 Hey, what's up folks and welcome back to another layer by layer in today's tutorial We're gonna take a look at a prop and how we created a holder to make the feather and prop maker feathering Adjustable and stuff. So let's go ahead and jump into The project. This is the project that we're gonna look at it is inspired by the Time stick from the Disney plus series Loki This is a 3d print no supports and it uses the feather m4 and the prop maker feathering You get motion activated lights and sounds 3 watt RGB LED Good amount of detail into this one. It's got a speaker a slide switch and an accelerometer so the main thing I wanted to talk about is this project and the main thing that makes it Modular and accessible is the way that the feather and the prop maker wing are nestled inside the handle So let me jump. So this is the learn guide check out the learn guide There is code documentation step-by-step instructions on how to build this to a tee The other thing I want to talk about is the prop maker feathering. It is Please sign up to get notified when you when they are back in stock It's only 995 and you get all sorts of awesome stuff for your feather So this has all the circuitry for building any type of prop You got a 3 watt RGB LED circuitry You can add buttons switches and a speaker and it has a built-in accelerometer. So it's really really nice And with the feather ecosystem, there are many different ways To lay out your feathers in this example, you can see here that they're laid out side by side But if you're doing something like this low key prop, you want to have them stacked on top of each other making a bit of a feather sandwich So the next thing I will promote is the 3d models of the board. So here's the 3d model of the feather m4 Notice that it is populated with all the components such as the jst connectors the components And even the usb connector along with the mounting holes and all the various pins Very very important. This is available on github So you can get just about any of the The Adafruit boards from here Of the feathers the prop maker feather wings are all here as well. So if you want the prop maker There it is. There's the prop maker feather wing There's an stl a step file and a fusion 360 file. So you can check that out This has all of the connectors as well And a built-in switch for the reset And currently they do not have the headers But that's fine if you want to do something without the headers and stuff But that's where you get the access to the CAD files You want to kind of not start from scratch but have these source files so that you can model around them So those are the three tabs that i'm talking about and then we'll switch over to fusion And we'll take a quick look at the prop itself really what i'm focusing on this tutorial is The feather holder in the handle. So let's take a look at this handle And one of the hardest things to do when making a prop is to fit your feather and your prop maker feather wing in your handle So the way i came up with is that the pommel here And the handle have screw threads. So if you do a cross section here you can see Where the two pieces connect and they are using these custom threads Built with the coil feature in fusion 360 and they have some nice clearance in between the threads so that so that you can actually Secure them together But the main thing i'm talking about here is the feather holder. So Let's turn off the section analysis and just deactivate the the pommel for a second here You can see here once you take the pommel out You can see that this this purple part here Is the feather holder. So it has a built-in tab so that you can pull this out So the idea here is that you would pull this out of the of the handle And you'll notice that there is this this bit of a railing Right and this railing Um has an a company accompanying nub that keeps the feather The feather holder rather um from rattling inside or rotating inside that's really kind of An important thing if you are planning to like swing this around and maybe even hit it You'll want to have that sort of geometry in place so that the two are not Rotating freely inside. So that's that's a nice thing When it comes to clearances you can see here that we just About have enough clearance for all the cables the pins and even the screws To do it. So this shape here Let's real quick if you take a note the diameter of the handle is 32 millimeters. Okay now the diameter of the Of the feather holder itself if we click on that we can see that it is actually 31 millimeters So it's it the clearance between the two parts is a half of a millimeter which may seem excessive But again when you're printing and things tend to expand You want to have that amount of clearance especially for Circular projects like this circular shaped objects like this The the they tend to have the bigger clearance between those surfaces So that's why I have a bit of a bigger thing there All right, so the railing we talked about the railing we're talking about the uh The the we're talking about the clearance between the two And now let's go ahead and kind of hide the the handle and talk about the feather holder So one of the cool things you can do right click isolate And that'll just save me a bunch of time from having to turn everything off But this is the handle in itself. I'm going to bring back some things. So uh the The prop maker and the feather Here Are actually combined in a way where they have the header pins Listed So let me hide this again. This is the feather holder. So this is what I'm talking about right here So this right here is the feather m4 and the prop maker feather wing Attached in the way where the The feather m4 has female headers and these are sort of your standard size headers We do have some lower profile ones, but I wanted to stay away from those because I felt like Most folks are probably going to use this standard header And plus I tend to always have more