What I have fixed today

I paid a visit to my local bike shop and discovered that the sign that is usually put out to let us know that Leighton is in the shop. His unit is at the back of a small cluster of commercial workshops and not visible from the road, was broken.
The aluminium sheet was just hug on a slot through which a bracket was hooked.
Leighton said the sign was 3 and a bit years old but at about £350 he was not sure about replacing it, so I said that I was sure I could fix it.
So the sign was removed, and I took it and one of the brackets home. I measured the slot and set to work in Fusion 360, It took 3 iterations to get to something that would work, I 3D printed each one in a cheap PLA with very low wall counts and infill, just to get something I could offer to the sign.


The top one was first, and it matched the slot, but the bracket did not fit, I had neglected to measure it.
The middle one fitted, but I was not happy with the bolt hole. I then asked myself why I used round ends on the design?
I had no good answer so redesigned it with rectangular ends which removed the problem for the holes and made printing it much easier.
I printed the final design using ABS to make them more robust.
I had put 3 holes each side for 4mm bolts but on fitting them I only drilled for 2. I had to flatten the sign to get it to slide into the 3D printed parts.

Leighton was well pleased with the repaired sign and will be using it to show when i is there.

And you just became his best customer! Nice one.

I have bought 3 bikes from him over the years.

DaveL said:

I have bought 3 bikes from him over the years.

Click to expand...

Hope you get a discount on your next one.

Nice work
It's always amusing/entertaining what businesses are charged for kit - £350!!!
My son had a Saturday job at a supermarket who were under a contract from Niceday who charged them more for reams of paper for the back offices than they were selling the paper in the shop.The contract strictly forbade them from using their own retail stock.
I was reading a dentist trade magazine while waiting to be butchered recently and one of the suppliers had a sale on.There was a little melamine cabinet on casters with a lower draw and two slide out trays at the top.
Reduced to £1999.00.

fuse said:

Nice work
It's always amusing what businesses are charged for kit - £350!!!
My son had a Saturday job at a supermarket who were under a contract from Niceday who charged them more for reams of paper for the back offices than they were selling the paper in the shop.The contract strictly forbade them from using their own retail stock.
I was reading a dentist trade magazine while waiting to be butchered recently and one of the suppliers had a sale on.There was a little melamine cabinet on casters with a lower draw and two slide out trays at the top.
Reduced to £1999.00.

Click to expand...

I was branch manager for a national plastics distibution company and a competitor had the contract to supply prisons nationally with polycarbonate sheet which was an expensive material. The prisons weren't allowed to order elsewhere but got around that by using their £500 per order option to buy from me at 45% less than the full retail they would have to pay on the contract. It meant multiple orders and split invoices sometimes but a win for them and for me and after all it's our taxes that pay for these purchases. Maybe I should have applied for a tax benefit for saving the country money.