DF95 DF65 Ballast bulb support

thingiverse

This is a ballast bulb holder that will help support your boat on the factory stand. It will prevent the weight of the fin and bulb from damaging the boat hull by hanging in the breeze. It will also help the boat stay on the stand if it gets bumped accidentally. It should be tight enough to slide on the rods, but not be too loose. The holder has a taper that matches the bulb so check the direction when you put the boat on the stand. By squeezing the rods inward a bit, you should be able to pop the holder on and off the stand without taking it apart. I used 1/8" adhesive backed closed-cell foam to pad the cradle area. The cradle area is designed for this thickness of foam so it matches the bulb very well. Thicker or thinner foam will change the fit! I have two versions of each holder. One is a single STL that fits my stands perfectly. However, my stand does not fit some other DF95/DF65 stands. It allows too much gap in between the bulb and the holder. I chalked this up to the factory using different lengths of rod during different production runs and the stands not being assembled the exact same by each person. To help with this, I have another version that is the holder split into multiple parts saved into a single STL. By importing this file into most any CAD software, and simply moving the parts up and down, you can customize the height however you like You may have to use "Split Disjoint Mesh" or similar command in your CAD software to break the STL into separate parts. You may have to Boolean Union the parts back together for your slicing software, but most slicers will knit the parts into a solid piece automatically as long as you leave them overlapped. Be careful scaling these parts, as you can distort the fit to the stand or bulb. Just scale the middle fitting block if you need to.