1/22/2026 - Project Research

I’ve seen lots of different light switch covers lately, and I thought it could be a cool project to design a few for my bedroom. I haven’t seen many with industrial-style designs, but I thought it would be interesting to explore.

The first step I took was to look at MakerWorld and see if I could get any inspiration. I found some cool designs but nothing exactly like what I was looking for. Anyway, I would have to make it specific to my light switch.

Here are some of the interesting designs I was talking about:

• https://makerworld.com/en/models/1074655-fire-alarm-light-switch-cover-screw-on?from=search#profileId-1065167
• https://makerworld.com/en/models/1381950-star-wars-light-side-dark-side-light-switch-cover?from=search#profileId-1445076
• https://makerworld.com/en/models/1615652-nintendo-switch-light-switch-cover-rocker-cover?from=search#profileId-1704902

None of these designs had what I was looking for, so I decided to create my own. The first thing I did was take measurements of the sockets in my bedroom.

Specifically, I have four in total: two single-switch covers and two covers with both a switch and a power outlet. I measured both types, and these are the measurements I recorded:

After talking with ChatGPT, I got a clearer idea of what I wanted the designs to look like. I decided to give them an industrial feel, with titles like CAUTION and some text like “Authorized Use Only.”

I want to make three designs: two for the single-switch covers and one for the switch-and-power-outlet cover. After thinking it over, I came up with these three designs. None of them are final, but they will be very similar to these.

I also did some research on multi-color 3D printing and found that the best option is to use a 3D printer with AMS, but it is also possible without AMS. Lastly, I created the project's GitHub repo:
https://github.com/adrirubio/light-switch-covers

1/28/2026 - Single Socket Cover 1 Design

It took much longer than I expected to complete the first single socket cover because I ran into various issues during the 3D design process.

I began by creating a sketch using the dimensions I recorded in the last journal and padded it by 7 mm, which is the depth of the sockets in my bedroom. I then applied the thickness tool with an outward thickness of 3 mm, making the interior hollow.

After this, I made a square pocket of 4.5 mm. This is the cutout for the light switch. This was pretty fast to make, and this is what it looked like at that point.

Now I needed to add the text and the caution symbols. This is where things started to get a bit more complicated. I started by having a look at how to add text. I used the ShapeString tool from the Draft workbench and found a font I liked.

Soon I had the CAUTION text on the top of the cover with a nice font. Here I found that I didn't want the text alone and that I wanted it to have the rectangular outline that most CAUTION signs have.

I decided that the best way to do this was to add a rectangle, giving the rectangle a different color from the case, and keeping the CAUTION text the same color. This didn’t inherently work though. I went through a bit of trial and error to get to the finished outline.

Specifically, I didn't know if the best option was to pad or pocket the rectangle. Eventually, I found that if I placed it 1 mm under the cover and then padded it by 1 mm, it would be right on top of the case cover.

Trial and error:

Eventual CAUTION text outline:

The CAUTION text wasn’t any easier, because when I tried to pad it, for some reason, only the first letter would get padded, and other times it didn’t appear at all.

I didn't find any information on why this was happening, and I thought maybe I was doing something wrong. I also wondered if the errors were because I was using FreeCAD on Ubuntu and that it might have had compatibility problems.

Before padding:

Only C getting padded:

ShapeString disappearing:

After trying for a while, I found that these things only happened in some bodies, and in others they didn’t. Eventually, after trying in the base body, I got it working, but at the time I didn’t really know how I did it.

I placed it 1 mm under the top of the rectangle and padded it so the difference wasn’t visible. This is how it looked:

Next, I wanted to add two CAUTION icons on either side of the CAUTION text. I approached this by downloading an SVG file and importing it into FreeCAD as geometry. When I moved the sketch into one of the bodies and padded it, it seemed to cause a glitch in the case cover.

Case cover glitch:

I fixed this by creating a new body for both icons, and they padded correctly. I used the same padding technique as before, and this is what it ended up looking like:

All that was left at this point was adding the "AUTHORIZED USE ONLY" text at the bottom of the cover. After creating the ShapeString, I ran into the same problem as before, specifically the issue of only the first letter getting padded.

Before padding:

Only A getting padded:

I found that the solution was to use the extrude tool from the Part workbench instead of the pad tool from the Part Design workbench. This seemed to extrude the text correctly.

