Hypnos Door Handle

Why do I own a 3D printer if not for making my life simpler? And cooler?

When I moved to this "new" house (which is instead pretty old) I knew that there would have been chances to use my recently built 3D printer, so here we go.

The one you see in the images is the old handle which I decided to replace. The idea is to make a custom glow-in-the-dark handle and after a bit of thinking, making it like a word seemed a good idea. So, what better than the personification of sleep HYPNOS? (tip: it's my bedroom's door)

Let's start modeling!

So I took some measurements and reported them on a sketch. If you take a look you can immediately know if this handle fits your door too or if you have to redesign some parts.

For every part, I used 123D Design, which is a very easy yet pretty powerful tool (if you are not planning to design a working model of the Big Ben).

The plate has the same dimensions as the original. The only difference is that I didn't make the key hole, simply because I don't want it.

The handle itself is simply a text extruded to different heights. If you design it by yourself, take you time to carefully put the letters one over the other. If the superposition is too weak, the handle will break!

The connection between the handle and the door mechanism is composed by three parts:

• a spacer
• a connection between the spacer and the handle
• a ring for locking the spacer

These three parts should be printed with full infill, otherwise the torque may break them.

Here you have both .123d and .stl files, so you can adapt it to your door!

The handle (all the white parts) were printed with glow-in-the-dark ABS.

The plate was printed with PLA and support, since i decided to print it as oriented in the modeling images. This is because I don't like very much the down face of the printed objects. Anyway, the support only required half meter of plastic.

The infilling percentages were:

• Handle -> 40% infill
• Plate -> 15% infill
• Other -> 100% infill

Once you have all the parts, you simply mount them together!

The parts should pressure-fit pretty well, it depends on how good calibrated is your printer, the kind of plastic you used, the color etc. Any way, if they are to tight you can refine them with a file. If they are a little loose, you can apply some superglue, that should do the job.

In my case, I had to replace the screws (since the original ones were very ugly).

The result for me was great! I really love it, especially during night! Unfortunately, I haven't a good camera, so I can't show you how cool it looks when it's glowing.

I hope you enjoyed, let me know if it works for you too!