My boys and I designed an entry for the worst cup ever contest held in April 2017.
We are borrowing a printer and thought we would try out a build. The entry is currently locked for judging, so the build get's it's own write up here.
The build software was suggesting around 14 hours to build the whole thing. We thought we should print a sample to make sure things fit properly around the phone.
The parts printed well enough. There were a few issues we wanted to address.
- We didn't like the autogenerated support because it was obstructing the straw and it left a lot to clean off the roof of the phone area. We designed our own support, more on that later.
- The rulers and text on the bottom was mostly closed over so we adjusted those features to be larger.
- The phone was too loose in it's spot, we tightened the area up so the gasket would have a chance to work.
- The pins on the gasket were very stringy so we simplified them by removing the pin slots.
Changes were complete and we were ready to really start.
The first full attempt did not fully stick to the build platform. You can see part of the claw hammer twisted toward the body of the cup.
I added some "helper disks" to the build, and it stuck well for the 9 hour 27 minute build.
Next, the real fun started with the removal of the homemade support. Some of it came off very easily. Other areas were very difficult.
The duckbill pliers and the wire cutters removed about 75% of the support. The chisels and picks took us to 95%. Then we discovered that homemade support is not as much fun as we hoped it would be. The support was created by designing an overbuilt 0.4mm zig-zag wall. This wall was patterned to cover the area needing support. A variety of Boolean operations left us with just enough support for the roof without blocking the straws. The problem we should have noticed was that the support was attached to some of the side walls. You can see the connected support in the failed build picture above. We didn't want to wait through another 10 hour build so we started to manually clean the support off the sides. The hack saw blade and files brought us to 100% clean, well at least we thought.
The gasket fit, optimism was high. We started to place the phone into the assembly and our optimism faded. The phone was tight from the start and was fully stuck when it was about 80% in place. It is amazing the cup is still in one piece, the force might have split the print layers. There was no way the phone would fit all the way in place. The sample build led us to an overly aggressive adjustment to the phone area. It probably took 10 minutes just to remove the phone. It is still amazing the printed part is still in one piece.
Five more minutes with the flat file and we were actually at the point where the phone could be placed and removed from the cup.
ConclusionsThe phone is in place. The phone even turns on. Watch for updates tomorrow on the use of the Danish Army Cup as a cup. The boys will have to finish their homework so we can try it out. We expect to test the gasket by filling it with rubbing alcohol. I hear that won't ruin the phone if the gasket leaks. If everything looks good we will dump the rubbing alcohol and move to water.
Thanks for reading.
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