Basic default presets for TPU. I have the extruder set at 230°C and bed at 60°C. Printer is a Creality CR-M4. Not the fastest printer on the market but it is dependable.
This assembly is related to the lift in a vehicle. Originally the lift was designed to pick the chair up by the 19mm dia. aluminum rigidizer bar on the backrest, indicated by the red arrow here.
That meant the entire weight of the chair was hanging on the welds at the ends of the rigidizer tube. Driving on rough streets would increase the forces on those welds.
I designed some hooks for the bottom of the lift that mean the chair is supported by the much stronger axle tube instead.
The foam tape was an initial attempt to prevent abrasion of the anodizing on the axle tube but isn’t durable enough.
I traced one of the arms on the lift, scanned it and imported the image into SketchUp to trace to design the hooks. Note that like the advice I’ve given you, I modeled these parts as if 1mm is 1 meter.
The tube with the rings prevent the anodizing from being damaged and keeps the chair from shifting side to side while the van is in motion.
I don’t have an enclosure but the printer is in the corner of my office and doesn’t have a lot of air movement around it. I’ve thought about making an enclosure but since the print bed moves in the Y direction and is a little more than 18 inches square, the enclosure would have to be quite large. So far I haven’t had any issues where an enclosure would help. Knock on wood.
FWIW, everything I’ve 3D printed 3D Printed Stuff | Flickr was modeled entirely from scratch within SketchUp.
I also recently discovered that graph paper makes it easier to transfer real-world dimensions for more complex shapes than just rectangles.
And I’ve realized that sometimes it’s faster to make a paper prototype before 3D printing—because the first print without a prototype can be surprisingly off.
Nice work, I really like the blog dump for your 3D printing stuff. Its always nice to see others work as inspiration. Do you know any other resources on flicker etc which has similar?