of these on hand than the shorter version So if you have something that has space constraints, you could swap these out for a smaller profile But I tend to stick with sort of the standard sizes here And you also get the added benefit of just having more clearance in between the boards So if you have these cables, which I do you're going to want to have all You know more clearance and space in between these two PCBs So that is how this is working the arrangement is that the Female headers are attached to the feather and the prop maker feather wing has the male Header pins soldered to the bottom of them. So That's that's kind of how feathers tend to work feather wings rather they tend to snap on top Of the feather. So that's how this assortment is All right, so then let's bring back the The feather holder and you'll see here that the way it's attached is Well with hardware screws. So this is the hardware screws. We have a set. There are four Screws and the feather and feather wings. They all have the same size of mounting holes Which tend to work really well with m25 sized screws. So that's what we got here These are m25 screws and they aren't eight millimeters in length They are the panhead style and if you look here The board is designed to accommodate for the screw head So you see that the screw head is just about able to clear The space around those mounting holes it gets a little bit tight in the back here, but it's just fine So that's the way they work Now the way they're attached is that you have these hex nuts that attach to the PCB itself And what that does is it gives the board a little bit of elevation away From the the actual the holder now you want to have that because sometimes wires tend to come in there And another thing that I added to this was these slots And the slots allow any wiring to kind of be wired on the bottom So if you ever need like extra ground pins or to break out various signals This having a slot for your header pins is a really good idea So that is the hex nuts. That's how they're attached and then the bottom here the bottom hex nuts Secure the the actual PCB holder To the feather and the feather the prop maker feathering just snaps on top So there's no need to screw that into anything. So that works out pretty well Another added geometry here is um Well, let me talk about the bottom here, right? So if I bring back the the handle you notice that this is um There's a bit of clearance broken out here. So I wasn't able to fully Make this a circle to to wrap around because you actually want this to be open So that the the prop maker has plenty of clearance because it's it gets pretty tight in there And when you have cables passing through you want to have this open So that's why this is kind of open and and the bottom the bottom has this opening because it's actually doing two things There is a slide switch that gets embedded into the handle And you need some clearance in order for the cabling to kind of pass through here Another thing is you need clearance for the actual hex nuts So you can see here that the hex nuts are just about able to clear this circular internal geometry here and The the added benefit uh to making this kind of cut all the way through The holder is that you have this really nice flat surface that you Will have really good bed adhesion to your 3d printer So it actually does two really good things it it allows clearance for cables to pass through And it gives you a lot of surface area to have a good adhesion to the bed So this this shape really works out really well for this handle for this project and I feel like it's it's it's I think this is like the golden standard Dimensions for any prop moving forward like I want to have my geometry internal geometry should kind of Be the same going forward like this is like the diameters. I'm going to use because it just works out really well For this setup and I feel like this is the setup that will work across a lot of different props So that's why I'm kind of featuring just this piece here Another thing about the geometry here is that this pull tab Once you've fitted this inside the handle You really can't dig your fingers inside to pull out the feather And there's nothing stopping the holder from being pushed all the way inside other than I guess the the size of the cabling But what this does is it gives you a way to kind of reach in and pull it out and that tends to work out really well With that 0.5 millimeter clearance you have You have a really good amount of clearance To to pull it out so it's not kind of stuck or anything so that works really well And so we talked about how it's attached we talked about the railings The railing really helps another thing is like the thickness of the handle. It's of the holder Is one millimeter and a half and that's modifiable, but it's really tailored to my Slicing settings and what I have set up in my slicer is that When I print this geometry it will not have any infill and only perimeters and because the perimeters are so tightly Printed together you basically have a super solid piece here There's no infill because the perimeter is pretty much just building a solid wall And that makes it really really robust. So this can be printed in PLA or whatever other filament And it will be pretty pretty robust and the bottom Because it has that really big surface area. You're going to get a pretty good print in a previous project I've tried printing this vertically, but This you really can't print it vertically because of this cutaway And you're wondering well, what's this cutaway here for? Well, you can see here that the the jst battery is pretty chunky You know to pass the voltage and all that you want to have a pretty chunky connector But because the the shape is really tight close quarters I had to create a cutaway for the cabling So the cabling was really important here to have a cutaway and once that cutaway was made It kind of stopped it from