December 14, 2025
Description
I'm proud to show you a model made specifically to aid those with sight disabilities. I consulted a sensory disability specialist while designing this. The marker on the knob and ring are very sharp and therefore tactile, allowing to keep a finger on the knob, while simultaneously using the same finger to feel for the ring markers. Moreover, it's designed to be printed in two contrasting colours, so that it's easier for those with poor eyesight to spot the markings, especially in dimly lit venues.
The design is printer agnostic, letting you take advantage of your material changer if you have one, allowing to use a manual filament change, or simply printing it in two parts designed to be glued together.
While it was made specifically for the Hercules hardware, the encoder and potentiometer should be generic enough to work with other manufacturers' gear.
First of all, filament choice. Black and yellow are a standard high-contrast combo. You might want to invert the colours relative to how I printed them for even better visibility.
Parts are already oriented correctly.
Models with 'SeparatedColors' in their names are the ones made for color changing machines, such as MMU or AMS. Those are 3mfs ready to be assigned colours
Ones with 'Whole' are solid bodies, made with manual filament change at an apropriate layer height in mind.
The 'KnobAssembly' ones are made to be printed separately in different colours and glued together. The clearances are quite forgiving. A drop of CA glue should do the trick.
Rings are meant to be glued onto the surface of the console with a little bit of double-sided tape.
Big thanks to my girlfriend, who works with children with disabilities everyday and ceaslesly tries to make their lives easier. She is the reason I thought of this idea and she's the one one to teach me how to execute it.
Thank you for checking out my work. I hope I'm able to help someone and if I do, don't hesitate to let me know!
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution
Pirzmag
