Fender Bender

FENDER BENDER begins with an opinionated design for building the most effective buffering system with the goal of eliminating as much friction from the system as possible. This was done through careful measurement of resistance all the way through the system and was tested with hundreds of prototypes. The final reference design uses 6mm OD x 3mm ID PTFE tubing wherever possible in our internal filament passages to minimize any friction introduced by the buffering system. This attention to performance was matched by focus on creating a design that maintains a reasonable aesthetic.

Stepdown adapters can be used to interconnect thee 6mm tubing to the 4mm tubing going into the printer, accomplishing a frictionless step down as well as allowing easy access when swapping filament.

We believe the reference design represents the best choices for a buffering system. However, because FENDER BENDER was built using a flexible, parametric tool, the design can easily be modified to build buffering systems representing differing opinions on design; allowing for different tubes, connectors, and bearings to be built without having to modify the Python/Build123d source code.

You can view the source for the project on github and find complete documentation here.

CURRENT RELEASE: Version 2.0