
Show HN: Space Age Hand Tools in the Maker Age - incanus77
https://justinmiller.io/posts/2019/03/14/vw681/
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choonway
The chamfer in the detail is wrong in your model.

Section A-A is what you would see if you sliced the part along the dotted line
and see it from the direction indicated by the arrows.

If you cut your part along A-A you would see a rectangle, not a trapezoid.

[https://imgur.com/moJzOiw](https://imgur.com/moJzOiw)

edit: did my own model and added a picture for reference :)

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jacquesm
You're correct. The shape of the tool is the way it is so it doesn't get
wedged at the bottom of the seal groove.

The part in contact with the old seal is about as wide as the seal, the part
in contact with the seal groove is narrower, as it should be.

The tool as shaped by the OP would get wedged between grime and fragments of
the old seal or might cut the old seal because of the too narrow point that
only contacts the old seal in the middle or on either edge.

~~~
choonway
ebay listing of the original part with closeup pictures. :)

[https://www.ebay.de/itm/1x-Spezial-Werkzeug-VW-Hebel-fuer-
Di...](https://www.ebay.de/itm/1x-Spezial-Werkzeug-VW-Hebel-fuer-Dichtung-
VW-681-Original-ex-BW-Bundeswehr-VW1-/362219167704)

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eggy
Very nice write up, and it seems like you had a lot of fun.

I play with OpenSCAD for fun, but because I use Inventor and Rhino at work,
and FreeCAD at home, I don't use OpenSCAD to actually design stuff.

If I want to do generative, creative and coded design I use Racket with the
Rosetta package [1] with Rhino or AutoCAD as my backend. I am trying to port
Rosetta to FreeCAD [2], so it is all free. Racket with Rosetta is a lot more
free or open to creating generative designs than OpenSCAD. I really get a kick
out of Grasshopper [3] with Rhino too.

[1]
[http://web.ist.utl.pt/antonio.menezes.leitao/Rosetta/tutoria...](http://web.ist.utl.pt/antonio.menezes.leitao/Rosetta/tutorials/introduction.html)

[2] [https://www.freecadweb.org](https://www.freecadweb.org)

[3]
[https://www.rhino3d.com/6/new/grasshopper](https://www.rhino3d.com/6/new/grasshopper)

~~~
linguaz
> I am trying to port Rosetta to FreeCAD ... so it is all free.

This sounds really interesting. I've been wanting to work with Rosetta but
with a backend other than AutoCAD, hopefully something that could run in
Debian. I'd be interested to follow any progress you make on this front if
there's a code repo / link you could point to, or maybe message me (contact
info is in my profile).

~~~
eggy
Rosetta already has an OpenGL backend. My job is not coding, so getting
Rosetta to work with FreeCAD is a personal project that I have not gone too
far with. If I do, I will create a code repo. I sometimes code in Python for
FreeCAD and Blender3D in the meantime. I like Rosetta, since it is striving to
be a general purpose geometry-scripting language like Processing did for
multimedia arts. Processing has been ported to, and is key to Rosetta.

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mattnewport
This is cool but I was left at the end wanting to know, did it work?

~~~
jacquesm
About as good as a screwdriver would have ;)

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m463
hilarious! This is like the Malcolm in the Middle episode where Hal fixes a
burned out light bulb. Search "Hal fixes a lightbulb" and you'll see what I
mean.

~~~
incanus77
I do. There is a great GIF of that sequence floating around somewhere.

edit: [https://xo.tc/images/yackshaving-
lightbulb.gif](https://xo.tc/images/yackshaving-lightbulb.gif)

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pjc50
There seems to be a lot of ... "not invented here" going on? It seems there's
a determination to reinvent or discover stuff that could instead be learned.
Like not having familiarity with technical drawing conventions.

Doing it all by trig seems like a lot of work too, a good parametric CAD
system would have higher level primitives for curves, chamfer, fillet etc.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Isn't NIH essentially how humans learn? While this particular thing could've
been made easier in a mouse-driven CAD tool, and a more pragmatic approach
still would be to buy an off-the-shelf tool, this looks like a perfect project
for someone who wants to get better at using OpenSCAD.

