3D printed handles bring worn-out pot back to life.

dankedieter · 2015-02-25T19:39:44.000Z

A worn-out pot in need of new handles became the perfect opportunity to practice my skills as an industrial designer; problem solving, design, modeling, and production.

The pot’s handle attachment points were carefully noted and used to determine the most functional and ergonomic solution. With the help of 3D-printing via 3D Hubs, I was able to produce the handles quickly and cost-effectively. It was important that the handles matched the existing knob located on the lid. To accomplish this the printed handles were sanded smooth and put through a simple process called vapor smoothing. For this process acetone vapor condenses on and reacts with the surface of the ABS parts. The result is a smooth and glossy surface very similar to what you’d expect from an injection-molded part.

Let me know (good or bad) what you guys think.

Some more info on my website: http://www.dankedieter.com/index.php?/new/not-beyond-repair/

3D model on sketchfab: Handle Ply - 3D model by dankedieter [e210a70] - Sketchfab

Printed on an Ultimaker 2.

Filemon · 2015-02-25T20:44:51.000Z

Haha nice! This is really cool

Alex3DHubs · 2015-02-25T21:04:31.000Z

Nice! Did you make any improvements of the handle or essentially just copy the old design?

dankedieter · 2015-02-25T21:17:07.000Z

Thank you! The handles had already been broken for many years so I had never even seen them before. I ended up basing the handles on design cues from the handle/knob on the pot lid.

Angel_LaHash · 2015-02-25T23:39:01.000Z

I think they look great, how will they handle up agest the Heat, them pans get dam hot and even the hands get dam hot… crack and drop

dankedieter · 2015-02-26T00:03:56.000Z

Thanks! The handles should do just fine against heat and everything. With a glass transition phase of around 150°C ABS plastics do pretty well against heat compared to other printable plastics such as PLA. ABS plastics are used for a variety of applications such as helmets, car parts, and Lego to name a few.

Creastudiostore · 2015-02-26T11:07:07.000Z

Well done!

CreativeTools · 2015-02-26T13:18:50.000Z

Nicely made! We really love your project and the fact that you preferred to fix it than throw it away. Please let us know if you make your model available for download. We would like to 3D-print a sample - obviously with attribution to you.

gr5org · 2015-02-26T14:40:30.000Z

Typically the glass transition for ABS is 105C, not 150C. This seems to me to be well within common temperatures of surface stove use and well above common temperatures inside an oven.

It can probably handle 105C just fine but by 120C the handles will probably be as soft as clay. Maybe this is good enough for boiling things - I’m not sure.

m4rten · 2015-02-26T17:25:59.000Z

looks really nice !! also intresting to see that there is another way to smooth the look of abs without spraying it directly on the model.

dankedieter · 2015-02-26T18:02:24.000Z

Yeah sorry about that, typo! It’s definitely 105C. I hope they withstand stove use, in testing right now time will tell. I probably should have used sintered nylon but I wanted to try out the vapor smoothing.

dankedieter · 2015-02-26T18:06:40.000Z

Yeah, it works pretty well and doesn’t take too much work. There are a bunch of youtube videos about vapor smoothing including quite a few different techniques.

Roland_Headless · 2015-02-27T02:58:30.000Z

How about using your new handle models to create plaster or fiberglass molds or if you could reverse engineer the drawing to print out a mold rather than the handle itself, now that you know they fit, and look good and functional. Then cast the handles in resin i.e. fiberglass resin or some other derivative. As resin is chemoset rather than thermoset those handles would be able to handle the heat much better.

dankedieter · 2015-02-27T22:22:28.000Z

Sounds like a bit too much work for just a handle for a pot. Before going through all the trouble of making a mold and all of that I would just buy a new pot. The next step I would take, if the heat ends up being too much would be to reprint them in Nylon and see if the results are better.

dankedieter · 2015-02-27T23:59:03.000Z

Thank you! I’d be honored to have CreativeTools print my handle design. I’ve posted the files to grabcad, let me know if you need another CAD format.

https://grabcad.com/library/pot-handle-1

CreativeTools · 2015-03-01T14:25:05.000Z

Thanks Dieter for sharing this file! We will print it and put a label on with attribution to you.

Cheers!

sylque · 2015-03-10T06:25:19.000Z

very nice, but I have a doubt about the light in time, because of the temperature caused by the heat of cooking and gas cooker