Stove Knob Cover Child Proof

thingiverse

WARNING: There is chance that your kid figures this out or the "decoupling" doesn't work with your printer as well as with mine. Be responsible and use your own judgment, I offer no guarantees. A soon as my little boy could reach the stove knobs, he delighted in the creative powers that turning those knobs gave him. He could make lights go on and off, it made those click sounds, and he could even make the big light in the oven go on, which he often approved of with a big, proud smile. Sadly, he could not see or comprehend the mayhem that he unleashed just a few inches above his head. So with a heavy heart I went on the search to spoil his little fun and "child-proof" those knobs. I couldn't find anything that would fit our stove because the knobs are too close, so I had to come up with my own. "Child-proofing" something is in an interesting endeavor. It is basically a friendly way of saying that we design a puzzle that is beyond your capabilities, that exploits your yet-to-develop low-level fine-motor skills and partial understanding of 3D space in your capable but inexperienced young brain. In the darkest way, it could be seen as an insulting and humiliating activity, exploiting someone's weaknesses to stifle their pursuit for happiness. But of course children cannot comprehend that, and as they are surrounded all the time by things they do not understand, it's just one of those things that they chalk up to the weirdness of the world. So back to the puzzle. Many child-proofing devices are figured out by kids relatively quickly. They pull, they push, they rotate, and are remarkably attentive to emulate what they see us do. Ideally there would be a separate key to unlock the device, stored in some place only accessible by adults. But this is the kitchen, and the stakes are high. If something starts burning, we don't have the luxury of time to call across the house for our loved one to ask who saw the key last. So here's how this one works: It has a rotating base, and a rotating cover, decoupling it from the real knob. You insert the cover by slightly squeezing it at the bottom. The tolerances are designed in a way that squeezing it in the middle isn't intended to work; you need to do it close to the base. The base here is designed for our Siemens stove, and you'll probably have to adjust it for your stove. I provided the Fusion360 file so you can do that, or you can just take the STL in your favorite mesh editor, fill up the hole, and make a new one that fits your stove. You can also try sending me a message with the measurements or the adjusted STL; it would be nice to have some standard sizes here for people to print. However, I cannot promise that I can help; sometimes my life just gets too busy.