3D-Printed Makita Adapters

Designing and printing your own Makita adapters is the most flexible and professional approach: you can tailor the adapters exactly to your needs.

You do not need to start your 3D design from scratch. There are excellent open-source templates with editable Fusion files that you can use as a start and then customize as needed.

Overview

When 3D-printing adapters, you still need the metal contacts. Your design strategy centers around how you want to implement the electric contacts.

Contact Plates: Common but Less Optimal

The easiest approach is to use pre-made contact plates:

You could adpopt the design used by commercial accessoires and embed (“lock in”) the contact plate into your 3D design.

Integrated Adapters

While designs using a separate contact plate are most common for cheap Makita accessoires, it is not the best approach for 3D printing.

Since you can freely design your adapter, why not directly insert the metal parts? This is much easier to design (as you don’t have to add spaces that exactly fit the plate, and you no longerneed a two-part design to “lock in” the plate).

Fitting metal contacts directly to your 3D-printed adapter looks better and creates more rugged adapters. Here are ways to implement the electric contacts:

• Spade Terminals:
  Standard spade terminals can serves as “poor mans contact plates”.

  

• Repurposing:
  Buy generic contact plates, but rather than inserting the entire plate, pull the metal contacts from the plates, then push them into your own adapter.

  

Design Approaches

There are four popular 3D-design approaches for custom Makita adapters:

• Interlock:
  Two parts that can be plugged together and secured by screws. When plugged together, they lock in a contact plate.
  

• Snap Design:
  One part only. The contact plate is “snapped” into it. This is easier to design and print, and has no vertical gap in the housing.

  This is before assembly:

  

  And this is the result with “snapped-in” contact plate:

  

  Here is a sample project including the 3D print files.

• Integrated:
  By pausing the slicer at some layer, inserting the contact plate, and then continuing the print you can embed the contact plate safely and permanently into your adapter.

• All-in-One:
  Insert the metal parts directly into your 3D design. This is the most straight-forward approach and gives you the most design flexibility. It is the only option that allows you to add digital interface plugs should you need them.

  • Repurpose Contact Plate:
    The metal contact stripes in a default contact plate can be pulled out. Simply re-insert them into your 3D print.

    

  • Spade Terminal (or alike):
    Use ubiquous spade terminal and insert these into your adapter.

    

External 3D Design Files

Friendly users have shared their print files (including editable Fusion files) so you don’t have to start from scratch. Print the files as-is, or use them as a start in your own design software:

• Adapter with Separate Contact Plate:
  Awesome professional design for a complete adapter that uses an external contact plate and secures it in “interlock” mode.

  Comes with different extension housings. Highly recommended.

• Adapter with Built-In Contacts:
  This design integrates the electrical contacts so you do not need a separate contact plate.

  Yet now you will need suitable conductive material (metal strips) and a way to insert them into the 3D print.

• Contact Plate Only:
  The electrical contact plate only. Download requires free registration. Purchasing ready-made contact plates is probably a much easier way.

  This download provides you will all the dimensions, and you may want to use this model as a placeholder in your own designs so you can later insert a ready-made contact plate.

Slow Website?

This website is very fast, and pages should appear instantly. If this site is slow for you, then your routing may be messed up, and this issue does not only affect done.land, but potentially a few other websites and downloads as well. Here are simple steps to speed up your Internet experience and fix issues with slow websites and downloads..

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