• 11 Posts
  • 183 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Have you considered lasercutting or CNC milling as well? And what about lithophanes?

    3D printers are highly accessible to people, even people with no technical knowledge can just buy one, download models and have it print successfully. Selling 3D printed parts pretty much only works if you do design as well and not many people request something like that. I don’t think you can make a feasible business out of 3D printing alone.

    And there is mechanical design and aesthetic design, which both are completely different practices. I mean things like making a TV mount or a tube holder vs making a detailed Warhammer 40K model. You need different software and skills for both of them and it consumes a lot of time to do well.

    CNC milling and lasercutting is not as wide spread as 3D printing is so you could still end up finding people interested in objects made this way.















  • Hmm. I have a 12 channel peristaltic pump at the moment that is meant for watering plants. Meaning they have a lot of downtime so the tubes are compressed for quite some time at the same spot.

    Ignore the yellow rollers in the image below, that was experimental. The final version has 3 all metal rollers so the tube is always compressed at one point. Over the tubes are U shaped bracket is mounted for compression.

    It’s an entirely custom design from scratch and haven’t uploaded the model to a 3D printing website yet but plan on doing so.


  • Hmm… I use cheapass silicone tubing, 5mm ID 7mm OD and wear hasn’t been an issue. Perhaps you compress the tube too much. The tube should be held shut so that no liquid flows backwards but also not compressed so much that it wears the tubing out. Your pump should have a variable tensioner on it.

    Perhaps also you don’t have enough rollers. At least one roller needs to be in full contact with the tubing (compressing) so that there is no backflow.