We’re pretty sure most people know how to use a measuring tape, but what you probably don’t know is what all of the different markings mean. Have you noticed the roman numerals and black diamonds?
Metric & Imperial Markings
If you live outside of the UK, chances are your measuring tape will have either metric or imperial measurement grades and units on it. In the UK however it is quite common to get measuring tapes with both as the European Union has enforced use of the metric system however many tradesman still prefer to use imperial units.
How Accurate Is Your Measuring Tape?
Pull out your tape and in the first few centimeters or inches there should be a roman numeral printed inside a rectangle or circle, this numeral refers to the accuracy of the measuring tape.
There are generally four grades of accuracy with Class 1 or I being the most accurate and and Class 4 or IV being the least accurate. If you’ve bought a cheap or unclassified tape, it won’t have any Class markings on it which simply means that is has not been tested and therefore doesn’t guarantee any level of accuracy.
The Length
The total length of your tape measure is generally printed in red somewhere right near the tip of the tape in red. If you have a tape measure with both imperial and metric units, the length of both with be shown next to their respective scales.
Now Here Are The Less Known Tape Measure Markings
Black Diamonds
You may have noticed that there are little black diamonds every so often down the length of your tape measure. They are used by tradesman as stud and joist marks, stud marks typically occur at 16″ intervals and joist marks at 19.2″ intervals. These may seem like strange denominations but they are derived from the fact that most American building materials come in 8ft lengths, 8ft divided 5 times gives you the perfect width for joists which happens to be 19.2″ as indicated on the tape.
Year Of Manufacture
The last two digits of the year of manufacture is often written alongside an M in a red or black rectangle. The year of manufacture is printed onto most modern tapes as a means to identify that it was manufactured to conform to a certain set of regulations applicable at that time.
CE Marking
If your tape was bought in Europe or manufactured with resale within the European Union in mind then it should have a CE printed on it, this means that it conforms to all of the European Union regulations applicable to it during the time of manufacture. It doesn’t mean it was manufactured in the EU but it does suggest that it was intended for resale there.
Testing Body
Somewhere near the year of manufacture, there may be another four digit number within a rectangle, this number relates to the agency responsible for the issuing of the certification. The codes can generally be looked up online and correspond to a registered institution or laboratory.
We all know the struggle, you get out of the shower and need to use the mirror and its covered in fog, wiping it with a towel leaves it full of streaks so you’re forced to open a window and allow it to dry off properly before you can see anything. A friend of mine one day told me about a trick they had tried to stop their bathroom mirrors from fogging up. The trick sounded too straight forward, and quite frankly like it wouldn’t work, so I pretty much forgot about it until a couple of months later. I got out of the shower, on a particularly frustrating day, to a foggy mirror and I remembered what my friend had told me, so I decided to give it a try – the next day of course as the trick only works when the mirror is dry to start with.
Stop Your Bathroom Mirrors From Fogging Up
All you need for this trick is a regular bar of soap and a soft dry cloth. Take the bar of soap and gently rub it onto the mirror’s glass. You only need to rub the bar of soap very lightly, it doesn’t need to completely cover the glass as the next step will take care of that. When you’re done, you should have a fairly hazy patch of glass in the middle of your mirror but there shouldn’t be any chunks or thick streaks of soap on it.
Now take a soft cotton or microfiber cloth and buff the soap residue off of the mirror so that it is shiny again. You’ll now appreciate not having put too much soap on in the first step! If you are struggling to get it off, you can add a tiny spray of glass cleaner but too much will remove all of the soap residue and prevent the trick from working.
When you are done, the mirror should look as it was before you added the soap, there shouldn’t be any haze or soap lines left on the glass. There will however be a thin, invisible film from the soap bar left behind which will prevent the glass from fogging up in the future.
Next time you take a shower, you’ll be greeted with a fog free mirror when you’re done.
Now you just have to remember to add some soap to the drying process next time you give your mirror a wipe down and your mirror will stay fog free!
Have you finished dusting and cleaning your home only to notice a layer has formed again after a few hours? It almost seems impossible to get rid of the dust that has accumulated in your home! Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to do, you just need to make sure you’re cleaning the right things to get rid of as much dust as possible with each clean.
