Flexibility Testing Gauge

thingiverse

Have you ever had a print that messed up early on? So you canceled it and then had to remove what it had already printed that was 1, 2, or maybe 3 layers thick? You noticed how flexible it was? Even when printed in PLA? This got me thinking. In some cases you may want to design a thing where a certain part of it has a certain give to it, a certain flexibility. I know I have some stuff I want to do in this category. Instead of trying in a hit-or-miss fashion to get what I want, I created this Flexibility Test Gauge. It prints tines in .2mm thickness increments. Print it out using the type of plastic you want to use for the thing you are designing, and use the same shells and infill too (this way your thing that you are designing should have the desired flex that you want it to. This print I did on my Makerbot Replicator 2 took a little more than an hour (1 hour 6 minutes), medium rez (.2mm layer height), shells:2, infill: 25%. I used True Orange PLA filament. The tines have the thickness# in millimeters embossed on them. For some reason the decimal point did not get rendered on the actual print. Rather than wrestle with that I just did a dot for each decimal with a Sharpy pen on the finished model. I took a silver metallic Sharpy and lightly colored the top of the raised lettering (I think it came out pretty cool)! Print and have fun imagining new and interesting designs!