11mo ago

First Functional Print

I was given an Ender 3 Pro last week and after a few bumps managed to successfully CAD, slice and print a booster seat for my phone. The caddy as it was would grab the volume down button on my phone, this little wedge solves the issue!

28 comments

That's great first issue to solve, I love the way it fits!
- Thanks, I ended up using a photo to get the profile into FreeCAD. It's not a friction fit but with the phone in place it'll never move.
  
  I highly recommend investing in some calipers, even a cheap <$10 set to start.
  
  Great work. This is how you really unlock the potential of your printer!
  
  Can you expand on this? You can import a photo into freeCAD?
Is that a stick I see in the background? 👀
Great job on your first designed part! That fitment looks pretty spot on. It's such a great feeling to be able to take something from "hmm I wish I had something that did this" all the way to "here's the thing!" It's an addictive process that causes me to invent far more issues to solve than is really necessary.
- Yup, 2010 B2500.
  I plan on cranking out replacement and upgraded parts for it now that I got the stringing under control.
- Is that really not common? I’m in the U.K., and <30% of cars might be auto, when I look at used car sales these days.
  
  In the US around 1% of sold cars have a manual transmission. I think it’s as rare to see a manual in the US as it is to see their dumbass huge fucking pickup trucks in Europe.
I love functional prints like this!
It's so satisfying to design and print stuff like this. Thanks for sharing.
- Glad you liked it!
Way to go! What material did you use? I ask because, where I am, many common printable materials would deform and melt in a car. As much as I've wanted to make things like this.
In summer you might just find a PLA part in a puddle on the floorboards. XD hahaha (Hyperbole, but you get me.)
- Printed a sun visor extension out of PLA in my early days of printing. Had to run out to my car at like noon to grab something and it was deformed and droopy and could be reshaped as easily as a piece of leather... I learned a lesson that day, lol.
  I printed a test piece (something much smaller) out of PETG to see if that would handle it. It would not, also got soft and sloppy after a couple of hours in the car.
- Just PLA, I've only had the printer for a week. It will make it though the winter but I'm not sure about the rest of this summer.

28 comments