In our home shower, we have a wire shelving rack which hangs on the neck of the shower-head. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of weight on it (all my wife’s shampoos, conditioners, etc) and with the tiniest downward slant of the pipe, that rack is slowly slipping forward – a disaster waiting to happen.
I had previously wrapped the pipe with some electrical tape, but the heat and humidity means the tape will never stay. Could I solve the issue with a 3D printer?
The answer seemed straight-forward – some sort of clamp to go around the pipe which would hold the rack in place.
I’ve been using Fusion 360 as my CAD software of choice. One nice feature is that I can directly import pre-made 3D models of standard hardware from the McMaster-Carr catalog. This makes it easy to combine standard hardware with 3D printed parts and see how they will fit and interact.
The clamp itself is pretty basic. I made a rectangle, put a circular hole through it, and sliced it in half. I removed some material from the middle so there would be plenty of clamping space.
I measured the stainless steel cap screws which I had and used them to size the recessed holes. Of course, with a design like this, there’s not really room to get a wrench in to hold the nuts. So, I downloaded the 3D file of the nut, positioned it, and used it to cut the shape out of the clamp. That way, the nut would fit perfectly inside and be held in place, prevented from spinning while tightening down.
I printed my two halves of the clamp and test fit the hardware. The screws went in just fine, but because I used the EXACT size of the nuts to cut a negative in to the shape, they wouldn’t fit – there was just no clearance for them. I planned on that, figuring that the plastic has a little bit of flex, and I didn’t use too much infill. I tightened down the nut and bolt with a hex key, and sure enough, I was able to use the screw to draw the nut down into the exact fit hole I made for it.
Now that testing was done, I simply had to mount it on the showerhead. I was surprised how much clamping power I got. It’s not going anywhere. The wire rack no longer stands a chance of slipping off!
I the end, I probably could have simply used a stainless steel hose clamp. It would have held tight and been corrosion resistant. But I would have hated it every time I looked at it, and always be worried of cutting my hand on it when I would reach up to adjust the shower head!
Sure, 3D design and printing was probably a little overkill, but it was fun, I always learn something new when working on projects like this, and it’s a little something I can be proud of!
