3D printed Switch Guard

Wed 15 August 2018 by Dr. Dirk Colbry

Picture of the switch

We recently moved into a new house and the kids are having fun running around turning on and off all the lights. Unfortunately, some of the light switches are not for lights. One goes to our garbage disposal, another goes to the gas fireplace and another turns off the furnace. I decided I wanted to design a 3D printed magnetic light switch cover that would connect to the standard bolts that hold on a light switch cover plate. The cover would discourage inadvertent switching of the lights but also easily allow us to use the switch when we need too.

As with many of my projects I guessed I was not the first to have this idea so I searched existing designs on Thingiverse.com and Youmagine.com/. Although I could not find designs that used magnets, there were a number of interesting options that used the same screw holes. The one I thought looked the best was by jwolle1:

Inspiration for my light switch cover

So I started with this design and wrote a simple OpenSCAD program to load in the design as a starting point and then modify it to add holes where I could add some standard (8mm x 3mm) cylindrical magnets i got from Home Depot.

Magnets

The final product turned out great. I ended up printing three of them for myself and one for my brother. Here are some pictures:

Picture of the switch

Picture of the switch

Download the STL file for this design here:

Youmagine.com


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