Week 3
I came up with two new designs approaches
Last updated
I came up with two new designs approaches
Last updated
As another alternative, I wanted to test out separate connector elements. For that, I created a hexagon shape with an opening. The opening had a width of 0.2mm. I created another connector element which had a thickness of 0.175mm and a half circle at the tip for easy attaching.
While printing I realized that I designed the piece too small. It had a dimension of 2 x2 cm. The printer was not able to keep up with such a small scale. The pieces and the connectors were not usable.
To scale it up I used the scaling function in the Prusa Slicer to scale it by 150%. This scaling also affected my structure's thickness, making the hexagon element too thick to print correctly. During printing, the nozzle moved the pieces around.
However, the pieces were still usable and had enough thickness and good detail level to put them together.
Comparison between the two prints:
As a different approach, I’ve tried to print a hexagonal structure with rings attached to the sides. These rings are alternated open and closed and they can be attached together. The ring opening was measured with 0.2mm.
Since my last print was a bit too flexible I decided to print this piece with a thickness of 0.7mm. I’ve printed two parts and I was pretty happy with the design.
For increased stability at the joints, I tried to move the slit of the rings closer to the body. I printed another two pieces to test the stability.
After testing the pieces, however, I noticed that the original design offered slightly more stability on the joints.
For the third iteration of this design, I tried to create an additional loop element to wrap around the closed rings to create a sturdy connection between to ring elements.
However, due to the current scale of the element the printer was not able to properly print the small loop connector in the appropriate detail.
For the following print, I scaled up the elements in Tinkercad.
These pieces improved the stability of the connection a lot.
