Philishave charging cradle
A few months ago, part of the charging cradle of my shaver broke. Since then charging my shaver requires carefully placing everything such that it charges.
As expected no replacement was available to order. The next step is searching for something to replace it on AliExpress. This resulted in this thing:
According to the description it should support my model…but it did not. The charging contacts were a few millimeter too far apart.
So when you cannot buy it, you make it. This immediately created a good opportunity to try out some new modelling software. For the last years I have been using Autodesk’s Fusion 360. However, when you use it very infrequently, you always need to go through the login process, which does not always work flawlessly. It is the same reason I stopped years ago with using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.
For this little project I decided to try FreeCad. Its user interface is most definitely not as refined as Fusion 360, but it has all the features I need. Creating sketches is in my opinion a little user-friendlier even in my humble opinion.
Before designing anything, I first pulled the AliExpress cradle apart. The metal charging pads formed the basis around which a created my design. The whole thing has to be compact. The original cradle was quite cumbersome to take along on a travel. I want something simpler, which won’t brake easily in a suitcase.
Getting the curvature of the inside correct turned out to be more trial-and-error than I hoped for. In the end I made quite a few prints to fit the shaver.
With every print I added some feature and at the same time adjusted the fit. The final print contains the metal springs with charing pads as well as the plug for the power adapter.
The outside was easier to make. It just had to clamp around the outside (no screws, glue or anything).
A finally of course try and see if it charges…
Hopefully I can get a few more years out of my shaver. It would have been a waste to buy a new one, just because the charging cradle broke.
And I think I’ll stick with FreeCad from now on. It is most definitely not perfect. It crashes some now and the learning curve is relatively steep. However, it always starts. I can locally manage my files. I can export the model to any format I want.