It took me 10 prototypes but I have finally reached a state I consider functional. The aim was to create a 3d printable TOH that stays largely within the dimensions of the Inari Blue TOH, but adds a metal ring on the inside to make it compatible with magnetic mounting accessories (for “Magsafe”) on the market.
If the model helps you as basis for your own TOH project with maybe a more sophisticated application, feel free to have a look.
Nice. The stand seems to be designed for iphone, so the mount should be compatible with basically everything. I also had kind of the same idea, printing a TOH that integrates the magnet from a fiio magclip.
Printed this and ive been really liking it, however I think the magnet ring could be a bit stronger. Should probably look on aliexpress for magnet rings
Interesting. To me it feels like a good strength for my use cases but I have no idea what people expect from a magsafe connection.
The cavity fits metal rings up to 0.7 mm in thickness. If you can find one as wide but with 0.7 mm, it should increase the strength of connectcion.
Alternatively, maybe you find a magsafe ring with stronger magnets.
You could also reduce the wall thickness under the metal ring from 0.6 to 0.5 or 0.4 mm. That should make the connection stronger, but that might be too thin for ASA to not sag in, get stress marks or crack. An option would be something like Prusa’s PC Blend, that one should be just fine with 0.4 mm.
The nuclear option would be to put the cavity on the outside and glue the metal ring into place. Then the connection will be much stronger but you’ll have rely on the glue to hold the exposed ring.
So i managed to drop my phone. My TOH did survive it but got some cracks along layer lines. Still held up but I decided to print a new one in yellow.
Printing ASA in a hot print chamber could make layer adhesion a lot stronger. I guess to the point where nothing had cracked. Maybe I give PP or PC Blend a try those would likely not crack either but are more challenging to print.
I could have sanded it down a bit more in the upper left corner, but overall it is close to the dimensions of the Inari Blue TOH, which itself has a 0.4 mm thicker backside than orange TOH (and I assume the white and black one).
There are two versions uploaded, one with extra tolerances for sanding and one without those tolerances within “Inari Blue” dimensions.
It holds by its side clips alone pretty well. Together with the optional inside clips (if installed) it feels rock solid. Creep over time might loosen it a bit but in the 2 weeks or so of the first print, I did not see any meaningful loss in grip. The grip does rely on the printer calibration. By changing extrusion factor and/or the width dimensions (increase/decrease slightly, +/- 50-200 µm) one can actually fine tune the strength of the grip if it feels to strong or too lose.
The one main difference is the camera bump, extending it up to slightly above camera lense level was deliberate, to better protect those lenses. This TOH is indended to be used without a protective cover. Even though, one could do so by simply leaving out the camera bump.
The TOH requires very little material, just some print bed real estate, so it shouldn’t be too expensive even from external services. The only thing to consider is that it is a bit hard or more expensive to iterate if you find that you’d need it a bit more or less tight.
Test printed a PP (polypropylene) TOH. It is rather difficult to print transparent without any layer lines. That’s as good as I got it. I have to say that I prefer the feeling of ASA and also you can make ASA look pretty nice, without looking “3d-printed”.
But I still wanted to see if it is possible and it is indeed.
Have you thought trying those automotive headlight polishing kits? Don’t know if you could use one straight away, or if you need to do some water sanding first. Other option would be adding very thing layer of epoxy resin or clear lacquer?
Sanding the surface might help but maybe polishing could be needed too. I have not tried how well PP takes to sanding, it is pretty tough stuff. I think the lines come mostly from the exterior but partially also from inside.
Resin could help too but I don’t like the idea of adding some funky additional polymers.
I guess I don’t care enough about transparent to botger
It glows a bit but not excessively. One could print the infill also in star shape but not centered around the flashlight. Custom routing is possible but rather complicated.
The design is amazing! I printed it in PETG and it fits like a glove! For testing, I put in a metal ring but that’s not really strong enough for most magnetic attachments, so I odererd a thin magnetic ring which will probably result in a strong enough attachment.
Yes, the star infill is probably the best looking for transparent materials. It also aligns with the ring as both are centered.
I guess I must have more moderate grip criteria for the magnet mount. But JP already confirmed that with a magnetic ring, the grip is much stronger (as one would expect).
I did have the vertical element in an early version too but removed it when I optimised the cavity for the metal ring that comes that fairly popular holding ring from Cloudvalley.
Different wrings have slightly different dimensions so I wanted to design it for a specific one that others can also get. But I added a version on printables with the vertical cavity that I had originally, not sure if it fits with what you have though.
