Many homemade projects require circle markings. Their diameter varies greatly: from just a couple of centimeters to a meter or more. You can spend a lot of time finding suitable compasses. The old way marking with thread does not give top scores– the circles turn out crooked. The compass, which we propose to make with your own hands from scrap materials, is universal. With its help, you can easily draw a circle and you can also easily change its diameter.
Materials
Before starting work, prepare:
- meter threaded rod M10;
- washers, 4 pcs.;
- nuts M10, 4 pcs.;
- nut M12, 1 pc.;
- screw;
- epoxy adhesive.
Step 1. needle for homemade compass will become a screw. It needs to be attached using epoxy glue to one of the outer edges of the large nut. For ease of operation, you can clamp the nut itself in a vice. When gluing parts, do not rush. The self-tapping screw must be strictly perpendicular to the nut. It will take about 4 days for the glue to dry completely.
Step 2. Now you need to fix the resulting needle on the threaded rod. For this purpose in specified sequence string on it:
- small nut;
- washer;
- nut with self-tapping screw;
- washer;
- small nut.
Tighten the parts so that the nut and washer structure is strong and secure and holds the improvised needle in the position you need.
Step 3. At the second end of the threaded rod, you should fasten a pencil according to the pattern already familiar to you. Place it between the washers and secure everything with nuts. The pencil itself must be hexagonal. Round pencils will not be held. This has already been verified.
All. The compass is ready. To use it, you need to measure the required length from the needle with a tape measure and twist the nuts with washers and a pencil to the designated point.
It was evening, there was something to do...
One day I got tired of drawing circles using the well-known “compass” type “plank with two nails”...
I decided to buy a compass - in the office supplies there are school "goat's legs" that cannot draw a large circle, at least 50 cm, and are also so flimsy that they bend during the process of drawing a circle (as schoolchildren draw something with them) ... I realized that this was not an option.
I looked on the websites of tool stores in my city - there are no compasses (no compasses...). But I found a couple of Moscow online stores where they offered me to buy a good compass for 3500-4000 rubles. :wacko: Why is this necessary??? - I thought.
And I decided to make a compass with my own hands. By the way, the manufacturing process took only one evening.
Compass materials
For the compass I used:
- square profile pipe - 15mm;
- M8 bolts with nuts and washers;
- M6 bolts with nuts and washers;
- printer shaft with a diameter of 3mm (any hardened rod will do).
Assembling a compass with your own hands
Also check out these articles
I cut two pieces of pipe, the length is at your discretion, at least 1 meter each, I used 30cm. It all depends on what kind of circles you draw...
The edges of the profile are cut off, as shown in the photo below, in order to insert the bolts for securing the needles. Those. 3 of the four sides are cut off from the profile so that a plate remains for drilling for the needle fastening bolts.
And for the upper part - 6mm, because... M6 bolts are used there.
The top bracket can be made from sheet steel 1mm thick.
A 6mm hole is drilled at the top of the bracket and an M6 bolt with two nuts is inserted there - this is a handle for convenient rotation of the compass (see photo at the bottom of the article).
Wing nuts are placed on the bolts that hold the legs in the bracket to make it convenient to fix the position of the compass legs.
The lower M8 bolts are clamped in a vice, a small notch is made on the threads, close to the bolt head, with a round file - this will make them easier to drill, then a 3mm hole is marked and drilled for inserting a needle
It is better to grind off the bolt heads by half so that the legs of the compass can touch as closely as possible.
And also, after inserting the needle, it is better to place a washer under the nut, otherwise the nut will rotate very poorly on the needle.
For the needles, two pieces of the shaft from an old printer were used - a hardened rod with a diameter of 3 mm.
As a result, in an evening of work (another evening I disassembled it and painted it), I got an excellent compass with great advantages and small disadvantages.
About the shortcomings of my compass
- the legs of the compass do not compress completely due to the heads of the bolts, the needles do not close to zero, about 1 cm remains, i.e. The compass cannot draw very small circles, less than 1cm. This can be solved by increasing the width of the upper bracket so that the legs of the compass are attached at a greater distance from each other, but for myself I decided that I did not need circles less than 1 cm in diameter;
- thickness profile pipe was not very well chosen, because it only includes an M8 bolt (if you use an M10 bolt, there will already be 2.5 mm left to the edges of the profile), in which you have to drill a 3 mm hole and when the nuts are tightly tightened, the bolt breaks in a thin place. I recommend using a 20 mm profile, into which you can safely insert an M10 bolt, which will increase the strength of the needles. But in my case, the tightening force is enough for the bolts to hold; one needle fastening bolt broke only when I decided to tighten it quite tightly with 2 wrenches: unsure:
- This compass can only be drawn with needles and not with a pencil, but for marking circles on wood and sheet steel it is much more convenient to use a needle (the result is a thin and precise line that is clearly visible) rather than a pencil. If desired, you can make devices for attaching a pencil to this compass.
