This is another make, where the original design of an expensive product was just shit. They save money and your expensive hardware is breaking down early.
This time it is a charging port plug for an e-bike. Not the charger itself, but the dust and spill water protection of the charging connector. Its original flimsy design makes it break and get lost. People don´t think about it and when the connector gets corroded the problem materialize.
I just post the image here, containing the original black part and my own design in white TPU. Another win for 3D printing to make products better than new.
The black ring was only broken at one point, but while I took measurements the other side broke off. That is how shitty the part was in the first place.
Just a small TPU related note. I had issues to print to print the pipe shape. It just got a melted tower of TPU. All the minimum layer time setting did was slowing the layer down to the minimum layer time, which caused even more heat to melt down.
The solution was to activate the “Raise Nozzle” feature in Cura. So the printer is printing the tubes wall, lifts up, drives away, returns, dips down again and prints the next layer. This gives the print enough time and a proper vertical pipe in this miniature size.
Nicely done my friend, especially figuring out how to get TPU to print the nipple. And now you can print a few of them, so you always have a spare. Put a couple on the key ring for the bike. As you well know, these kinds of prints are the ones I particularly like.
I just spent an afternoon with a nephew of my wife’s who is into 3d printing teaching him to think about his 3d printer as a tool to solve problems. This is an excellent example. Thanks for sharing and your hint about using the raise nozzle feature in Cura to increase the effective minimum layer time is excellent.
Yeah, I printed a couple since it is only a 10 minute print with the most time of waiting and next to no TPU used. However, I did the same with my fender mount fix of the same bike and the ABS part is still without a sign of wear. This TPU print is robust. I tried to rip the ring apart on one of the failed attempts and it hurt my fingers and was not even close to break at the same point, so the additional replacement parts will probably in the bike shed till the bike is gone.