Wet wipes quickly capture the dirt and keep it trapped so there is less risk of the dust rising into the air again. By using a wet cloth and rinsing it out in a bucket, by the third or fourth rinse you start rubbing the dust trapped in the water back onto the furniture, it dries and again rises into the air. Use a new wipe for each large item of furniture once a week for the best results. You could even try making your own wet wipes.
Dust All Of Your Furniture
Dust settles on everything in your home and so you need to dust everything as well. Just dusting the surfaces you use often or which look dirty means you’re leaving dust around your home which can easily be spread. Next time you’re dusting, remember to clean your mirrors, television, picture frames and decor.
To make extra sure you’re getting all of the dust, vacuum your couch or sofa once a week as well. It settles on the fabric and is thrown up into the air every time somebody sits down or stands up.
Wash Your Curtains
You should wash all of your curtains in your home at least once a season. Being so close to the windows and draughts, they accumulate a lot of dust along the seams and in the folds which is then blown into your home whenever you open and close the curtains.
Brush Dust From The Corners
Get yourself a soft bristled dusting brush and start using it to brush dust out of the corners and small gaps. You’ll be surprised at how much accumulates in the spaces you can’t reach with a cloth or wet wipe.
Wipe Down Your Plants
Plants are often put in a corner, watered and left alone. No one ever thinks to clean them, they clean themselves right? Actually they don’t, plants stay clean outdoors because of the rain and wind, when you’ve put them indoors they will need a wipe down every now and again. Wipe the leaves with a damp cloth from time to time to keep them clean.
That’s it, just by doing these five things, your home will already be a whole lot cleaner and you’ll notice a drastic decrease in the amount of dust which builds up.
Traditional soldering irons use a heated tip to melt solder in order to make electrical joints, while this works well when you have a mains outlet around, its not that practical when you’re out in the field. Anyone who’s done anything RC will know the frustration involved in a joint coming loose or a wire breaking off in the middle of a day out. You can buy a couple of different models of cordless soldering irons online but the main drawbacks are either lack of power or short battery life, the cold heat soldering iron addresses both of these problems. If anything it is perhaps a bit too hot and since it is only on instantaneously, you can make loads of joints (100+) before the battery runs flat.
The cold heat soldering iron works by essentially “short circuiting” the battery across the solder joint, the solder acts as a resistor, heats up really quickly and melts to form the joint as in the normal soldering process. The concept is similar to a traditional soldering iron in the way the tip is heated although in this case, the heated part is the actual solder and not a soldering tip.
What’s even better about this project is that it can be built using things lying around at home, there really is nothing complicated about it.
What You Need To Build A Cold Heat Soldering Iron
A Scrap Piece Of Copper, Aluminium Or Brass Tubing (8cm/3″)
A Thin Piece Of Scrap Glass (Or Mica, Plexiglass, Acrylic etc)
A Short Length Of Ripcord Or Any 2 Strand Wire
Some Pencil Lead (Graphite) Refills
Heat Shrink Tubing or Insulation Tape
LiPo Battery Plug To Match Your Battery
A 1000mAh 2 Cell Lipo Battery (Or Similar Capacity 2 Cell)
A Piece of Wood, Pen Or Dowel For The Handle – Alternately, Below Are Plans To 3D Print A Case For The Tip & Battery
Making Your Cordless Cold Heat Soldering Iron
Making The Soldering Iron Tip
The tip is the most important part of your soldering iron so it pays off to take some extra time to get it right.
Start off by cutting your scrap piece of tubing into two equal sections of about 4cm or 1 1/2″ long, this doesn’t need to be all that accurate but it needs to be long enough to adequately support the pencil leads and absorb some of the excess heat created when soldering.
Now strip the plastic insulation off of the ends of your ripcord to expose the wire, the exposed wire should extend about halfway into the tubes with the edge of the insulation up against the tube ends.
Push each wire into the tube and then use a hammer or a pliers to squash the tube flat over the wire. Flatten the whole length of both tubes, these are going to be your contacts onto the pencil leads.
Now cut a strip of glass from your sheet of glass, the piece needs to be the same width and length as the flat tubes. In this case, the flattened tubes were about 1cm (2/5″) wide. Use a glass cutter to score the glass and then break off a strip of the correct width before breaking it to the correct length.
