On 20 Mar 2012 at 17:25, Ethan Dicks wrote:
I was looking at the shape and especially the tines...
I think it
would be a great thing to make with a 3D printer, but long, thin parts
tend to be fragile, especially when "drawn" on a fused filament
deposition printer "against the grain".
Liquid polymer and sintered powder objects don't have as much of a
dimensional strength/weakness issue, but a tower made of stacked
slices of 0.5mm-wide filament isn't particularly strong. For the
application of an RL/RK unit select plug, once the plug is in place,
it's supported and isn't likely to see much lateral stress on the thin
bits, but handling and insertion could damage the plug.
One thought I had was a generic plug with slots that would admit long,
thin select cams that are printed flat then glued into place
(neutral-color ABS would great for this, for the translucent milky
color and the fact that acetone welds ABS well).
Don Lancaster says he's done injection molding with a hot glue gun:
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/resbn50.pdf
--Chuck