being able to be printed this way And I have printed it this way before but it's actually better to print it flat Because you have just more surface area here in the bottom And there's no supports required for this geometry. Everything just prints You know really well, there's no overhangs really there's nothing that's 45 degrees More than 45 degrees. So you're able to print all this geometry without any support Which is really good and that cutaway here for the battery is pretty critical So my idea is that in the future projects like I could just print out this exact same part and it'll just be you know What do you say it'll be Swappable changeable to any handle so I could just keep printing this same part over and over again And then just as long as I use the same geometry for my handle or whatever piece and whatever prop It should be adaptable. So that's kind of why I like this this whole arrangement I think it's going to work really well and it's like going forward like I want to keep these dimensions In tax so that I can kind of have a consistent way of doing this over and over again Maybe I can even bring this out as an external component and just bring it into my design and not have to redraw it every time So that would be really cool. Um, but yeah, it's kind of taking It's accounting for all of the little things Clearances cables securing not rattling around inside your handle. So that is really it there Um, I'll take a quick look at the sketches of how the feather Was created. So what I tend to do with the first sketch is to just draw out your mounting holes for the feather They're always going to be the same. So I always create it in the same fashion All right in the profile for creating the actual geometry for the holder itself You basically just make a circle since my handle has a circular internal Shell I want to have it that same thing. So I just use construction lines to kind of create these breakaways these these segments So that I can just extrude the pieces that I want um, you also see here that we have this sort of Triangular geometry that has 45 degrees or 135 degrees and that just creates that internal railing And you're just able to use them construction lines and some Some coincident constraints so that this is uh, you know, it's all printed Without any supports The thickness here is we could use a user parameter if we want to change that but I tend to just stick with this So it's just a hard core to evaluate, but that's fine. The bottom here is defined So you can see here. I have a two millimeter thickness. That's just to make it more rigid and more robust Um, and then you can see here that this this line just cuts straight across horizontally and that gives me The ability to just select profiles that I want as opposed to just creating a cutaway or anything Just select the profiles you want extrude it out, and then that should be good I hide the handle here. So that's the way I created it. Now the next bit is The cutaway for the jst battery connector So I just kind of project in some geometry from the piece itself Create a rectangle add some dimensions here and um, That's really it there. That's just a cutaway. We do some rounded edges And then the uh, the pull tab the the tab that allows you to pull this out of the handle That is just an extra um rectangle with some lines in there and um I kind of wanted it to be another thing about why I have hex nuts in between the pcb and the and the holder I talked about the wiring, but really what it allows you to do is that if these two were flush, right? If this was flush with the surface you actually would not be able to get a usb cable in there So with this elevated now you have that extra clearance for a regular usb cable to fit in And plug into the usb port. It's super duper critical to have these hex nuts So this is the arrangement. It kind of has to be this way Now I could have added um some standoffs You know built into this, but I just just chose not to um I don't know why I didn't you could do that But I guess less is more here when you have actual hex nuts It's not glued to it. So you have the freedom of I guess using different thicknesses or something But I just felt like hey if you already have hex nuts just use them, right? So that's why I have two sets of hex nuts here and that is super critical to get that usb cable in here I had to make sure that this right here this geometry here This is just here so that you have some sort of grip onto the tab You don't necessarily need it, but I felt like it was something that would help With the user experience of like pulling it out and having somewhere to grip onto Uh, so that's pretty much all of the uh the sketches The last sketch here is actually just these slots for creating some opening here some clearance for those headers And again, you could use these As a way to uh break out some of these pins You could even add a bigger hole here All of this right here could be hollowed out with a with a hole or a slot if you want to have even more cabling So it's very very Adjustable there, but I think this is kind of like the gold sweet spot For creating a holder for your props, but that's really all I want to talk about If you want to have access to just this piece I can share this I'll probably share this because it keeps it has those headers feel female headers everything's just set up so you just drop this right into your design So I'll share that as well, but that's going to really do it for this one Let me you guys know what you think about props and are you creating parts that are You know Adaptable for other projects Um, I think this this will be a new way going forward for for for props So definitely check out the feather m4 and the prop maker feather wing sign up when they're in stock and uh, you know Check out those 3d models as well That's going to do it for me. Um, I'll see you in the next one. But until then Remember to make a great day. Bye folks