tradeschooltranny

[tradeschooltranny]

I made clamps to hold up my nameplate at work 😀 with magnets

I 💖 clear filament

[tradeschooltranny]

I have been working at a trade show this week to set up. My coworker from the Illinois office had a piece (made from delrin, which is a superior plastic) in this shape. He was using it with a screw to bolt onto the side of the machine and to align the barfeeder. We usually avoid lasers for this purpose and instead we string the machine and use something (normally i'm using a magnet with a pointer on it) on a nearby piece of steel to note how centered the machine is now, and act accordingly.

I liked this design because it allows you to screw the piece on tightly and use it like a handle to spin the steel piece. Therefore, I stole his design, and I made myself a rounded thumbscrew piece to attach to the screw.

[tradeschooltranny]

After removing supports the pin is trapped 🙂 so. Success, ultimately. If it was in a part we'd have a hinge. I haven't tried this in my printer yet so I just wanted to design something to prove it out.

Print-in-Place Design Test

To test Print-in-Place (ie, part prints itself into a corner in a way that requires no further assembly), I drew this pin and shaft. I think this should also be a good test of organic supports.

[tradeschooltranny]

Print-in-Place Design Test

To test Print-in-Place (ie, part prints itself into a corner in a way that requires no further assembly), I drew this pin and shaft. I think this should also be a good test of organic supports.

[tradeschooltranny]

The bastards at Dremel didn't see fit to give me a 402 bit so i printed one i drew in solidworks for 20 cents. fuck you dremel.

[tradeschooltranny]

Prusa 2.6 Organic supports

As of the alpha PrusaSlicer build, you can now opt for 'organic' style supports on the part. Material usage is reduced by 30% and supports remove cleanly with significantly less support related post processing

Compared to traditional "roller coaster' style supports. Organic on left.

Printing process on this sanding tool with a steep angle.

[tradeschooltranny]

Dial indicator case

To start, I first printed Gridfinity items when I got my 3D printer but I didn't know what to make of it. Ultimately, I wanted to make a dial indicator and accessory case that would fit some of my unusual indicator accessories. I printed a case that works for holding Gridfinity items, and some seemingly fitting stuff to go with, but it didn't fit together the way i wanted because the piece holding the dial indicator was too big.

The ill fitting piece not pictured.

I wanted to redesign the indicator piece but I was ultimately feeling limited by Gridfinity. I modeled a new indicator holder in Solidworks and printed a draft to check the fit. The indicator fit, but I began to wonder if there would ever be a way to keep the shadowboxed concept i liked and not waste a ton of material.

In this case, I used 5% infill with lightning pattern (lowest amount of filament usage possible) and it still estimated 51 grams for the final print, which is a lot.

My new plan is to mimick the design of a typical indicator case but make the supports a lot thicker and more robust. Original case has .080 plastic walls, and my new design has .100 walls, with two .250 thickness supports.

Unfinished Solidworks sketch of the new design. Sensitive indicator tip will be held in a floating position.