The Spice of Pi - Blog Doug 6

Looks like a nice result ... especially after that length of time.

I'm a bit late here but I would think you could print something close that you can slot some wet and dry sandpaper into to act as your reamer and fit it into a drill.

Plenty of lubrication and it should be a quick fix.

I always used methss as the lubricant for aluminium when tapping.

Not sure what you'd use for that plastic.

Mark

I tried a hone as beacon_dave suggested and I also tried a sandpaper flapper drum. They both work, but PLA is a pretty hard plastic and it is a lot of work to sand off significant amounts of material - it took about 40 minutes to get one cylinder close to where I wanted it. I ended up modifying the file and reprinting - also with mixed results.

it took about 40 minutes to get one cylinder close to where I wanted it

It was that bad .... It just shows there is little attention to sizing of those jars.

I ended up modifying the file and reprinting

That's a bit serious ... 2.7 days serious

Have you measured the jars to see the range of diameters.?

Obviously there are some other options if this was for production or you were making several of them.

My thought would be 5 or six 'bumps' on the inside which would allow easier fine tuning, or sloppier but taller holes.

Well done on the attention to detail, it is a key part of the whole design.

Mark

The jar diameters vary by about a millimeter, but PLA is pretty tough to sand down. About half the jars fit without much work, the other half were going to be a lot of work. I figured - let the printer do the work...

Sounds like you need a machine to automate that finishing process

What were the 'mixed results' from the reprint, as the first one looked as if it went really well ?

Did you experience any material warping with that size of print ? Looking at the printing video though you appeared to have pretty good adhesion to the printer bed, so perhaps not.

I was using an electric drill with the hone and sanding drum but you can't work it hard enough to generate heat as the PLA melts and messes up the operation.

Mixed results - the print file was corrupted and stopped printing (after 2 days) before it was complete - there should be a top layer to make the platter stronger.

I thought the printer CPU had just crashed so I reprinted the file, but it failed at exactly the same point 2 days later.

Fortunately the partial platter looks fine and seems strong enough as is, because I ran out of plastic.

PLA is very stable dimensionally - I haven't had any issues with warping.

Hi Douglas

If you have a wood bit large enough, it might work better than trying to sand the PLA.

DAB

Hi Douglas

If you have a wood bit large enough, it might work better than trying to sand the PLA.

DAB