potted motor grease wick clip3.skp (155.7 KB)
Some metal clips that retain a grease wick have deformed and broken. Replacements aren’t available so I’m trying to3D print some.
My Sketchup drawing is pretty close but I find the retaining area for the grease wick spring is a little small.
The clip has to fit into a 1/2" diameter tube so I don’t think I have the option of trying to thin the walls.
Is there an easy way to modify this or should I go back to square one and redraw it from scratch?
I can see that might work. Can I ask how you were able to position the cutter in the right place?
I like this idea because I might have to sneak up on the final size.
I set out some intersecting guidelines to locate the center. You could make multiple copies of the group so you can make different iterations using different size cylinders.
I like the cutter idea and I like having multiple copies so I can try different size cutters but I don’t see how intersecting guidelines can find the center of part of a circle.
The guide line parallel to the green axis is a 1/4 over from the axis (because everything has to fit in a 1/2 tube).
I think you established guide line parallel to the red axis by. going to the first segment line of the open tube
I placed a guide parallel to the red axis at the end of the curve and another parallel to the green axis at the center of the curve. In your model the edges are all exploded. I used a paid extension to weld some of the edge segments into an arc to confirm the center of the object. There’s a guide point at the center which corresponds with the intersection of the guidelines.
A trick you can use is the magenta inference from the midpoint of any two segments of a curve.
Here it is using 2017, just to confirm that it did work that far back.
That looks like an interesting technique. Am I right though in thinking that if the group has had its edges Softened/Smoothed it won’t work?
No. You can still infer off the midpoints of the edges.
No, works just fine.
OK, I’m able to use this technique to find center. Neat!
When I draw the magenta line from the midpoint, the line extends right across the object and doesn’t stop where I would expect it to.
Oh, I just noticed that you seem to do it in a two step procedure.
You can do it in one go, but it tends to snap to other things, by doing the two steps you get a line to start with that you can simply follow, I did that more to show what is going on.
Thanks, that was informative
Note too that I am doing that from outside the context of the group so the edges don’t stick and can be easily deleted. Can be done within the group too.
It’s too bad I can’t credit two people with providing a solution. Dave’s idea to use a cutter to change the dimension of the tube worked well. And Box’s lesson on inferring lines from the mid points of segments was great.
Dave’s is the correct answer to the thread.
Another unexpected benefit to Dave’s cutter technique is that the recess left by the cutter goes beyond 180 degrees. That means the spring can’t slide out sideways, but because of the opening, springiness is retained allowing for easier manipulation of the clip into its housing.
