3D Printed Tape Measure, 4ft

thingiverse

**Sorry for the video quality. I didn't have good equipment back in 2014. ... Still don't...** This is a fully 3D printed, in situ, tape measure that I designed a bunch of years ago. It contains ~4ft of tape (labeled with whole inches and graduations), 114 parts, a belt clip, fold out crank with detent, and lock for the tape. I printed it on a polyjet printer which had a wax-like support material. It took about 2.5hrs to clean out all the support and work free all the pieces. I think I also had to clean it a second time after more support worked out of all the hinge joints. This design can only be printed on a polyjet or SLS Nylon printer. The walls may actually be too thin for SLS Nylon so maybe printing at 1.5x scale or higher will be better. This would obviously throw off the length of the tape but at least it would print successfully. The SLS files units are in inches. Use Google or math to convert to mm. I included a 1ft and 2ft section of tape for those experimenting with printing this. If you can print these pieces successfully then you should be able to print the whole tape measure. When cleaning out the tape measure be sure to take your time. That's the key. Pull out small lengths of the tape and clean what you can. Then repeat. Remember: you have to pull out the tape by hand (maybe with a little help from the crank). The crank is really only used to reel the tape back in. Running the crank in reverse will jam up the tape inside the body. More information can be found here: http://thecornercase.blogspot.com/2014/03/3d-printed-tape-measure.html Not amazing, self conscious, darth vader video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1z5zAEpUIw