I was doing some bike maintenance today and wanted to disassemble my rear hub. It turned out that I needed a 12mm Allen bit for that, which I don’t have. So I 3D printed one! And it worked! Torques safely to 5Nm and I only needed 4Nm for the job. Haven’t tested higher torques.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Nice! This got me thinking, is there a telescoping Allen key or socket wrench size determination tool? You slide down the increments until you achieve fit and this tells you what size wrench to fit? I’m guessing the tolerances would be way too tight for 3d printing. I’d keep a tool like this in my garage, I always run and get three socket wrenches from the basement to use in garage and half the time I still misjudge the size.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        A 3d printed caliper is not a bad idea, but the shape isn’t always great for working on cars and bikes. A vertical telescope mimics the approach of the tool. Its something trivial enough I would probably never buy it, but might print it.

    • T4UTV1S@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think the tolerances would be too bad. A lot of prints that have tight tolerances have a test piece that you print and test against a known object, which let’s you adjust your print to get tighter tolerances. Once you correct for the expansion of the plastic, getting the right tolerances should be totally doable.