Switch and Outlet cover plates

thingiverse

UPDATES 2023-05-15 Updated the Safety Cover. I realized that the centre screw hole was about 1mm too short so the plate applied too much pressure on the sliding shield if the screw was tightened too much. There should be more of a gap now to allow the safety to slide more easily. I am also looking at a shim that can be used to help align a poorly placed receptacle box. In older homes the boxes may not be positioned nicely which makes the covers hard to align and keep straight. My house also has cedar interior walls which makes the alignment even harder. I am testing out some options which I hope will help with the issue. I will upload them after I have tested them out. Not sure if any universal shim would actually work considering how different boxes have been installed. I have a 50 yr old A frame that has vertical cedar siding for some of its interior walls. The joints cause issues since a lot of the outlets ended up positioned somewhere over a joint. It not only looks bad but I get quite a draft through those holes in the winter. I have a shim that works but does require some tweaking for individual outlets. This is probably useless for most houses that use standard drywall walls as it really just fills in the wall dip where the siding connects. I have also found that it is actually less work to reposition/straighten poorly placed outlet boxes rather than trying to fit a shim that will straighten the plug to the wall. 2023-05-07 My water pump had a regular single pole switch on it. I swapped it out with a proper double pole. Its hard to see the ON/OFF markings on the switch so I printed a new cover plate that makes it easier to see. Just used a black felt pen to darken the letters. I added the STL in case anyone else needed something similar. 2023-05-06 I have added a second option for the Flat Faced Cover for the old duplex style outlets. This one covers the duplex receptacle and also includes a safety lock. When assembling the 2 parts make sure the locking mechanism slides freely. You may need to file the edges if your print has any elephant foot. The pieces have pretty close tolerances. Also keep in mind that the Flat Cover already adds a couple of mm thickness between the outlet and plug. By adding the safety lock this increases the spacing to about 3mm. Sorry, had red filament in my printer and was too lazy to switch it out for printing the test. SUMMARY I needed to replace some of my switch and outlet covers so I decided to try for something that would fit better with our wood interior. I had some wood filament that was getting old so I figured I would try replacing the old white covers with some cedar ones. There are quite a few of these already available but I though I would design my own for fun. I was quite surprised how well they printed considering the condition of my old filament. The duplex receptacles are still the old off white ones so I though I would try making a cover that hid the underlying white outlet and just provide a plain surface with the holes. I have to wait for more filament to test it for actual use (wall colour matching) but I did print a test one in blue PETG and the fit was fine. It does add an extra 2mm over the outlet but I found that my plugs were still tight enough. **--WARNING--** Use your printed covers at your own risk. Plastics can catch fire and burn. Ensure that all your electrical outlets are in good shape and use filament that is designed to minimize the potential for fires. PLA is NOT a good choice. I am currently using PETG as I believe that it has better fire retardant characteristics than most other (non specialized) filaments. Filament materials are constantly changing so do some research to find which is the best choice.