I’ve been trying to figure this out for a few hours, and I’m stumped.
So, I am trying to make a bottom of an enclosure to house a PCB. I want a hole that will take a screw from the bottom but still allow for support of the PCB. The screw will pass through the hole of the PCB to screw into another piece of the enclosure that will be met on top of the PCB.
It’s really like a hole within a hole if that makes any sense.
So for a M3 screw (3mm) hole to pass all the way through, but another hole that is basically 6mm to take the head of the screw but the 3mm hole will start at 4mm from where it needs to end.
This will allow the thread of the M3 screw to pass through but the head of the screw to stop at 4mm.
hope that makes sense. I have not been able to find any videos or clues on google.
Do you want a countersink (comical recess for a flat head screw) or a counterbore (cylindrical recess for a cap screw or a button head screw)?
For a countersink you can offset the edge of the hole to define the perimeter of the countersink and then select just the edge of the hole and move it into the part. For most metric countersinks move the edge of the hole in by the same amount as the offset.
For a counterbore, you can offset the edge of the hole and then push the face in with Push/Pull.
What version of SketchUp are you really using? You put “Free Plan” 2018 in your forum profile but the has never been a free version of SketchUp 2018.
And, 1.6mm diameter hole is tiny. Really tiny by sketchup standards.
I assume that object you are working on is a component? Copy this object off to the side. Use the scale tool on this copied component. Scale it up 1000 times.
Edit the scaled up component to create a 1.6 meter diameter hole.
Or start over and model in meters, then scale down later, or if 3d printing it doesn’t matter….
I think what is throwing me off is that the hole actually has go all way through the material but also become a support shaft where the PCB sits on, then the 3mm hole has to be go up to be the counter sink depth to catch the head of the machine screw.
It occurred to me that based on your description, you are pushing the hole past the bottom face of the box. This would result in the hole not opening on the bottom. It would also result in a zero-thickness tube wall hanging below the box which you do not want anyway. Faces in SketchUp have no thickness so in order for the object to be printable, you have to have inner and outer surfaces as I ended up with in the video.
By the way, turn on Length Snapping and set your Display Precision higher in Model Info>Units.
Since it appears you want to 3D print the thing you are modeling, take @bmike’s advice. Set Model Units to Meters instead of millimeters. Model as if millimeters are meters and when you export the .stl, export with Meters as the units. When you import the .stl into the slicer, it’ll come in as millimeters.
As @bmik and @DaveR suggest … SketchUp does not much like working with sub-millimeter geometries. To get around that, set the Model Info>Units to meters. Export the model as a .STL file. And when the .STL is imported into the slicer, the units will be in millimeters … so everyone is happy.
As for the modeling sequence … extrude the standoff first, then the counterbore, then the through-hole … each done with a circle and a follow-me.
Typical issue with a counterbore and standoff … having enough material to “attach” the standoff. A simple section makes it easy to measure that … and to see the interaction between the wall thickness of the case, the depth of the counterbore and the diameter of the standoff.
