3D Printed Mouse Minder

So, I hang out at the Nova Labs MakerSpace pretty frequently, and we've been having some trouble keeping our computer mice near their intended location. Some are attached to kiosks, some laptops available for borrowing/using unique software, some for our AV carts - so we don't really want to bolt them down permanently or anything draconian. Therefore, the solution in this instructable is designed to let people know that the mouse they're borrowing has a home, and would like to get back to it soon.

So, what are we building? 3D Printed Mouse Minders to keep an eye on the mice. These minders will be permanently attached to their (corded) mice, with their eyes looking down the cord towards the user. They will also have their home location printed into the bottom, so that they can find their way back more easily.

This project was executed in Tinkercad, which might not be the most powerful cad tool but it's absolutely perfect for things like this - simple, fast designs that can be integrated into multiple different STLs.

The animal should sorta fit with the station, while being whimsical - while the mouse is being borrowed, the minder can provide comfort to the user as well.

Filament - I like to use TPU for user-facing parts; if you don't have a TPU
A corded mouse - any should do!

3D Printer! I used a modified Prusa Mini, with a BondTech extruder upgrade - the stock mini is a bad choice for TPU, but will work fine with other filaments.

Blue painter's tape

I designed my Mouse Minder on Tinkercad - you can check it out here:
https://www.tinkercad.com/things/kmUsyhS3Vgt

The first thing I did was load in an Octocat - specifically this one by tbuser:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10394

I posted my finished design there, too, if you want the same minder:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4860687

Tinkercad Design Process:

1. Load up your STLs - i.e. whatever animal/object you want to build your mouse minder into. I also loaded in the Nova Labs logo to add to the model.
2. You can use my measurements, or even just copy my mouse-cord channel
3. Add some text! Remember to flip the text over, so it reads correctly from the bottom.
4. Union the mouse channel in
5. Export as STL and Print!

There's one trick to this build, and that is having your printer pause at the right time to insert the mouse.

Pause should be something easy... but it's not. Hitting the pause button at the right time will do it, but it's much nicer if the printer pauses for you at just the right time.

Pause Commands

Here's a (possibly) exhaustive list of pause commands that your printer MIGHT obey. A good resource for gcode commands, and what firmwares support them is here:

https://reprap.org/wiki/G-code

• M25: Pause SD print. Some printers ignore this command UNLESS they're printing from the SD card - i.e. this should work from a card, but not from Octoprint or over a gcode sender. How do you resume the print? M24 is the gcode - but you'll need an LCD controller or serial connection to send it.
• M76: Pause Print Job. This pauses the print job TIMER, but doesn't stop the machine.
• M226: Gcode initiated pause. Not supported by Marlin... i.e. not supported by the vast majority of printers.
• M601: Pause print. Mostly only Prusa supports this one. M602 to resume.
• @pause: Pause print. This is a meta-command, which will be read by Octoprint and initiate a pause if you have Octoprint on your machine. This way, you can restart the print from Octoprint as well.

Using PrusaSlicer, you can insert a pause at a layer height. If your preferred slicer doesn't support that, you can use a text editor to add the gcode manually, just search for the right Z-height.

It's best to test your pause on a smallish object, first!

Worst case scenario, you can just watch your print and manually pause it.

Installing the Mouse

Once you've worked out how to pause, put the mouse cord in ensuring that the front of the print is towards the mouse. Use blue tape to hold it in place, because if the cord gets caught on the nozzle or similar it could damage the printer.

That's it! Enjoy your (hopefully) less lonely mouse.