I'm Duncan Holmes of Lincoln East High School and I've created a ladle & gripper multi tool. I've had the issue of my ladle at home being of poor design and it does not catch foods such as scrambled eggs. The gripper is to safely and conveniently retrieve toast from the toaster.

Supplies

gripper

I purposely chose to make the gripper portion from a non-conductive material for added safety.

This sample prototype was fabricated from a piece of cherry hardwood.

1.5 thick x 1.125 wide x 12 inches long.

There's also a Autodesk file so you can see the gripper more in depth for your self.

ladle

I 3d printed the ladle. I have attached the file you can use to 3d print the part as you wish.

Step 1: Ladle Assembly

why it is the way it is

I made a model of a ladle in Autodesk Inventor 2024. My original version was gonna be a half circle cut out of the extruded right triangle but that proved to be a poor design with prototyping. So instead, I my final form shows resemblance to a bulldozer bucket.

The reason it's a right triangle is because it has to angle itself with a flat surface so it's not awkward when using the tool.

The reason the half circle cutout didn't work when trying to scoop things was because there was the circle wall going up left to right getting in the way. Just imagine if you took a ice cream scooper but the ends of it formed a square and now imagine you're trying to scoop up ice cream with it. It's just doesn't work. So a bulldozer it is! It can scoop from left to right without any resistance unless the object is bigger than the ladle.

The ladle uses common 1/2" diameter threaded specifications that are set to 13 threads per inch which is also known as unified national coarse threading.

The little extension at the end of the bulldozer ladle adds for ease of use. If that's not there then you'll have greater difficulty getting things as the height of the ladle entrance will be too high and you'll push things instead of scooping them.

how to make it

I would suggest making this with a 3d printer as the design doesn't take in mind how to construct this with wood or any other material. The 3D print could serve as a model for an injection mold for future mass production.

download the "ladle part distinct v4.ipt"
do a save as and save the .ipt file to an .stl file.
put that into a 3d printer friendly software
my school has a maker-bot 3d printer
so i had to make a STL file and put it into the "Makerbot" app which made a maker bot file
my teacher took a flash drive, put that makerbot file in the makerbot machine & made the machine print the part
put the 3d printed part in some water so the construction glue dissolves.
i did this in my sink
finished

Step 2: Gripper Assembly

This is a pretty simple gripper design. I wanted it to be more advanced with a hinge & a snap on button to form only a stick but that's unnecessary. In the end, I kept it a simple design.

The way i made this was by using my school's CNC machine which basically cuts shapes out of materials. The shape being this gripper. If you want to make this out of wood without such a machine (and you will because personally owning something like that would be problematic) I would suggest figuring out a way to mark a wood piece with the gripper dimensions. That shouldn't be too hard. You'll figure something out. You're smart

or you could borrow someone's CNC machine (that would be so cool)

And that sums it up. Thanks for reading my instructible, Have a swell day <3