Fixing Blinds With The Glowforge

At the apartment I have lived at, I have had some vertical blinds that NEVER worked. Last year I decided to attempt to fix them, upon taking everything apart, I noticed that the gears were all off. I was able to fix everything and get all but 6 of the blinds from rotating like the rest. The 6 blinds that did not work were missing a small little part. I originally thought, maybe I could laser that once /if that laser actually gets delivered… Well I’m happy to announce that I have completed that project last night. This was my first attempt at doing the 3D engrave and it was awesome and worked amazingly for this practical use.
The white one is the part I was attempting to replicate, and the black one is one of the the replacements I was able to make

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Amazing solution! That is a thing I would have expected someone to make on a 3D printer, but here you have done it so much faster with a laser. Well done!

Oh, and if you find that the acrylic doesn’t hold up to the weight of the blinds, you can always re-cut the thing out of Delrin (much tougher).

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exceptional work! Love the practical stuff :grinning:

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Practical cuts mega thread here:

Great idea! I wouldn’t have thought of lasering it either! :grinning:

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Thank you, I will also look into Delrin, not sure I have used that before.

So far they have held up well as I was constantly testing them to make sure they were still working since I was impressed the part actually worked haha. That being said, it has only been like a day, so time will tell.

Just using what I had lol. Plus no real 3D modeling was necessary since I just threw some gradient and grays where I thought it would need to go. Kinda makes me excited for other projects as this was my first 3D experience.

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Awesome 3D project. Hope you enjoy the light (or darkness or anywhere in between!) that you’ve been missing out on. :slight_smile: