Working 3D Printed Circular Saw the Size of a Fingernail!

3D Printing & Imaging Workshop
Working 3D Printed Circular Saw the Size of a Fingernail!

tinySaw_3

If the giant fingertips in these images look familiar, that’s because they belong to the same crazed maker, New Zealand’s Lance Abernethy, who 3D printed a miniscule, working power drill last year. Lance is back and this time he’s brought his fingernail-sized circular saw.

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The viral success of his drill video appears to have inspired Abernethy to begin work on additional powered tools worthy of a dollhouse’s garage workbench. Writes 3DPrint:

Abernethy has revealed his latest creation, perhaps even more impressive than his previous. He has unveiled a miniature 3D printed circular saw, which he 3D printed on his Ultimaker 2 machine, after designing the individual parts using a software called Onshape. The parts were printed in PLA at a layer height of 21-40 microns and shell thickness of 0.5mm. The printing process took less than 1 hour to complete in total.

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Like the power drill, the circular saw is powered by a tiny hearing aid battery. The print consisted of four parts, two main saw body pieces, a saw guard, and a blade holder.

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The saw is not powerful enough to actually cut anything, but in the future, Abernathy wants to try his hand at Lilliputian power tools that actually do. He hopes to eventually design and print tiny copies of all of the power tools in his Makita tool set. He also has plans to produce parts for sale and design files that others can download to print out their own adorable tiny toy tools.

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

View more articles by Gareth Branwyn

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