3D Printing a Hole Punch Jig

Peter Rukavina

I have a 3/8 inch hole punch; it looks like this:

Business card inserted, freeform, into the hole punch.

I want to use the punch to make holes in business cards; there are two problems with this setup as-is:

  1. There’s no way to ensure that the holes I punch are centred horizontally on the cards.
  2. There’s no way to control the vertical distance from the top of the cards that the hole gets punched, other than pushing the card all the way into the punch.

I want my holes to be centred and about 1/8 inch from the top of the cards, but because of these limitations, the best I can do is eyeball the horizontal centre and get holes about 1/2 inch from the top, like this:

The result of punching the hole freeform.

Clearly what I need is a “jig,” a device to wrap around the hole punch to solve both problems.

To the 3D printer!

I designed a jig in Tinkercad with a slot for the hole punch and guides for a business card:

The hole punch jig in Tinkercad.

The design took just over 2 hours to print on my Monoprice Select Mini 3D printer:

The finished 3D print of the jig.

With the hole punch inserted, and a business card ready to punch, it looks like this:

The jig in use, with a business card ready to punch.

And it works!

Here’s a perfectly-punched hole:

Perfectly punched hole, using the hole punch and the jig.

Now I’m off to punch lots of perfect holes in lots of cards for a New Years card project I’m working on.

Comments

Submitted by elmine on

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Designing and printing gear sounds like a perfect way to postpone boring tasks like punching holes in cards. It’s how I tend to do stuff. Good to know I’m not alone.

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Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

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