After rearranging the text and using the same padding (extruding) technique, I got the finished version for now:

I also did some rethinking about the color of the switch cover because the text wouldn’t be very distinguishable with a blue cover and black text. I thought maybe I could make this one have a yellow base cover (which matches CAUTION) and have the CAUTION text outline, CAUTION icons, and "AUTHORIZED USE ONLY" text in black.

2/5/2026 - Single Socket Cover 2 Design

Now that I understand what went wrong last time, this socket cover was much quicker to build. I created another sketch with the same dimensions I used in the last cover, padded it, applied the thickness tool, and made the light switch cutout.

Before long, I got to this point:

It didn’t take long to create the same text outline as before because I wanted the WARNING text on this cover to have the same rectangle outline that gets colored instead of the text. I used the same padding technique, and this way the text was directly on the top of the cover and not slightly padded above it.

Next, I added the WARNING text on top of the rectangle outline using the same padding technique. I centered the text, and this is what it looks like:

I liked how the CAUTION icons on the last cover looked, so I decided to add some electrical warning icons on this cover. I didn’t really like how any of the electrical SVG icons looked, and using the icons last time was very tedious because they weren’t fully constrained.

So, I decided to create my own. I created a base triangle with the same dimensions as the one in the last cover, and then, using the line tool in the sketcher, I created what I thought looked like an electrical icon.

It took a few tries to get something that resembled an electrical icon, but upon zooming out a bit, I found that the arrow and the left corner were too close together and the icon was barely distinguishable at that size:

I made the arrow a bit smaller and modified some distances until I got this:

Once I liked how the icon looked, I constrained every line, which was still extremely tedious. When this was done, I centered it, duplicated it, placed it on the right, and padded both icons to get this:

Lastly, I added the bottom text, HIGH VOLTAGE, centered it, and applied the same padding technique as before. This is how the finished cover looks:

The color for this cover will be red, except for the WARNING outline, the electrical icon, and the HIGH VOLTAGE text, which will all be in black.

I pushed all the changes to GitHub: https://github.com/adrirubio/light-switch-covers

2/24/2026 - Double Socket Cover Design

Now that the single socket cover was finished, I began work on the double socket cover. I started, as with the other two socket covers, by creating a sketch with the measurements I had recorded, padding it, and applying the thickness tool.

I had to take some extra measurements to make the sketch for the cutout belonging to the light switch and the power socket. But soon I had this:

Next, I added the same rectangular text outline as before for the POWER CONTROL text. Then, I added the POWER CONTROL ShapeString with a nice font and used the padding technique so all the letters got padded instead of only the first one.

I moved on to the power icons, which is where things started to get a bit more complicated. I tried some different design options to make the icon, but eventually I found the arc slot tool and the slot tool, which were perfect for making a power icon.

Although it took a few tries to get the correct sizes on both the slots to make it look good on the sides of the POWER CONTROL text, this is what I ended up with after lots of trial and error:

The icon appears in white because I used the extrude tool from the Part Workbench instead of the pad tool, because the pad tool only padded the arc slot. I don’t think the white outline will be a problem, though.

Once the icons were finished, I added the LINE ACTIVE text at the bottom by selecting the ShapeString, modifying the size, centering it, and using the padding technique to keep the text level with the rest of the case.

The color for this cover will be blue, except for the POWER CONTROL outline, the power icon, and the LINE ACTIVE text, which will all be black.

I pushed all the changes to GitHub: https://github.com/adrirubio/light-switch-covers

3/8/2026 - Getting the Covers Printed

I got in contact with Pegoku from Spain, who had printed some parts for me before. However, since he doesn’t have an AMS and was leaving on the 5th, we couldn’t make it work. Still, he provided some useful information about the 3D parts.

He mentioned that the rectangle and the text were missing a cut. By cutting the text out of the rectangle, the colors wouldn’t overlap. I applied these cuts to the three covers and updated the STEP and STL files.

After the cut:

After that, I sent a message in printing-legion to see who could print the covers. I quickly received a response from Trulle, who has an AMS and the correct colors, so I sent him the STL files right away.

For each cover, I sent two STL files: one for the base and another for the text, icons, etc. This makes it easier to assign the colors. After reviewing the colors and confirming everything looked good, Trulle started printing the first cover.

The three covers haven’t been printed yet, but they should be completed in the next few days and arrive in about a week.

I also created a README for the project and pushed all the changes to GitHub:
https://github.com/adrirubio/light-switch-covers