The glass strip should be a similar size to the flattened tube contacts when you are done.
Before assembling the tip, you need to score the tubing so that the pencil leads are held firmly and in the centre of the tube contacts. Use a pair of side cutters, a craft knife or a Dremel to cut or score a line down the centre of each contact as shown below, the line doesn’t need to go the full way down the length of the contact.
Assemble the tip by putting the glass strip between the two contacts with the score marks facing inwards towards the glass. Insert the pencil leads between the contacts and the glass, lining them up with the score marks, and then wrap the tip up with insulation tape or put a piece of heat shrink tubing around it.
Once you are happy with the position of all of the components and the alignment of the pencil lead, heat up the heat shrink tubing with a lighter, heat gun or blow torch briefly to shrink it together and lock the pieces in place.
The pencil leads should be close together but not touching each other when you are done. You will now need to be very careful when handling your soldering iron tip as the slightest bump will break the pencil leads, they are really fragile.
On the other end of the ripcord lead, you need to solar on your battery plug. The polarity (positive + and negative -) of the battery plug don’t matter for this tip so you can solder either lead onto either of the plug terminals.
The tip and electrical connections are now completed.
Testing The Cold Heat Soldering Iron Tip
Once you have completed your tip, you should probably test it and check that the connections are made correctly before you go through the effort of mounting it onto a handle or inside a case.
To test the tip, make sure that the pencil leads are not touching each other or anything conductive, they should preferably be raised a little off the counter or work surface. Now plug the tip’s lead into your charged LiPo battery.
With the battery plugged in, take a piece of thin strand solder and touch it against the two pencil leads simultaneously. It should smoke a little bit and then the solder will begin to melt. A little spark or the tips of the pencil leads turning bright orange is quite normal, just don’t allow the whole pencil lead to turn orange.
Shown in the video below is our test of the tip, we plugged the tip into a power monitor to check the voltage and maximum current when soldering to ensure that the current was not exceeding the batteries limit.
The battery voltage was 8.33V which is normal for a fully charged 2 cell Lipo and the maximum current drawn to melt the solder was 5.30A which is well below the batteries 20A limit. With a 1000mAh battery, you should get about 11 minutes of soldering before the battery needs charging. That’s 11 minutes of actual contact between the two pencil leads, which is a lot of soldering time, around 130 joints if each takes 5 seconds or so.
The power meter used to take these measurements can be found through this link.
Mounting The Soldering Iron Tip
Once you are happy with how your tip works, you can mount it onto a handle or rod so that it’s easier to use. A round wooden dowel works well as a handle and is relatively inexpensive. Tape the tip to one end and the battery to the other end, you’ll now have a neat pencil like portable soldering iron.
We decided to take it one step further and 3D print a case to house the tip and the battery. The case is printed in two parts, one is the actual case in which the tip is mounted and the battery fits into and the other is the end cap to close off the battery compartment.
The case was designed for a 0.4mm nozzle printer but it can be printed with any printer with a suitable build volume. The material used was HIPS with a nozzle temperature of 225°C (437°F) and a bed temperature of 95°C (203°F).
Here is a timelapse video of the case being printed:
Once you have printed both pieces of the soldering iron case, the tip needs to be installed. The tip fits tightly into the front of the case, you may need to remove the pencil leads to push it into the case and then replace them afterwards.
The complete soldering iron.
Using The Soldering Iron
Although the battery is effectively not in circuit when the soldering iron is not in use, you should always keep the battery unplugged when you are not using it to prevent something short circuiting the tip. A stray tool or screw in your toolbox may fall across the pencil leads and could cause a fire.
You can use any two cell battery you already have for your RC hobbies or whatever is available from your local RC store, it doesn’t need to be a high spec LiPo battery. A two cell battery has enough voltage and 1000mAh is enough capacity for a fair bit of soldering before it needs to be charged. To get more soldering time out of your soldering iron, use a battery with a larger capacity – 1500mAh or 2000mAh. We don’t recommend increasing the voltage (number of cells) above two, this design works quite well between 5V and 10V so a 2 cell LiPo is perfect.
To solder a joint, simply hold the soldering iron in one hand as you do with a regular soldering iron and then solder in another hand, gently touch the tip onto the joint and bridge the two pencil leads with the solder wire. The solder will melt and the joint will be formed. Do not press down on the pencil leads as they are extremely fragile and will break. It may be tempting to push down harder if the tip doesn’t heat up at first, rather move the solder wire around to a better angle.
