Small 3D Metal Printed Part

[Julie AnnParticipant @julieann]

The tension spring on the reversing levers on my traction engines goes from an eyelet on the tongue to the reversing lever, rather than the more common extended pin on the operating lever to the reversing lever.

The use of an eyelet is prototypical Burrell according to Gilbert, so I wanted to replicate same. Designing an eyelet in 3D CAD was simple. But I could see making them being rather fiddly. So I decided to get them 3D printed in stainless steel. If nothing else this would be in the nature of an experiment to see how a fairly small part would turn out. The answer was surprisingly well:

I went with PCBWay as craftcloud3d use external printing companies and the prices are now astronomic. I only needed two eyelets but bought ten. Total cost was $60 of which half was shipping. I was charged £45 on my credit card which is not far off the normal exchange rate. Delivery was eight days.

The shank is a few thou undersize which means I will have to rethink my means of attaching the eyelets to the tongue. I was going to use a 10BA thread, but don’t really want to buy 11BA taps and dies as I can’t see myself ever using them again. Since I have spare eyelets I can afford to experiment with a few ideas.

Julie

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