V-Groove Table Clamp

thingiverse

I attended a physics workshop many years ago where I was introduced to incredibly versatile table clamps by one of the workshop leaders. These clamps were similar to those sold by Sargent Welch, and I immediately wanted some for myself. However, they are quite pricey, so I never seriously considered getting them until I stumbled upon Mark Schober's blog post about 3D-printed lab clamps. I thought of simply printing Mark's clamps but decided against it since I was eager to learn Fusion 360 by working on another project. Mark's design served as my inspiration for this new endeavor, and the primary difference between our projects is that mine consists solely of 3D printed components. I wanted to explore whether 3D printed screws would be effective, so I created the threaded parts in OpenSCAD using Mike Mattala's NUT JOB tool from Thingiverse. So far, it appears to work well; however, it has yet to be tested with actual student use. My version of the clamp accommodates up to 1/2-inch electrical conduit, just like Mark's design, and also works with smaller stock sizes.