Here is a video of two joints being made:
Some General Usage Tips
Don’t attempt to solder any sensitive electronic circuitry with this soldering iron. There is a voltage difference across the tip which may damage sensitive components.
Remember not to over discharge your LiPo batteries, use a battery monitor to alert you when the battery is running low.
Keep the tip away from anything conductive when the battery is plugged in and always unplug the battery during transport.
Work quickly, once the joint is hot, push the solder you need into the joint and stop quickly. The tips of the pencil leads may start glowing but don’t let the whole lead heat up, it will start to damage the heat shrink or insulation tape you used to hold the tip together.
Don’t press down on the tip, the pencil leads are really fragile and will break if any pressure is applied to them. Rather move the solder around until it touches both ends of the pencil lead, this will cause it to melt.
Try making a cap to protect the pencil leads when you’re transporting the soldering iron, this way you can leave it loose in your toolbox.
You could use an RC brushed ESC to vary the voltage and current supplied to the tip for smaller or larger jobs, a servo tested could be used to give the ESC the reference signal.
Share This Guide:
Have you made your own cold heat soldering iron? Let us know in the comments section below, we would love to hear your tips and tricks.
Motivation can be difficult to find. We often know what our goals are but struggle to stay motivated in order to reach them and we certainly aren’t going to get there by hoping. We need action!
Not too many people want to go to the gym and workout everyday yet most people want to be fit and healthy, motivation is what we need to bridge the gap and get us there. Once you have figured out where you want to be, do these 7 things daily in order to find the fuel to get you there.
Set Short Term Goals
Your goals are most likely not going to be achieved in a week or even a month and it may become difficult to find motivation during the middle portion of your goal period. Break your goals up into little chunks and you’ll be much more likely to achieve them. For example, instead of saying you’d like to loose 20kg or 45lbs in the next 6 months, rather set your goal on loosing 3.5kg or 7.5lbs a month for the next 6 months. Each month you reach your weight loss goal will give you the required motivation to get through the next month.
Create Reminders
Reminder can be in the form of alerts on your cellphone or physical sticky notes. Either way, use these reminders to keep your goals in mind throughout the day, we often need the extra help in the beginning until it becomes a habit. For example, if you’ve decided you need to drink more water throughout the day, set reminders for every two hours so you don’t find yourself leaving work and realising that the last time you drank water was with lunch.
If you need to get your life more organised in order to meet your goals, have a look at our top 5 apps to get organised with.
Meetup With Friends And Family
Never underestimate how much motivation friends and family can provide for you, especially if you are an extrovert. Bringing a close friend or family member into your goal can provide you the extra motivation you need on the bad days.
Stay Motivated With Music
If you struggle with the daily tasks required to achieve your long term goals, music may help you to set the tone. Create a slow and classic playlist to wind down and de-stress or a rock playlists to wake up and keep moving. A good playlist is especially useful for tasks which take time, like cleaning up the house, going to gym or just finding the time to relax.
Keep An Eye On Your Progress
Keep a journal or document your progress and remember to keep looking back on the progress you’ve made. When you see how far you’ve come, you’ll find it easier to stay motivated to continue moving towards your goal, however far it may seem.
Update Your Wardrobe
How you dress is often reflected in the work you do and it can give you the confidence you need to pursue your goals. It doesn’t even need to be a complete outfit, just a need item of clothing or accessory can go a long way. You could even reward yourself for achieving your daily steps towards your goal, put a portion of money away each day you are able to work towards your goal. Once you reach your goal, you’ll be able to reward yourself with a new watch, accessory, item of jewelry or gadget.
Try To Keep It Fun
Always try and add an element of fun to your goals and enjoy the work involved in reaching them. When we lose the enjoyment, we often give up on the goal itself. You need to get creative, a funky water bottle for your drink more water goal, a new fitness watch for your weight loss, having a friend join you running, small things help to bring the fun and excitement back into a task and stay motivated.
Keeping your home clutter free is a good way to stay motivated, you’ll spend less time worrying about things or trying to find things and have more time to do the things you love and to achieve your goals.
