October 3, 2016
Description
The windows at the facility where I work have a long boom attached to a crank that is used to open and close them. The boom attaches to a pivot fitting which is a wide metal tongue with two additional metal tabs. Most of the little metal tabs have gone missing.
I was asked to try to replace the little metal tabs, but they are too thin to 3D print effectively. Instead I developed a single large plastic part that fits over the wide metal tongue. I printed this in colorfabb nGen using 4 shells, so it consisted entirely of continuous shells and no infill. Extremely strong this way. Works fine, and works better than the original (it doesn't squeak).
If you work on an ex-Navy base from the WWII era, maybe you have windows like this, and have the same problem!
To me, the interesting thing about this project is that sometimes you can get a lot more from 3D printing by rethinking the entire solution, and not just trying for a 1:1 replacement of a missing part.
License:
Creative Commons - Attribution