Designing a drill gauge on Tinkercad.

Designing a Drill Gauge on Tinkercad.

As you have seen from my recent Drill Gauge post, my class is currently focused on creating another one but on a 3D app called Tinkercad. This app helps you create anything you want with accurate measurements and allows you to 3D print anything you create on it (but you would obviously need the 3D printer for this to work). 

In my latest Drill Gauge post, you may notice at the end I have already created a model-like drill gauge from Tinkercad to look like the one I had created in class, well now I am going to create my own drill gauge, the holes have to be the same sizes and the sizes still need to be able to show which hole is which size. 

Steps on how I designed my digital drill gauge.

1. I went into 'BASIC SHAPES' on the right side of the screen and selected a polygon shape.
2. I put in my own measurements on the length/width & height- Height(3), Length(80) & Width(60).
3. I selected the cylinder 8 times so I could have 8 holes for the digital drill gauge.
4. I put in the sizes I wanted for each different hole, (3,4,5,5.5,6,6.8,8,10)- (Or you could have any of the sizes you want to use/commonly use).
5. I played around and put the circles in random places at first, and then I found a little pattern I liked so I kept it.
6. I made sure they had an even distance from each other and then piece by piece I made each cylinder piece a hole.
7. I clicked onto 'Basic shapes' and clicked onto 'text and numbers' and selected each number needed.
8. I then put each number to the sizes 3 by 3 and the height 3.
9. I then made sure they were evenly placed under the right holes and that they were just on top of the drill gauge. 
10. I went and gathered letters for my name and placed it evenly in the center on the bottom of my drill gauge.
11. After that I, then highlighted it all and clicked 'Ctrl+G' which then grouped it all together.
12. Then I chose the colour I wanted to print in and went to the 3D printer.

Here is a photo of my own made digital gauge from Tinkercad.

Here is a photo of another drill gauge I have made but it is just like the one I made in class.

How to use TinkerCad-
 I am not really good at using Tinkercad but here are some tips I can give if you ever need help on it.
-I just played around for a while to get use to seeing and knowing where everything is.
-This helps by giving you a feel of what Tinkercad actually is and how to measure.
-Tinkercad comes with a few steps or tutorials if you're new and just sign up, it gives some easy pointers and some drafts/steps for you to do.
-You are easily able to get correct measurements by clicking on the shape you have supposedly chosen, and then numbers should come up on the side, you're able to click on those numbers and write in the size you want.
- You also have a variety of colours you can choose from.
- You can also share a design you have created with some people and yous can edit it at the same time, this can help if you need to work on a design with a group.
- You can easily embed your designs into slides/docs/blogs and more.
- You can also look at other people's designs they have created. You can look at the most popular ones or you can search for a certain item and it shall come up.
- If you find someone else's design that you like, you can copy the design and can add as much as you like to it, but you need to make sure to give credit to the person who originally created it..
-These are all the tips I can give you on how to create your own digital drill gauge.

How to make a drill gauge!

Here are some pointers on how to make a drill gauge.

- Get a piece of Aluminium (width- 25, thickness-3, length- 110; Aluminium is best for not rusting).

- Draw file and use an emery cloth to clean it up.

- Put engineers blue on one side of the aluminium piece.

-Use your ruler to measure 10cm from the top of your aluminium piece, then measure 20cm, 30cm, 40cm, 50cm & 60cm from the top. There should be six 10cm marked evenly from the line.

-Get an engineers square and a scribe, use the scribe on the lines width wise, you should get 10cm rectangles evenly distanced.

- From the last line mark 15cm in the middle and from that 15cm mark another, the last rectangle should be 20cm length worthy and 10cm wide.

- Use the engineer square to mark off the last two lines then scribe a line going vertically straight through the middle.

- Then center punch where each line meets, there should be 8 center punched marks.

- Find your drill bits (the correct sizes preferably), you can either start drilling the holes from where you marked or you can use a spotting drill bit first just to make sure you'll be drilling in the right place.

- Get a hand countersink and do small twists on the end of the holes to remove any burrs the machine left.

- Use the emery cloth again to clean up any new marks made. Then get your number punches (the right numbers for your sizes), and then punch the correct size number below your holes.

- Use your polishing and buffering machine to buffer and polish your drill gauge (make sure to do all the edges and sides).

- You now have a choice to spray paint it or add colour to it somehow but make sure to clean the insides of the holes, so the paint doesn't block it up. (Also make sure not to add thick layers of paint).

-  You should now have your own drill gauge coloured or not.

What is a Drill Gauge?

What is a Drill Gauge?
A drill gauge is normally made of steel but can be made out of other types of metal for example; Aluminium.
The reason for its existence is to accurately measure or check the size of any drill bit. It is mostly used by engineers and can come with and in many different sizes.

What does a Drill Gauge look like?
A drill gauge has around 27 different sized holes with the sizes under or next to the hole.

The length is roughly around 150mm+ (if you want to add a slight curve on the edges) long and the width would roughly be around 66mm. It depends on what type of Drill Gauge you're looking at or wanting to create and how many holes you want.








Here is a photo of a drill gauge one of my classmates had created.

The one I personally created has been given away as a gift for another so it could not be shown.

The one my class and I have created has only 8 holes of different sizes, this being because they are the most commonly used drill bit sizes that we use or would probably need future wise. Some of us have also spray painted our Drill Gauge just to add colour, and some have kept theirs plain as you can see. On my drill gauge, I did not add any colour just because I liked the silver shine.


What are some of the measuring tools we used for this project?
While creating a drill gauge we obviously needed to have a tool appropriate for measuring.
For this topic, we used 6 measuring tools to achieve the exact sizes, they are-
-Ruler (Used for measuring on where to mark out our lines, and to measure the sizes)
-Engineer square (Getting accurate lines after marking it out)
-Vernier (This is just to assure that my first measurements and my draw filing were accurate)
-Odd leg caliper (Was used to help mark out a curve at the end of my Drill gauge)
-Micrometer ( I used to mark and check the thickness of the aluminium piece.
-Spring divider x3 (I used for engraving lines and the distance between each marking point)

How to use a vernier and micrometer-
Here are two videos on how to use and read a vernier and micrometer.
Vernier- VIDEO
Micrometer- VIDEO


Here is my Tinkercad/digital Drill Gauge.

We created these after finishing our real drill gauge.

While creating this digital drill gauge, for this we had to create the same shapes as the real drill gauge, we also had to use the exact same sizes, so we could distance the holes in the correct places, we also had to check the thickness is the same and that the holes are the proper size. I feel like this was a fun project to do and that the learning behind this topic was also a lot but helpful.