This upside-down tripod creature is one of the feet on a well-used camping chair. Sometime ago, the plastic broke round one of the poles, meaning it could lift away without warning. I’ve been working on designing and printing a piece to repair it and today got to a point that was successful… enough.

The challenge is that the geometry is not straightforward. The pole is set in a circular foot but it isn’t central because two other poles also connect in. That means there is an intersection between the plastic of the foot and the plastic of the pole holder, two cylinders of different radiuses. There is also the complexity of the break and the small scale that work (and measuring is required on). I did my first version two or three weeks ago, which is when I realised there was more than one radius involved, and I’ve been working on ways to solve it. I wandered down a few dead ends in creating it, which can probably be largely blamed on turning to the coding side too early.

I think this version was a fairly good design but I then ran into some hitches when I was printing it. Even after I’d included a large, snap away base plate, it still got knocked loose from the bed when it was near the top. I am fairly sure this was partly down to my use of the fuzzy skin feature. That introduces jitters in the printing which produces a nicer texture than plain layer lines but I wonder if that movement was what kept knocking the piece loose?

I will have to experiment but, although the tangle on the top doesn’t pass the prettiness test, the piece still seemed functional and, although I’ve not tested it in use for long, appears to have worked. That’s probably enough time on this particular project – I’ll keep pushing for beautiful as well as functional on future ones.