/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1333101
>I'd expect it to be really fragile, especially in a brittle plastic like PLA
PLA isn't that brittle unless you're exposing it to a ton of moisture over a really long time. The decent rolls of PLA I'm using are about as durable as plain polystyrene.

I was originally attempting to cast the majority of the parts and I did produce the first 10 of these that way. But once you add pigments to Urethane resins that are above 50A durometer their rated impact resistance (2.2 izod) starts to fall below that of PLA (1.7 izod).

The parts are way bulkier than they need to be in any areas where loads are expected. I ran mine through 2,000 shots before the parts started to flex in spots, so those are the areas I made thicker.

The PLA isn't tasked with providing structure in very many places anyways. There's 10-32 threaded rod taking up the vast majority of the tensile load. I also have a length of it running from the stock to the bottom of the grip.

Nothing earth-shattering to add. I remove the sideplate from my Monoprice Select Minis as soon as I get them so I can reroute the heated bed wiring. I have a few of these setup in a closet and they're close enough together that using the stock filament holder is annoying.

So I drilled a hole in the sideplate I don't use, bend the end of it, bolted it to the Z-axis tower, and mounted a conveyor roller through the drilled hole using a shaft collar.

Filament is was easier to swap, the extruder doesn't have to pull quite so hard to advance the spool, and I only had to spend $9 per printer.