I landed a piece of assembly work consisting of soldering some thru-hole components onto some PCBs and create a bunch of simple wire harnesses. There is a join on the harness that needs a piece of heat-shrink to insulate it, and I was getting really tired of trying to cut hundreds of pieces all the same length, so I made a tool.

My initial though was some grand gizmo like a guillotine with a Stanley knife blade, but it was over complicated. However, I woke up this morning with a brilliant idea, though I say so myself, and much simpler than my previous musings.

I 3D printed two simple parts and super glued the base to the bottom of the wire cutters. All you have to do is adjust the end-stop for the desired length of heat-shrink and away you go. I made provision in the end-stop to add a locking screw; you can see the hole, but the fit is pretty tight and I don’t seem to need it. I’m sure there are lots of improvements that could be made, but this very simple add-on seems to work brilliantly as is.