This won’t be anything particularly novel to you old hands at 3D printing, but I wanted to demonstrate to others just how useful that open source tools and 3D printing can be, even for non-geeky tasks such as home improvement.

I have briefly mentioned on Twitter (but I don’t believe on this blog) that I’ve been working on a new ham shack/home office over the last 9 months. Shack 2.0 is now finished, save a bit of work in getting and setting up workbenches. Since this building is going to be my ham shack, I needed a way to to get antenna coax and other cabling in and out through the wall that was built-in right from the start. Based on a friend’s recommendation, I plan to purchase an entry panel that mounts on the exterior of the building around a 2 inch conduit. So as you can see below, I installed such a conduit before finishing the interior of Shack 2.0.

The interior of Shack 2.0 is fully finished with drywall, and I had to cut out a bit of a ragged opening for the conduit, leaving an ugly, unfinished transition.

As far as I’m aware, there’s no commercial bit of trim for finishing something like this, so I was able to make my own by firing up FreeCAD and designing a flange in about 15 minutes, and then printing it on my Ender 3.

The initial plan was to print the flange in gray PETG, but I didn’t quite trust myself to get it right the first time, so I did a trial run in PLA first. That came out nearly perfect, so I immediately reprinted in PETG. It only took about 3 hours for each print, so from start to finish, it only took the second half of the day to go from nothing to finished trim.

A couple of drywall anchors, and it was mounted to the wall neatly and securely, giving a nice finished look to the last bit of the shack that needed it.

Again, this is basic stuff, but it’s still pleasing to be able to close the idea-design-product loop so quickly, plus it gives me a chance to tease the new shack.

Once I get my workbenches, finish them, and install them, I’ll get some photos and create a post to show you what Shack 2.0 looks like. That will close the chapter on an exhausting yet exciting time, and mark the transition to putting full attention back into a couple of new Etherkit product launches coming soon.