Chain Mail

thingiverse

The idea to 3d print chain mail came from a friend of mine who is into reenacting. I've experienced firsthand how long it takes to make metal chain mail by hand so I figured why not let a machine do it for me. The pattern of the links is simple, but the trick to designing it is to get the links in place with none of them touching. This just required a bunch of playing around with the spacing, and angles in Autodesk. Once I found the correct spacing for one link to be connected to four links, it was just a matter of adding a base to support them, and making a linear pattern. I had to do a few test prints to figure the optimal contact between the links and the base, and necessary contact with the print bed. If I had a dual extruder, I'd print the base in PVA so that I wouldn't have to spend the time cutting it away, and risk breaking the links. I'd really like to see somebody try this as a remix. Nozzel: .3mm material: 3D Solutech PLA Extruder temp: 200 bed temp: 65