This is one of the many reasons I got into 3D Printing; I've already made up some sets of custom feet so I could rearrange my stereo equipment with hot, large-vented surround receiver on top of Blu-Ray player that's 120mm shallower and tidy up gaming gear with all its oddball profiles. The nicest part is that you can't even see the parts I made.
Of course I'm not the first to have this idea; Thingiverse has oodles of .stl files for Tektronix parts. And even if they don't have exactly what you need, with over 4,000 different kinds of feet, there has to be SOMETHING in there close enough to start with that you can make it work.
Those claws are pretty neat!
OK, I'll take a look at Thingiverse. If they don't have anything to fit, I guess a worst case scenario would be to learn to use a 3D design program and reproduce the 6114A feet, since I have a fully working and complete 6114A to use as a model.
Another question is whether PLA or some other filament could stand up to the stress of the steel tilting bail being rotated into and out of position.
Remember that many 3D printers can do MUCH finer detail work than what you see as examples; the default settings a lot of people use are pretty coarse, as they're optimized for a middle ground between speed and precision. Personally, I'd put up with a 3-hour print for something I'm going to handle all the time like a knob, for example. Or you can go the opposite route by printing quick then sanding and painting to make it shiny.
Ah, that's good to know. Most examples I've seen weren't very fine at all.
PLA+ is the easiest for beginners to get good results, and it is quite strong; very close to ABS if the layer bond is good. It isn't AS heat-stable; melt temp is ~190-200 degrees C. Obviously, you don't want to put it down on a hot iron... but for anything you're going to use anywhere it won't kill a human being, it'll be fine, particularly in a compression-load situation.
Give you some idea; a lot of the knobs you'll see on Thingiverse either have crude threads, or have a set-screw hole sized so that you can force-thread a long grub-screw direct into the plastic. Yes, they do hold.
Wow! That is quite a haul! Congrats!
Edit....how did you manage to get all that stuff into your lab and not get the stink eye from the SWMBO?
haha good question. I have a separate entrance for the basement. So when I came in I just had one of the Keithley 181 and HP 39506a in my arms. I went downstairs and used the other entrance to get the rest
Man I read myself and I really sound like a addict
Welcome to the rabbit hole! You should put a sign over your basement entrance that says that...
Is that a CNC controller and stepper drivers? Sheeit... you're 3/4 of the way to your own CNC Milling machine... talk about a rabbit hole; that's a machine that makes them automatically and repeatedly out of nothing, where sanity once used to reign.
Neat. There's a 3D file for the bracket that holds the analog meters in old HP bench supplies.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:225449
Excellent! That was one of the things on my list to come up with when I finally get my FDM printer. I have several with broken meter retention brackets.
Someone else made a rear bezel for 344xxA, 33120A, 53xxxA, etc. But those are still available from Keysight. I suppose once you have a printer, it's cheaper to just print them.
https://youtu.be/rN09nj2Vu8gRule of thumb is generally if it isn't specifically cosmetic, you can probably print it. If you have sanding/painting skills, you can print cosmetic crap too. If it needs to be metal, you can print a lost PLA original. This video gives you a good idea what's involved in doing it with conventional moldmaking; it also shows what you can expect to have to do in prep and finishing to get a good part whether in plastic or to turn into metal.
https://youtu.be/kgakfi8IbjcThis is a good example of lost PLA done "quick & dirty" as a hobbyist might engage in. Not as shiny as Brian's work, but a lot less involved process-wise.
Lost PLA is done in investment plaster, and the PLA part is burned out; there are some
new processes that use a converted microwave oven. Otherwise, pretty similar process to conventional foundry and finishing work. Does give you a little more respect for the folks in China who do this shit every day for slave wages so we don't have to.
mnem
*Maker from way back*