A Stronger Print-in-Place Clamp!

I've designed a couple of print-in-place clamps in the last few weeks, and the motivations have been different each time.  

The first one ( https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-print-32421236 ) was driven by a desire to make an interesting, complex hinged clamp that was entirely print in place.

The second one ( https://www.patreon.com/posts/bigger-and-clamp-33223325 ) had a much larger capacity, and was much simpler, but strength was limited by the orientation of the print.

Which brings us to this version, which had two goals:

1. Print in place, with no supports

2. Be stronger, which means print such that clamping force will be along the print plane, not perpendicular to it.

I'd originally thought that the strongest way to make this kind of clamp would be to print the body flat, and thread the bolt in afterwards.  But, that was with the assumption that the bolt would still be printed standing upright, which still makes the bolt itself fairly weak.  What if we printed the bolt lying down, instead?

By now you've seen the underside, and you can see how this works - the design is pretty simple!  The clamp body and threaded bolt are laid flat and sliced back so that both parts are on the bed.  The point of slicing is driven by making sure that the angle of the bolt body isn't badly overhung, because we don't want print issues messing up the moving parts.

Of course, the bolt can't fall out, because the opening isn't big enough for that, and there's still plenty of contact area between the bolt and the clamp body to do all the clamping.  Simple!

The evolution of these designs is interesting.  Each is stronger than the last, and each is simpler than the last.  Is each better?  Depends on your perspective!  I like them all, but the first one has a sculptural appeal that the other two lack, and I'm a sucker for all the engineering complexity involved in making all those moving parts print-in-place.  But, the last one is much stronger, and by that metric it's no contest.

What it really shows, though, is how solutions to problems evolve, and that arriving at a simple solution sometimes involves a meandering path :)

Creative Printer supporters will find this design under Flat Print Clamp in dropbox!