Category: 3D Printing

I made a thing – a printable TATE (vertical) mode grip for the Nintendo Switch 2

It’s printed in a red color because that makes it go faster

Back when the Nintendo Switch came out with its hybrid approach to video game consoles, folks quickly realized that its portable nature and detachable controllers made it a good candidate for playing games in TATE mode.1 That is to say where the monitor or screen is turned 90º to be more tall than wide.

Why would you want to do this? Well, many games – especially arcade games – were designed with the screen in this orientation! Galaga, 1942 and even more modern games like Ikaruga and Downwell. The vertical orientation is great for shooters or other games where the playing field is taller. 2

In 2019 Jeremy Parish, Mike Choi, and Fangamer created and released the Flip Grip for the Nintendo Switch. It was a nice bit of kit that held the screen or tablet part of the Switch and had rails for the Joy-Con controllers to slide into. I liked the idea so much I backed the original Kickstarter project!

Fast forward to 2025 and the Switch 2 was released. It keeps the same hybrid approach, but this time instead of a rail mechanism uses magnets to attach the Joy-cons. Since the Switch 2 is backwards compatible, you can play all your original Switch games on it. But, as you can imagine, there’s no Flip Grip for the Switch 2.

I saw there were a couple of attempts on the internet to design a vertical, or TATE mode, grip for the Switch 2. Many of them look nice, a few questionable, and like all middle-aged millennial tinkers, I thought, “Why don’t I try to make one!?”. So I did. You can download it over on MakerWorld.

I made a few iterations on this project as you can see in the image above. I first worked on getting the dimensions correct for the main Switch 2 body, then worked on a system for the magnetically attached Joy-Con 2s. My first few iterations were a little off in almost every dimension.

I first modeled the grip to use some small round magnets I had laying around. They were difficult to work with. Hard to grasp and you needed four for each Joy-Con. When you went to glue them into the “rail” they liked to escape and stick to one another. Not to mention they were far too weak to hold the controller in place. Even after a few revisions where I printed the thin inserts to cover the magnets at .40mm thick. I ended up going with much stronger rectangular magnets from K&J Magnetics. They were just the right size, matching the dimensions of the metal buttons on the Joy-cons.

After a few revisions I started to print just the rail part as that was the most tricky. This sped up the process quite a bit. Not sure why I kept printing the main body over and over again without changes. Learning, I suppose.

I wanted to have a thin bit of plastic covering the magnets to give it a nice finish and make sure there was little room for the controller to wiggle. Even with the stronger magnets I had to add a little “wing” behind the controller to help keep it in place.

I eventually got to the final product with cutouts for the buttons on the left side, and the speaker and vent on the right. I even designed a little felt insert to keep the plastic from rubbing.

There’s probably more I can do like make the tolerances tighter or add more ergonomic grips. Maybe someday.

This was also a chance to teach myself (thanks YouTube and wikis!) how to use FreeCAD, an open-source CAD program. It wasn’t the most intuitive bit of software I’ve used, but I learned about how to set constraints, bevels, and the metric system. Ok, that last one was a joke. 🙂

Again, the whole thing can be downloaded over on Makerworld for free. It’s licensed under a Creative Commons license and I even included the source FreeCAD files if you want to see how poorly I used the software. I mean, if you want to make any modifications.

A short story about a drawer slider bracket, 3D printing, and the internet

Among my numerous hobbies is 3-D printing. My wife bought me my first “put-it-together-yourself” kit back in 2016. Since then I’ve upgraded to a Bambu Lab X1, which is as close to a home appliance as 3D printing has ever been. It literally has never failed me short of my own errors.

Recently, my mom called me up to tell me that multiple drawers in her kitchen cabinets were broken. The rails the drawer slides along had fallen down, and the drawers were no longer horizontally level. Her husband took one apart and found that the bracket that holds the rail to the back of the cabinet had broken.

She looked online to see if she could find a replacement part, but was unsuccessful. Knowing I have a 3D printer, she asked if I could print a replacement. Always eager for a fun challenge (and because I’m a good son), I said sure.

Before I started measuring and modeling the part, I took a look online myself to see if I could find replacement parts. Sure enough, there were other people were having the same difficulty sourcing a replacement part.

So I started measuring and preparing a model.

A few minutes into doing this I thought, “Wait a second, I wonder if someone else has come up with the same solution and already made a model?”. Guess what? Someone had!

In 2017 bmonnin created and uploaded their model for others to use. They had the same problem my mom had!

“I had several brackets that support the drawer slider on my kitchen cabinet drawers break. After looking around at several different big boxes and online I couldn’t find the same bracket anywhere.

So I got to printing.

A few minutes later, a solid replacement for the part was born.

I printed it in red because red makes it go faster

There is a slight, almost imperceptible, difference between the original and the model. The lip that holds the rail in place is on both the top and bottom in the original. Assumedly so the manufacturer could print one mold and flip it for either side of the drawer. bmonnin’s model only has the lip on one side. They provided a mirrored version though, so all is well!

Since my mom needed more than one, I set up the X1 to print enough for all her drawers.

A few hours later, and less than half a spool of filament, I was done.

The next time I saw my mom, I handed a box of brackets off to her and Ken. A few days later she shared these photos.

Huzzah! A resounding success. I hope they last as long as the old ones (26 years, since the house was built).

🙂

This is one of those mundane, but also incredibly interconnected, stories where technology – combined with the social aspects of being able to share information easily and freely – come together to create a tangible solution to a problem. A small problem in this instance, but I think an example of how even larger problems can be solved when we think and work together.