The Hardware Press is a fork of the American Common Press. It was designed to be buildable from commonly available parts, and is intended to be used with 3D printed matrices, or the material that is used to transfer content in a physical printing process. Although if you want to get a job set in moveable type, that’s cool too. If it was good enough for Ben, it’s good enough for us.
This project was designed with a specific workflow in mind. An explanation of that workflow and support stack can be found here.
The Hardware Press’s body consists of:
The wood from:
- One sheet of 3/4” plywood
- Approximately three 2x4s
- A 12x12” 1/8” piece of plywood for the tympan (this is probably not available at a hardware store, but is available at your local craft store)
The press mechanism was built with:
- A 3/4” threaded rod (a 24” one was used, but multiple lengths are available)
- Three 1/2” cast iron floor flanges (the gauge for gas pipe parts uses a different measuring point than the rod)
- A tee joint (also 1/2”) and two 6” pieces of 1/2” pipe
- A 3” PVC shower drain
The following fasteners and adhesives were also used:
- 2 1/2” construction screws
- 2” decking screws
- 1” construction screws, as well as 1/2” 19-gauge bright brad nails
- Wood glue
- Red thread lock
We used the following tools:
- A corded drill
- Several miscellaneous drill bits
- A 1” circle saw bit
- A table saw
- A miter saw
- A hammer
- A mallet
- A wire cutter
- Multiple hand clamps
You can skip the table saw if you are smart about how you get your lumber cut when you purchase it. Most hardware stores will do a limited number of cuts as a service. Also, we didn’t actually use a corded drill, but after 2 hours with the circular saw on battery drills, I wish we had. You could also probably trade the miter saw out for a jigsaw or hand saw.
For more information about the project and its developers, see the about page. Plans are available here. For more details on the press and printing with it, check out the printing notes section.