Recaps and Rejects! (Patreon)

Hey there, wonderful people!

Another month zooms by!  And in between the things that got posted, some other stuff veered off in other directions, evolved into other forms, or went crashing off into the undergrowth.  Join me on this salvage expedition...

Connecting Drawers: So Close, but Not Quite There

This was one that aaalmost made it.  It works, and it has some design features that I'm somewhat proud of (the interior guides and stops at the front and back worked really well).  The individual parts connect to each other, and that works neatly, but overall I think it's just not robust enough.  By that I mean that it would be very sensitive to printer or slicer issues, and you could have an immobile drawer forever stuck closed.

See, the drawer prints in place within its surrounding box, and the walls are very close together.  And more significantly, those walls have a lot of surface area.  On a design that could vibrate as it gets tall, that's a bit of a vulnerability.  What this really shows is that being determined to make something print-in-place is not always a good idea!

I'll probably come back to drawers at some point, and they'll almost certainly be a multi-piece print...

In the meantime, though, if you feel like experimenting with this model, I've uploaded it to 999 ZZZ Experiments / Connecting Drawers.  

Operator Box, The Early Years

The Operator Box turned out nicely, and I'm really happy with the locking ring, but that wasn't actually the initial plan.  Originally, I'd envisioned the thing as entirely one print-in-place assembly with a rotating latch - here's a test print:

It worked okay, but it wasn't at all secure - you could pull it open if you tried, and the latch would just be rotated back to the open position.  Eventually, the latching was replaced by the screw-locking approach, which not only worked much more securely but looks much cooler, too.

Before the Tessellator Tray - The Mesh Tray!

I think I mentioned in the writeup about the Tessellator Tray that it was preceded by a much more complicated approach that didn't work nearly as well.  Here it is! 

As you can imagine, that's a nightmare from a bed adhesion point of view and makes for a very fragile print.  If one of those little bits goes wrong, it's a disaster.  Also, the design was just a bit silly anyway, with all that mess underneath and spiky protrusions all around the outside of the mesh part.

The Tessellator Tray was a redesign to address all those issues, and it worked out far better.  You'll notice the leg concept stayed the same, though!

Just in case anyone wants to poke at the mesh tray, it's in 999 ZZZ Experiments / Mesh Tray, but really, you'd be better off printing the superior version instead :)

Oh, The Horror!

Believe it or not, this is/was/could be the basis for a skull.  With rotating gear driven eyes and a mechanically-linked jaw.  This was an experiment, and the eyes worked really well!  They're driven by a gear rack at the back, which was also supposed to drive the jaw, but that bit was somewhat less fruitful.  

It's silly, but I like it, and I may well pick it back up as Halloween gets closer!

Updates, Changes, Extensions!

This month saw a bunch of variations to models based on great suggestions!  When suggestions are either a) useful to lots of people or b) just plain cool, they're obviously more likely to get some traction, but anything fun or interesting has a good chance of moving up the to-do list.  

This is why I love design so much - it's kind of an extended conversation.  A "finished" design is a starting point that drives further ideas and concepts, and those in turn become other things.  So that's why I love being part of this community, why I love all the amazing feedback, and why I value your support so much :)

Right, let's see what the month brings!

xoxo

Sven.