As a chronic Linux user, I’ve been a fan of thinkpads for a while – so long, in fact, that my current thinkpad’s trackpoint has been worn to a smooth, useless nub.   Woe was I!

Luckily I have been brushing up on my FreeCAD/3D printing chops (well, ushering them into infancy), and this little part served as a good example project.

After taking some calipers to the original trackpoint, I was able to come up with a profile that I could perform a revolution on:

Performing a revolution on this yielded a rough 3d shape – applying a chamfer to the edge and adding some small spheres made for some grip and improved aesthetics:

To make it fit on the existing mount, I created a rectangular pocket by subtracting a cube from the rotated solid.  After firing up the 3d printer (and churning through 1 poor print) I had a working replacement:

It is working a lot better now!

 

If anyone else wants to print one of these, here’s a link to the .STL file.

Happy printing!