Heat Set Insert Press, only weird and complicated

In your life, do people often ask you why you need to make things so difficult?  

If so, this tool is for you.

This is a heat-set insert installation tool designed for the Hakko FX-951 soldering iron.  There are many such tools available, but this one is different because:

• It requires you to print many parts at high precision.
• Some basic machining of 2mm steel dowels is required.
• It uses a lot of plastic.
• It is hard to assemble and needs post-print sanding and fitting.
• It is expensive and requires multiple purchases from different vendors.

In addition, it provides nothing, NOTHING, more than the ability to move a Hakko FX-951 stylus up and down in a straight line.  

The Peaucellier-Lipkin inversor is a mechanical linkage invented in the 19th century.  It is one of the first mechanical solutions for turning purely rotational motion into perfect straight-line motion, and was a technical advance with application to steam engine design.  In this tool, you can notice that every part of it moves in a circular arc, except the stylus itself. 

This linkage is simple, amazing, and kind of beautiful to watch.   It's really the only reason you'd make this device.

Notes on the build:

Instead of springs or elastic, this design uses a counterbalance, so you will have to provide between 1-2 pounds of mass in the provided cup.  You can use washers, a slug of metal, or whatever you like.

My print of this device used Bambu PLA-CF, printed on “Extra Fine”, with top ironing.  I also added extra walls on the long load-bearing struts.   However, the spaghetti detector on the Carbon X1 got a false positive when making the base due to the large amount of excess stringing produced by PLA-CF during top ironing of the plain base.  

Print the pieces with randomized seam position.  The Carbon X1 cannot make a 2mm diameter hole with the precision required for an interference fit, so it helps to clean the holes up by reaming them with a sharp drill bit, by hand.  I clamped the bit in a drill chuck and used it as a hand tool.  I used a 5/64" bit for the 2mm holes, which is slightly smaller than 2mm.  For the 5mm holes meant to house the ball bearings, you canuse a 3/16" drill bit, but this may not be required.

All the joint holes are designed for interference fits, and include the required offsets for printing in PLA-CF with a 0.4mm nozzle (so you don't need to include hole compensation).  I used a Bambu Carbon X1.  I recommend you print all the struts such that the joint holes align vertically along the Z axis, but this means that you will likely have to extend support material to help keep them adhered to the bed.  It also means that you'll probably need to sand the undersides of the strut pieces to make them interlock smoothly; it's fine to use rough-grit sandpaper for this since these surfaces aren't visible.  

If you own a vise, you can easily press the ball bearings into their receptacle holes using a pair of soft jaws.  Otherwise, a piece of hardwood against a table will probably do fine.

BOM is included in the files, which includes the 2mm axle dimensions, the bearing specs, and the main support part number.   I included URLs for the specific parts like the bearings, but you'll need some commonly available parts like 2mm steel dowels and M4 grub screws, which you can source from McMaster-Carr or wherever you like.  

The main support is a piece of open GoRAIL from servocity.com.

Some pieces, namely the wire guide and the cup, will need to be glued together.  Cyanoacrylate works well for this.  Since the underside of the top portion of the wire guide will be rough, a thickened CA glue is best.  However, since this piece doesn't take very much load, any glue that bonds plastic will work.

Some pieces, like the hstool_cap_# and hstool_triangle_# are identical copies.   I've included these so that you don't have to remember how many to print.

Two bases are included: One that functions only as a base, and another that has a 2x3 gridfinity baseplate integrated into it.   If you don't know what gridfinity is, just print the other one.  The bottom of both bases is flat, because the intention is that you put rubber feet on the corners.

If you want a stylus holder for an iron other than the FX-951, please message me and send a model of the stylus.  If you don't have a CAD program to make a model, include a description.  I'll throw a modified bracket together for you and post it here.

Update:

Added hstool_assembly.step, which includes all of the required parts in an assembled configuration.  This can help you modify the design or act as an assembly guide.   In addition, note that there are two wire guide pieces in the assembly model; one of them is designed to route the soldering iron wire into a piece of open-channel GoRail, while the other can accommodate closed-channel t-slot.  The latter will work, but I think it doesn't look as nice.