Baby Gate Spring

Description

Demonstration Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9LFOKo1dBE My wife and I had trouble remembering if we closed the baby gate at the top of our stairs, so we were constantly walking over and double-checking. Now the gate always shuts itself whenever we walk through it, so long as the gate is released with enough distance to go so it has room to get up to speed. If you use this design for a safety-critical application, use at your own risk, as I take no responsibility for any mishaps. The spring can easily be disengaged so that it will not spring shut, which is convenient when moving furniture for example. To disengage, start with the gate closed. Bend the end of the spring with the hook so that it comes off the gate and move it to the other side of the gate. If the spring needs to be stronger, you can increase the height. Doubling the height will double the spring rate. Print with as many outer perimeter walls that your slicer will allow. I printed my spring with PLA, which is stronger than ABS. ABS might work fine, but I haven't tried it. This specific spring is designed to fit a Safety1st brand baby gate without the extender piece so that the hinge is directly adjacent to the wall. If you have a different gate, you can use this design as a guide. My spring needs to have a hole drilled in place through the spring, the gate mount, and the wall. The hole in the wall then needs to have a drywall anchor installed before the spring is attached with a wood screw. The drywall anchor is not needed if the hole goes through a wood stud. The principle of the design is that it's basically a coiled torsion spring with a single, planar coil, which is easier to print than a helical coil. Alternatively, you can think of it as a curved leaf spring. I came up with the shape because it was the longest total length I could get to fit on my 3D printer and I knew that the shape would provide plenty of available length of the spring that would bend when the gate opened. (My 3D printer has a print area of 270 mm x 200 mm, or 10.6" x 7.9".) 3D printed plastic is elastic up to a point, but to get a usable amount of deflection, the spring needs to be long. This is usually accomplished by having many coils. In this case, I made my single coil very long to get the amount of deflection I needed while remaining in the elastic region.

Statistics

Category

Tags