stronger, and printed in a fifth of the time.

A FreeCAD view of a simpler, more elegant handle. — Much better.

A couple of hours were all it took to knock out a dozen in ABS, and scrounge up enough M5 hardware for all of them. A few minutes with a drill and a hex wrench were all it took to get the drawers all tidied up.

Several 3d printed handles and hardware — Digital dreams made plastic flesh.

The handles installed on metal drawers — Digital dreams made plastic flesh.

Getting a handle on the drawers, though, made the elephant at the threshold of the room more obvious: the doors to tooltown don’t have handles, either. Quickly, to the FreeCADs!

FreeCAD view of embossed door handles, which read "TOOL" and "TOWN" — Would make pretty good knuckle tats, too.

Ranjit kindly donated some 1/4″ bolts and nuts to the cause. With a little messing around with a level, a straightedge, a drill, and a couple of wrenches, the new handles were snugly installed.

The printed handles installed on the sliding doors — Now you know where you are, or where you’re going.

Ibid, ajar — Now you know where you are, or where you’re going.

As usual, the design files and models are available in our Grab Bag repository.