I designed a general way to link parts specifically for chaining them together. This design was the best I could come up with so far for making it easy to snap parts together while still giving a firm connection that wouldn't come apart too easily. Not so simple to do since these are opposing needs. Easy to get together, hard to fall apart. Once I had something that worked - and tested with my daughter's name bracelet for a few days of wearing - I had another idea that happened to fall on March 14 - Pi Day. A Pi Bracelet which had a bunch of the digits of Pi chained together.
Model: on PinShape
Filament: Ultimachine PLA Gold 3mm
The links are a design that I created from scratch, as I mention above. It requires a quick description - so please read this if you expect to print and use this design so you don't break the connections trying to get it together:
Step 1: Put the male/tenon and female/mortise parts at a right angle to eachother, with the tenon below the mortise.
Step 2: Push the tenon into the bottom of the mortise at the base of the mortise. You should see a small slot where it is meant to be pushed in.
Step 3: Once the tenon is in the mortise, pull the parts to be straight with one-another - slowly opening the 90 degree angle to 180 degrees.
Step 4: Pull the parts away from eachother just slightly until they click - and flex the connection back and forth until it loosens a bit (which is basically clearing some of the residual plastic from printing).
After a while flexing each connection, the links should loosen and naturally flex like a normal bracelet would.
Here's the result - which looked pretty darn good printed in gold - and looks pretty good on your wrist. Traveling back from California, I wore it through security at the airport. The TSA inspector noticed it and said "Nice - I like your Pi" ;)
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| Printed at 100% (top) and 80% |
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