How to Make Anything (Using Acrylic and Machine Screws)

Step 3: The Component Pieces & Nuts & Bolts

There are only 2 shapes required.

The T-Cutout

• This is the piece the machine screw extends into, a nut catching in the large cutout portion.

The RCR Slot (Rectangle-Circle-Rectangle)

• The cutout the T-Cutout slots into.

To use, simply download the template attached to this step (03-TBOL-T-Slot Template.cdr for Corel Draw or 03-TBOL-T-Slot Template.svg for InkScape)

The Nuts & Bolts
Putting everything together is as simple as a single machine screw and matching nut. McMaster Carr is a great source for these.

• 3mm x 16mm machine screw #92005a126
• 3mm x 10mm machine screw #92005a120
• 3mm nuts #90695a033

Comments

[FourthDr]

Hi Stuart: I was just trying to replicate your technique for making t-slot parts using the above templates (03-TBOL-T-Slot Template.cdr and 03-TBOL-T-Slot Template.svg) and there seems to be a problem with those templates. In the above screen shot of your computer screen the three template items are shown centered and much larger that in the actual template. In fact the three boxes are located at bottom left about two inches off the page and one inch off the page at the bottom. After several attempts to correct this, I was unsuccessful. I tried using both Inkscape and CorelDraw X4 thinking maybe Inkscape was not handling the file correctly. But after getting a copy of CorelDraw the problem persisted. My conclusion is that the templates must be corrupted or need some earlier version of CorelDraw to display properly. Would you please check the template and upload new copies or let me know what I am doing wrong? Regards

[oomlout]

Hey Fourth; Sorry We have a tendency to move the orientation point when drawing files (we find the page border often gets in the way). To correct this you can select and move the pieces onto the page and then zoom so they fill the page. If it is a version issue we use corel draw 11, not sure how X4 handles compatibility issues but perhaps trying to import the corel file rather than opening might help. I hope thats helpful Regards Stuart McFarlan