Overcomplications! :)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Making things complicated is great fun, but it isn't always easy...

It's that time again - let's look at things that didn't turn out quite as planned this month!  

First up, that thing pictured above!  It's a phone stand, believe it or not, and an intentionally convoluted one.  All those moving parts are intended to drive a simple angle adjustment.  Two sets of planetary gears, sides that fold together, captured bolts and pins for alignment and fixing position - this thing is full of all the best unnecessary parts!

Would it work?  Maybe?  What I can say is that it is a nightmare to print!  See, this model actually got even more involved after the render above was made, with notches and increased thickness to reduce curling and improve adhesion, but there are just so many parts that are too prone to failure.  I have a few different options for bed adhesion over the printers I use, and not one of them managed to get more than a few hours into the print before something detached.

I still like the idea, so maybe it'll end up redesigned in some way, but it needs to be redesigned as a simpler type of overcomplication :)

But let's pretend that never happened, and move on to this work-in-progress caddy component!

Now, this one actually mostly works!  That's a print-in-place lid with cogs that control a latch, much like the Machine Canister.  However, just to be different I decided to use three cogs.  That turned out to be a problem.

You see, the nature of print-in-place tolerances means there's a little bit of movement in axes other than the rotational one, and that adds friction.  The problem is exacerbated with small radius rotating parts like these ones, too, where the height of the thing is a significant portion of the radius.  Rather than just turning, forces tend to tilt the cogs.  The upshot is that while this thing works okay, it's not reliable, and it's not overly satisfying.

The good thing is that the hinge and lid design works perfectly!  So, I just need to redesign that latching part, probably with only two cogs, and much larger ones at that.   In fact, I'll go do that right now! :)

Happy Almost-October, everyone!

xoxo

Sven.