How do you stay motivated in your day to day life? Share your advice, tips and tricks with us in the comments section below.
Somewhere in between a pizza and a hot sub, this is a really easy lunch, snack or dinner which can be tailored to your taste – use any pizza toppings you can think of. As a snack, one french bread will serve around four people and as a lunch or dinner it is perfect for two to share.
Makes 2-4 Servings | Preparation Time 10 Minutes | Cooking Time 12 Minutes
What Your Need To Make One French Bread Pizza
One French Bread
Olive Oil – To Brush Onto Bread
1/8 Cup Tomato Paste or Pizza Sauce
1 Cup Grated Mozzarella Cheese
1/4 Cup Cheddar Cheese
1 Tsp Dried Italian Herbs
Pizza Toppins – Ham & Mushrooms Used Here
How To Make Your French Bread Pizza
Turn your oven onto grill and allow it to heat up. Cut the french bread in half down the width and then cut each half length ways (like a sandwich) so that you have four open quarters. Brush some olive oil onto the cut side of the bread and place the quarters onto a baking sheet. Grill them in the oven until the tops turn a light brown, be careful with this step as they burn really quickly. You may also need to move them around on the tray so that they grill evenly.
Once the tops are nicely browned, turn off the grill and turn your oven onto 180°C (360°F) spread some tomato paste or pizza sauce onto the bread, try to cover as much of the cut surface of the bread as possible.
Next sprinkle most of the mozzarella cheese onto the bread, keep about a quarter to put on last as this helps to keep your toppings on the pizza. sprinkle some Italian herbs onto the cheese.
Now it’s time to add your toppings, you can place your toppings in layers or spread them out around the bread to your liking. We put sliced mushroom and some ham onto each quarter.
Finally top the french bread pizza’s off with the cheddar and left over mozzarella cheese, adding some of the cheese last allows it to melt over the toppings and keep them in place when you’re eating or cutting them up.
Put the breads into the oven, on the lowest rack (in case the grill is still hot) and bake them for 5-10 minutes until the cheese has melted and the toppings are cooked through.
For an Italian themed dinner, how about paring these french bread pizzas as a starter with a pasta main served with our 10 minute tomato and basil pasta sauce. You could even step the pasta up a notch and make your own gnocchi to serve it on.
Life is not always easy so here are 15 brilliant tricks to help make your day to day life a bit easier. They help you solve little and irritating problems to allow you to get on with the things you really enjoy.
Re-use An Old Ketchup Bottle
Use an old ketchup bottle next time you are making pancakes, it’s now much easier to pour the right amount into the pan and you can keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.
Seat Belt Buckle Keyring
Use an old seat belt buckle to keep your keys in a safe place. When you get home or into the office simply clip them up and you’ll always remember where they are.
Prevent Credit Card Fraud
There are always new tricks and scams out there to defraud you of your money but you can do a bit to help. Paint nail polish over the last four digits of your card and put a sticker over the security code. This will make it just a little bit harder for fraudsters to memorise your card’s numbers. Some more modern cards, especially those with RFID or chips can even be cut without causing problems although this is probably not wise if you aren’t sure.
Make A Paint Caddy
And old milk carton makes the perfect pain caddy for touch up jobs. Cut the side out of the carton and you can use the bottom to store, dilute or mix paint and the top makes a handy brush holder.
Keep Your Scissors Sharp
If your scissors have gone blunt and you don’t have a sharpener, try cutting a sheet of foil a couple of times. The foil will sharpen your scissors and they’ll be as good as new.
Clothes Hanger Recipe Stand
Hand your recipe book from a cabinet using an old clothes hanger, really useful to save counter space.
Magnetic Strip Tool Caddy
Stick up a magnetic strip in your workshop, you can now use it as a handy tool caddy to keep your tools of your work surface and neatly organise.
Keep The Nails Handy
Avoid sticking dirt nails in your mouth by sticking them through the back of your work gloves the next time you’re doing a job on the roof or in a hard to reach place.
Hang A Shower Rail Hook
Hang a couple of hooks on your shower rail to create useful places to hang a shower caddy or your shower things while you’re busy. Hang one on the outside of the shower curtain to hang your towel on.
