{"id":2683,"date":"2021-02-28T14:52:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T14:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2683"},"modified":"2021-02-28T14:52:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-28T14:52:25","slug":"making-myself-nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/?p=2683","title":{"rendered":"Making myself nuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

80\\20 T-slotted aluminum hardware rules, but it’s kind of expensive and even the 20-series is just a little too big to make sense for a lot of electronics DIY stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Makerbeam is a 1cm profile series that should be the perfect compliment to 80\\20, and at first glance it’s great and seems semi-affordable even for small amounts, but that’s just looking at the extrusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got 4 sticks of 300mm MakerBeam for $18 to try out and thought- hey, this isn’t too bad. Way more than wood but this is reusable foreverish. But I mistakenly thought that a standard M2 nut could work in the slot. I was wrong. Pan head M3 bolt wont fit either, you need a square head bolt or a flat nut\u2026 no big deal, right? The M3-5 hammer nuts for 80\\20 are like $10 for 50 so I can deal with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nope- the makerbeam M3 flat nuts are freaking outrageous- like a buck each for about .01 cents worth of stamped metal with an M3 hole\u2026 freaking infuriating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole point of getting this stuff is that I’m not a machinist, so if I have to start making my own fasteners this goes sideways fast. But\u2026 I figured out you don’t have to be a machinist to make something workable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Just needed snips, drill, screwdriver, and a little file helped. A sane person that owned a functioning drill press would do even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Started with scrap copper sheet I’d pulled out of a laptop heatsink years ago (Hoarding heatsink materials pays off very occasionally). Cut off a strip thin enough to slide in the MakerBeam slot and drilled some M3ish sized holes. I don’t have an M3 tap so I just filed out a little and turned an M3 through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surprisingly cool part is that even if the hole is off- when you put it in the slot and screw it down it does sort of a brake press action on the nut and it trues up in the slot. They’re not as strong obviously but if you’ve got loads that can tear copper I guess just pay the buck. I figure this could also be a decent alternative the brackets which are also outrageously priced, but actually I’ll probably just use 80\\20 for most stuff because this isn’t trivial enough to make dozens of nuts whenever I need them so it’s actually not all that workable, just more so than paying $1 per nut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

80\\20 T-slotted aluminum hardware rules, but it’s kind of expensive and even the 20-series is just a little too big to make sense for a lot of electronics DIY stuff. Makerbeam is a 1cm profile series that should be the perfect compliment to 80\\20, and at first glance it’s great and seems semi-affordable even for […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2685,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions\/2685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/funkboxing.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}