1/16 Scale FrankenDiff

[ddmckee54]

Well, the first attempt was an outstanding failure, which was not unexpected. It produced a rounded, sorta U-shaped object - whose legs were within a millimeter of being equal. However, I was TRYING to produce a squared off U-bolt with corners of a much tighter radius.

It was a bad die design on my part. I was afraid my movable die would allow the 2mm rod to move around.... It took the easy way out and moved. I didn't have nearly enough perimeter walls or infill either, 3 top layers, 3 bottom layers, 3 perimeter walls, and 30% infill didn't cut the mustard.

I'll double all of those on the next test, I'll also change the design of the top die. I want to restrict the rod so that it can't flex away from the top die like it did on the first test. According to the slicer, doing that will increase the print time for the dies by about 50%. Which will make it about 1-1/2 hours to print, and that's still not bad at all.

I'm only using PLA for the dies. If it doesn't look like that can take the stress, I can easily see modifications to the dies to allow the high-stress parts to be made of steel. (Or at least put steel in the high stress areas.)
Don