Don’t Forget The Birthdays
Don’t forget another birthday with this hang up birthday reminder calendar, plus it makes a decorative piece for a kitchen or study wall.
Re-purposed Tablet Stand
Do you have an old laptop stand lying around the house? Re-purpose it and use it as a tablet stand, no need to throw it out or buy a new tablet stand.
Let Lemons Do The Cleaning
A lemon can be a powerful cleaner, cut one in half and rub it on your metalwork in the shower, bathroom and kitchen to leave them shiny and scale free.
If you think lemons work well for cleaning, have a look at how well baking soda gets things done around the house.
Use A Comb To Hold Nails
Use a comb to hold the nail next time you’re hammering one in to avoid hitting your fingers.
Park With Confidence
Hang a tennis ball from the ceiling down to the level of your car’s wind shield to help you park your car. Drive until the ball touches your wind shield and you know you’re in exactly the right spot.
Re-seal An Open Packet
Cut the neck off an old bottle and use it to make a hand resealable lid for pasta, rice and cereal etc.
Now that these tips and tricks have made your life a bit easier, have a look at these DIY hacks to make your next DIY project a bit more manageable. If cooking and organising tips and tricks are more your thing, have a look at our kitchen hacks.
I wanted to make some stands for my surround sound speakers and this looked like an easy solution. Mounting them on the wall was an an option but having them on floor stands just seemed easier as they can be moved around and the wiring to the speaker is neatly hidden away in the tube of the stand, now I just need to hide the wiring running along the baseboards.
These speaker stands are really easy to make, I had most of what was required for them lying around in my workshop already, I just had to buy the table legs. Once you have everything together, it shouldn’t take you more than an hour or so to put them both together. So lets get started.
What You’ll Need To Build Two Speaker Stands
2 Table Legs – The Screw On Office Furniture Type
4 Pieces of Flat Wood – 20cm (8″) Long
2 Smaller Pieces of Wood – About 8cm (3″) Square
12 Small Wood Screws
Black Spray Paint
How To Make The Speaker Stands
If the listed items seem a bit vague, I’ve left out the detail on purpose. These are supposed to be quick and easy stands and if you’ve done a bit of DIY around the house you should have some leftovers which resemble most items on this list. The only item which you probably won’t have lying around is the table legs.
To start off, we’ll make the wooden base and speaker support sections. The top speaker support is simply a small square piece of wood of about 8cm (3″). Sand the edges to get rid of any saw marks and then you can spray this piece black, top, bottom and sides.
For the wooden base, I glued two 20cm (8″) planks of flat pine together again to form a squarish base. Clamp the two sections together and allow the glue to cure, express wood glue should be dry in about 15 minutes – follow the directions on your packaging. Once the sections are glued together then spray them black as well, top, bottom and sides.
When your top and bottom wood sections are dry, you’re almost done. Center the top of the table leg on the bottom wooden base and use four wood screws, one on each corner, to attach the leg to the base. If you are planning on running your speaker wire in your tube then you may need to thread it through before securing the leg to the base, make sure you don’t damage the wire when screwing the base on. My stands had a small hole near the top (which is now the bottom) which I threaded the wire through.
Unscrew the plastic adjustable foot of the table leg all the way until it comes off. Now drill a small hole in the centre and put a screw through the end cap and into the top wooden support. You can put a second screw through the cap and into the wood if it feels flimsy. Once the wooden block is secure, screw the foot back into the table leg.
Now you just need to attached the speaker to the stand and you’re done. The attachment depends on what type of speaker you have, some have screw holes, some a base plate and others just rest on the stands. My speakers don’t have and holes or a base so I just double sided taped them onto the stands with two large strips.
Finish off threading the wire through the stand and connect it to the speaker and you’re done.
Have you tried building these or similar stands yourself? Let us know in the comments section below.
If you’ve just bought a 3D printer of you’re thinking of buying one, you’re probably just as excited as I was when I got mine running. Unfortunately, it can take a while to wade through the thousands of ornaments, figurines and trinkets available to find something you’d actually be interested in.
So instead of wasting you time and filament printing junk you don’t need, lets make something useful. After all, printing useful things makes it easier to justify your printer’s rather expensive existence to your significant other.
All of the print models are free and are available for download through the link provided by clicking on the image.