Otherwise, the compass turned out great and is already helping me in my work. It is possible that in the future I will make a compass version 2.0, where I will take into account all the shortcomings of the first version.
Update
Following the advice of experienced people from the wonderful forum chipmaker.ru, the compass was modified - the legs were rotated 90 degrees, so that the heads of the bolts no longer touch, and the needles can be set at an angle - this is very convenient when drawing large circles. Thanks for the advice!
The last two photos show the already modified compass.
DIY compass photo:
Many homemade projects require circle markings. Their diameter varies greatly: from just a couple of centimeters to a meter or more. You can spend a lot of time finding suitable compasses. The old method of marking using thread does not give the best results - the circles turn out crooked. The compass, which we propose to make with your own hands from scrap materials, is universal. With its help, you can easily draw a circle and you can also easily change its diameter. Details of the assembly of this wonderful compass are further in the master class.
Materials
Before starting work, prepare:
- meter threaded rod M10;
- washers, 4 pcs.;
- nuts M10, 4 pcs.;
- nut M12, 1 pc.;
- screw;
- epoxy adhesive.
Step 1. The needle for a homemade compass will be a screw. It needs to be attached using epoxy glue to one of the outer edges of the large nut. For ease of operation, you can clamp the nut itself in a vice. When gluing parts, do not rush. The self-tapping screw must be strictly perpendicular to the nut. It will take about 4 days for the glue to dry completely.
Step 2. Now you need to fix the resulting needle on the threaded rod. To do this, in the specified sequence, string on it:
- small nut;
- washer;
- nut with self-tapping screw;
- washer;
- small nut.
Tighten the parts so that the nut and washer structure is strong and secure and holds the improvised needle in the position you need.
Step 3. At the second end of the threaded rod, you should fasten a pencil according to the pattern already familiar to you. Place it between the washers and secure everything with nuts. The pencil itself must be hexagonal. Round pencils will not be held. This has already been verified.
All. The compass is ready. To use it, you need to measure the required length from the needle with a tape measure and twist the nuts with washers and a pencil to the designated point.
In carpentry and carpentry, sometimes it becomes necessary to draw large circles. This can happen when cutting round furniture pieces, such as tabletops, from joiner's board or sheet material. I mean reveal round blanks from chipboard, chipboard, plywood, MDF. And in the construction business, when creating a design, figures are also cut out of plasterboard. For such markings, a large carpenter's compass is required, but this may not be enough for the radius.
The fact is that the radius of a classic compass is limited by the length of the legs. And if you need to mark a circle with a large radius, for example about a meter, then a standard tool will not help. For such work, you can make a device using parts that are likely to be found in any home workshop.
The main part of the tool is a wooden rod, the length can be taken about 1 meter. This is enough for most jobs, but choose the size you need. Kernel would be better suited round, cross section 20 mm. . By the way, a thin cutting is well suited as a workpiece for light summer cottage tool.
When choosing a diameter, you should immediately think about another important detail. A plastic tube will be placed on the rod, and it should internal diameter be slightly larger than the outer diameter of the rod.
We drill a hole on one side of the rod, the diameter is selected according to the diameter of the pencil. After this, we saw through the part with a hacksaw from the end together with the hole. We drill another hole across the cut for a clamping bolt with a wing. A working pencil will be clamped into this device.
Now we cut a piece of plastic tube 100-150 mm long. , pierce with an awl or drill a hole through the tube in the center. Then we insert a thin nail into one hole from the inside, and widen the other and screw a clamping bolt into it. By the way, it is better to choose a nail with a large flat head, so it will be more rigid.
We assemble all the parts of the compass together, insert a pencil into the split end of the rod and clamp it with a thumb. From the other end we put on a tube with a central axis and tighten it with a clamping bolt. We set the desired radius of the circle, the distance between the end of the pencil and the central axis and tighten the clamping bolt on the tube. This bolt will simultaneously press the head of the nail - the axis of the compass. Just don't pull it too hard, it will come off quickly.
By the way, if you need to draw a circle somewhere on a construction site, but there is no time to look for suitable parts, then you can use simplified version compass. We take a thin long strip and tape a pencil to one end. We measure the required radius and nail a thin, sharp nail; it should go through the slats and become the central axis. I think it’s clear that the point of the nail and the sharpened end of the pencil should be on the same side of the rail. There is one inconvenience here: to accurately mark, sometimes you have to pull out and break the nail several times, but in general you can work.
Topic from the site http://ostmaster.blogspot.ru/2012/10/blog-post_14.html