How would one go about getting a small part for their son’s toy 3D printed?
Let’s assume that the person asking has absolutely no clue about how a 3D printer works and quite frankly thinks it must have something to do with the dark arts!
My son broke his favourite toy helicopter and my super glue efforts on the small plastic part have failed. Is there anyone I could speak to about getting this small part reproduced at all? Would make one little chap rather happy…my son too.
That’s awesome. Thank you. I’ll remove the part and bring it down later this week. Probably Thursday daytime. I’ll find somewhere safe to leave it for you. However, if you drop us a line when you’re next about I’d love to see how you do it.
So it’s basically a long shaft with a disc halfway down. The shaft has holes bored into them. One at 2.5mm diameter and 10mm long. The other is about 1.5-2mm wide and unknown how long as I can’t get the metal spindle out yet. Will have to take a Stanley to it to get it out and measure how long it embeds into the shaft.
In the pic, the bottom disc is not attached. It slides up and down with the spring and acts as a stopper, so only the main shaft with disc halfway up would be needed. Is this something the printer could create?
Also, if it’s not too cheeky, could I get a spare printed out too in case he gets all heavy handed and somehow snaps the rotors off again?! Would obviously whack some money in the honesty box or similar if there is one for materials for the printer?
I’m not even gonna pretend to know how you’d do that, but thanks!
Do you need the original now, or is the sketch enough to print from?
Also, if you need any woodworking done, I can return the favour (not that I’m an expert or anything, but more than happy to repay the favour using my limited skills)
That will take minutes to replicate from your drawing. Looks like the shaft attached to the rotor is threaded, if it’s a standard pitch we can thread the print.
It will be easy to do and print, for longevity, a lathe turned aluminium part would be better but our space lathe is not ready yet.
Let’s try a 3D print first and go from there…
I have some PLA we can use for the test…
I can have the part ready and printed for Friday night?
I will be doing a laser induction then…
Wow. That escalated quickly from reproducing a little bit of plastic to threaded printing and aluminium replacements! Not that I’m complaining.
The rod is indeed threaded. It’s a 3mm flat head screw. I didn’t realise you could print threads, hence me asking for it to be 2.5mm. Was hoping to screw it in and create the threads as it goes in.
What time on Friday? I’m working until 7pm but will be heading home on a number 3, so passing the space around 8pm. If later, will head home and drive down. Seriously chuffed you can do that for us. Thank you so much.
