Scaffold Tub

Ah, I do love a nice industrial motif, and what is more industrial than big, exposed threads? This oversized tub rests on three hinged tripodian struts, and the aforementioned screw threads serve to extend those struts for extra coolness points. You can also just extend two of the struts and fold the shorter leg inwards in for a more... dynamic appearance!

You'll notice that the struts are quite chunky, and the lower "feet" of both the outer and inner parts get much broader again. This is purely for printability because tall, thin objects get highly problematic if there isn't sufficient contact area. And of course, those are the kind of failures that tend to happen at the end of a print, which is the most emotionally devastating point for a print failure to happen. That said, it's still relatively high risk, even with those nice broad patches, so take care with you bed adhesion. While the struts look like they converge with the tub body, that's a hinged connection and so the tub does not provide any support at all!

Early on, there was a threaded foot in the model which served the purpose of a lock ring. However, that meant that the actual strut parts had to share contact area with the foot, and that was not a useful compromise. So instead the thread was made less coarse to increase friction so that the lock ring was unnecessary (unless, maybe, you print it in a silk filament and then oil it or something). Of course, this does mean that it now takes longer to actually adjust the strut length :)

Print Description

This is an articulated, print-in-place model so make sure your first layer is nice and neat and that there aren't any print artifacts like stringing or overextrusion that might bond moving parts together!

Print Dimensions

The Scaffold Tub occupies 186mm x 186mm on the print bed and is 172mm tall. The full size is quite large!

Supports Needed?

Not at all!  Designed for straightforward printing!

Scalability

Yes indeed, this can be scaled up and down to a reasonable degree. I've scaled it down to 60% with no issues whatsoever.

Print Orientation

The Scaffold Tub prints right-way-up with the struts folded in and retracted.

Further Thoughts

Early versions of the tub had a mechanism for adjusting the angle of the struts within a range, using yet another threaded mechanism, but at some point it occurred to me that I always extended it fully anyway. And, much as I do love unnecessary complexity in these things it was good to get rid of an element that was high risk for print failures, especially since I was already taking every opportunity to bolster the printability of the other bits :)

Happy printing!

xoxo

Sven.

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481 Scaffold Tub