Here’s Our List Of 30 Awesome & Useful Things To 3D Print
Savings Piggy Bank
Sliding Door Bolt
Power Outlet Charging Shelf
Out Of Office Flip Sign
Labelled Door Knobs
Plastic Workshop Wrench
SD Card Storage Mountain
One Handed Book Holder
Earbud Holder
Caffeine Molecule Coffee Coaster
Shopping Bag Handle
Block Desk Calendar
Automatic Coin Sorter
Self Watering Planter
Fun Platform Jack
We particularly like this model as it is all printed as a single model, already assembled!
Desktop Headphone Holder
Soap Dish
Portal Book Stand
Bendy Desk Lamp
Macbook Pro Stand
Easy Bottle Opener & Closer
Decorative Door Stop
iPhone Charging Dock & Passive Speaker
Cable Management Hive
AA To C Battery Adapter
Flash Drive Cryptex
Shower Head
Quick Business Card Case
Secret Storage Shelf
Swiss Army Style Key Chain
This list of 3d print models should keep you and your printer busy for quite a while, enjoy!
Have you printed anything else useful for the house which we haven’t listed? Leave us a comment below or send us your pictures to include, we’re always looking for new projects to try out.
From when we are kids, we start creating an image in our minds of our dream job and people generally spend their careers working towards this goal. Whether you’re looking to start climbing the ladder or you’re one step away from your dream job, you’ll need to have your sights on your next (or first) job and figure out how you’re going to get it.
We’ve written out five steps to get you from where you currently are to where you want to be. If finding a new job was one of your goals for 2017 then follow this guide and with the right attitude and a bit of luck, you’ll find yourself behind a new desk in a month or two.
Know Exactly What You Want
Even if you’re in a “gap filling” role now just to make ends meet, you still need to have specific career goals in mind and it helps to start pursuing them as early as possible. Don’t find yourself constantly waiting for better opportunities or making excuses to get out and into the field you want to be in, rather work a minimum wage job in the field of your passion than in a field you don’t enjoy just for the money or job security.
Develop some specific careers goals and use these to narrow down a job function, and job title you want to be looking for within your particular industry. Once you’ve got a job function and title in mind, you’re already a lot closer to finding your next job as you now know what you’re searching for.
Get Yourself Out There
In the age of the internet, getting yourself out there and into an industry has never been easier. You now know the path you need to follow but you now need to reach out to the right people in order to get you there.
With a job function and title in mind, you’ll likely have a good idea of some of the companies you’d love to work for. Do some online searching and find out if they hire through a human resources department or through an agency, once you’ve established who to contact, you can being writing up the documentation you need to get in the door.
Know Your Story
Once you know where you’re going, you’ll need to tell your prospective employers a bit about yourself and where you are coming from. You need to start by putting together a list of your skills, work experiences and education. For example, you can communicate with GK & Partners in order to get in-depth knowledge of the education sector. Don’t just focus on the most recent occurrences, sometimes companies are interested in the jobs you had back in high school as they demonstrate personality traits and fundamental skills.
Get Ready To Apply For The Job
You’ve done all of the prep work, but the actual job is not going to fall into your lap without you getting your resume and cover letter drawn up. There is a lot of information available online in this regard but the fundamentals are similar and you essentially have two options for the best chance of success, use a resume template or a resume writing service.
While you may be able to write your own resume and do a decent job of it, getting a professional resume writing service to write your resume for you will drastically improve your chances of landing the job. It may seem expensive, but these guys are professionals for a reason and they’ve had years of experience, they will ask you for your personal information and for information on the job and company you are targeting and they’ll tailor your resume for that specific position and make sure that your information is best presented for you to get the job. The cost will be well justified when you get a call for an interview.
If you can’t afford a resume writing service, then a professionally drawn up resume template is your next best option, Go-Resume has resume templates on sale from only $5.99 at the moment. They come pre-loaded with the correct fields, formatting and amount of information, just fill in the fields and you’ll already have a much better chance at the job than if you’d written your own resume from scratch.
Don’t Forget To Follow Up
Once you’ve sent a prospective employer your resume and cover letter, back off for a week or two but don’t forget to follow up down the line. You don’t want to pester them and create the impression that you’re desperate but you need to show that you’re committed to getting the job by keeping in touch and following up on the status of your application.
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