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| RandyT:
--- Quote from: Ond on August 21, 2024, 04:52:07 am ---When you're looking at putting any parts that come out of a 3D printer under stress this is good advice. Layer orientation does make a difference. In truth, my hex nut holder design was rushed and a bit lazy. I have beefed up the fitting Scott. Apart from trying to think in terms of the limitations of a filament printer, I'm also trying to take advantage of printing face down on a smooth plate. Smooth flat surfaces mean less effort and better results in the final product finish. In this case making fittings thicker and stronger should be fine. Take a look at the design image below. You can see the original hex nut support on the left is pathetically thin. Not much torque on the nut needed to break that! --- End quote --- As I am sure you know, there are many things which affect strength and suitability of a printed part. While orientation can play a role in layer adhesion, it's probably not the largest factor. Infill, wall thickness and just plain using the correct polymer to achieve the "toughness" required, all come into play. While changing orientation can provide a certain amount of benefit, it can also increase material usage, time for printing and post processing, as well as overall part aesthetics. All of these need to be weighed against each other to find the correct approach. Ultimately, much can be achieved with regard to strength simply through appropriate part design, regardless of the other factors, and this is usually the most effective, as stresses are rarely unidirectional. I.e. a weak part for a given material will be weak regardless of the manner in which it is produced. I am also a proponent of threaded inserts for parts which will be assembled and disassembled repeatedly, even though there have been some tests which show that directly threading into the polymers with fasteners is nearly as strong (and much simpler/ less-costly), provided the part is designed properly, and the fastener is correct for the job and is not over-tightened. But again, "horses for courses", as they may not always be the proper choice. If you do use heat set inserts, the best way to use them is to size the holes such that a bit of the molten material is extruded upward when the insert is set slightly below the surface, and a cool, flat object is used to flatten that material to be flush to the surface of the part, thus encapsulating it within. This is most important where "pull-out" is of concern, but needs to be done well when parts are expected to be tightly mated to those surfaces, otherwise just the action of tightening the fastener could advance the insert from it's position and weaken the hold. In that case, you might want to leave them slightly proud with the heated tool, and then use a cool, flat surface to press them flush. This really helps to make them as perfect as possible. BTW, your parts look great. Happy to see that printer you chose is working out well for you :) |
| Ond:
I knew about threaded inserts for wood but not heat set ones for plastic. There you go, I'm always learning. There will be a project in which I use them for sure :cheers: @ Randy & Scott. I'm nearing completion of the Kodi media server so here's a few pics before final assembly. The 3D printed parts have all been smoothed, primed and painted. They look less like typical filament printed parts now. They're a bit slicker, more solid in color, and smoother. I changed the design of the power button a little so that when pressed, the Kodi logo will glow from a backlight LED along with the cutouts either side of the button. Better than just a solid plastic button IMO. Next pics will be of the completed project. A few final things to do on this are cutting out the acrylic inserts which are fitted to the inside surface of the front panel for the red glow effect, wiring a fuse into the AC supply, final paint touch-up and assembly. Since this thread will cover multiple projects I have coming up, I think I'll mark the start and end of each with a banner or something so it's easier to tell one project from another. I'm working on three different speaker pair builds (along with other projects) at the moment. All are based on professionally designed high-end cabinets, crossovers and drivers. They are not my designs BTW. I'm undecided on what to post of these. This isn't a DIY sound equipment forum, but I know there's at least a few members here that are into that. Hmm, :dunno ;D |
| bobbyb13:
Very fun to stumble onto some Ond content! Sure I'm late to this, but work is in the way of everything right now. The elements to make things more than just utilitarian are the details I love the most. Elegant embellishments on the form follows function paradigm are always so cool. I at least will look forward to seeing some speaker unit production! |
| Ond:
--- Quote from: bobbyb13 on October 05, 2024, 01:13:48 pm ---Very fun to stumble onto some Ond content! Sure I'm late to this, but work is in the way of everything right now. The elements to make things more than just utilitarian are the details I love the most. Elegant embellishments on the form follows function paradigm are always so cool. I at least will look forward to seeing some speaker unit production! --- End quote --- hey bobby, nice to see you are still at some projects and posting here :). I have multiple projects all going at once right now, I thought since one of them is finished I'll update. I've finished both Kodi and Volumio units. Kodi for all things video and Volumio for all digital audio. They turned out alright I think. Some minor aesthetic changes along the way: The Kodi box with improved (IMO) front panel. The Volumio box with it's own green theme. The back panel showing connections. side by side... Just simple lighting on the Volumio unit. Not that they will ever be stacked like this, but hey, just to see what they look like I plugged some fancy headphones into the DAC headphone jack. Summary: 3D printing came in very useful for this project. It allowed me to make small functional and aesthetic changes and re-print parts as needed. At some point I may update the Raspberry Pi 4 in the Volumio box to a Pi 5, the Kodi box already has a Pi 5 in it. The main reason is that the Pi 5 has better on/off controls available than the Pi 4. I may tweak LED lighting slightly in the Kodi unit to be dimmer and more even, but that can wait while I focus on other projects. Next up loud speaker building! I'm building three pairs of different speaker designs simultaneously. |
| Ond:
Loud Speaker Design & Build So why bother building my own speakers? The main reasons are that I can build great sounding speakers for way less than the cost of equivalent "off the shelf" models. Well designed speakers with quality components can get really pricey, crazy pricey in fact! The other thing is just the satisfaction of building something of quality myself. I'm building three different loud speaker designs. The renders are for reference. The big complicated angular ones on the right are for music. The less complex tall ones in the middle are for home cinema and the small ones are also for music. All of them are based on original pro-designs (not mine) including cabinets, crossovers and drivers, matched to a specific design and performance. The only changes I've made are to two of the cabinet shapes, preserving the box internal volumes. The cutaway view below is of the Sasandu design from SB Acoustics. Whilst there are cabinet kits you can buy for these, they are very expensive. I took the open source plans for the cabinets and created CNC cutting files in Fusion. More on that later. They are a challenging design to say the least but feature design elements and drivers featured in high-end speakers. Here is a concept render of the 'Artisan' based design finished in American Walnut veneer and gloss black. I purchased plans for these quite a few years ago from a sound engineer in Sydney. They have relatively simple crossovers which I build myself. Most of the MDF panel work is cut on my own saw table. I've built quite a few of these in the past, some of which remained in a previous home as part of the sale agreement. These days, I like to design PCBs in KiCad from the crossover schematics and get the PCB boards made. The crossover below is from the Artisan design. Of the three, it is the most simple. Just a two way x-over with minimal parts. Here is the finished crossover ready to go. The small 'Carrera' enclosures are the furthest along at the moment. I've taken the Carrera design specs by Paul Carmody and come up with boxes done completely out of 32mm 1.25 inch thick MDF. As I don't have a CNC I have to come up with ways to accurately cut speaker holes, rebates etc. I've put my 3D printer to good use for this and printed up cutting templates to use with a flush trim router bit. The system works pretty well and keeps the router work accurate. I just have to be careful to keep the bit bearing spinning nicely or it can overheat the plastic template and then bad things happen! ;D |
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