Self promoting pawn
On youtube I saw this excellent video by "Works By Design" that immediately captivated me. I was super excited when I saw that the design of this self-promoting pawn where available on his Patreon website. I can now proudly say I'm a creator of an implementation of his truly mesmerising design.
After I acquired the design files (including a manual, print files, step files and video) I first tried to print the parts on my Ender 3 V3 SE. Unfortunately this printer's quality is not sufficient . If you've seen the amount of small details in the parts, you can imagine.
I had my doubts about making this design from resin printed parts. Resin parts are not known for engineering grade toughness. Their surface resistance is pretty high so moving parts easily stick together. After some time checking out online, I found a solution. pencilling the sliding surfaces with a graphite pencil. The carbon layers in graphite slide over each other with low friction, thus making the parts move much easier. After using vaseline, this was less of a mess and worked much better.
Because the STEP files were present in the design package I was able to modify a few part just a little, that helped a lot in finalising my resin based pawn.
Getting the non printed parts was a bit of a hassle. The 8mm x 50mm spring was a bit too wide and not very available anywhere. In the end there was a Danish manufacturer that sold springs from stainless steel and piano wire that packed a bit more punch and where around 7mm wide. the 1.5mm pins where a lot smaller than I thought so when I called the hardware store to as for steel 1.5x6 mm dowels they were a bit surprised this existed at all. Dutch hardware stores tend not to have to more eclectic parts available ;)
The current design works around 3~4 times and then the shaft release part needs to be swapped (it wears out quickly), I need to figure out how to solve this, but overall there were many times I was thinking it was not ging to work, so I'm happy for the end result.