We love this design’s simplicity, but its mundane appearance is deceptive because a lot is going on here. [Bas van Hassel]’s clamp looks like a bench cookie or maybe a compressed hockey puck, but one pie piece-shaped quadrant extends on dovetails to form a right-angle channel, perfect for holding your ninety-degree joint while your glue dries. Opposing disc edges are flat, so your clamp won’t slip. Divots on the top and bumps on the bottom keep your stacks nice and neat when you put them away. All around, we have no trouble believing this designer has spent a lot of hours in the woodshop.
As long as your wood pieces are the same thickness, it seems like a practical use of printer filament, but if you have different sizes, you can always pull the dovetail out of its groove. Thanks to the scaling feature built into slicing programs, we expect some precision makers to utilize this in projects like dollhouses and model airplanes. If you have a high-resolution printer, you could make some miniature tools to construct a flea circus set. At that point, you may need to make some smaller clamps.
Print orientation for the puck is straightforward as it is a print-in-place design, but sometimes it isn’t always clear, so listen to those who know better and don’t be afraid of gears in your vises.
Starting with a piece of steel, [izzy] traced and cut out a 90 degree curve with an attached arm that will allow it to rotate from a central block. He then grabs a random drill bit and attaches it to a flex shaft which is secured to the leading point of the steel curve. To complete the handy setup the entire rig is bolted to a block that will clamp over the corner stock.
