this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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3DPrinting

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKrDUnZCmQQ

What if your parts just fit—every single time—no matter what printer, material, or slicer settings you use?

In this video, we break down the proven design principles that eliminate the guesswork from tolerances in 3D printing. You’ll learn how to design press-fits, snap-fits, lids, and interlocking parts that are robust to shrinkage, color variation, and machine quirks. Rounded corners, chamfers, compliant features, and grip fins — we cover it all and show why designing for process is more reliable than tweaking slicer settings.

By the end, you’ll know exactly how to model your parts for perfect, repeatable fit — anywhere, anytime, on any printer.

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[–] zipsglacier@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

The part at the end about the fins is good, but too quick. He says put a gap under the fins, and that makes sense, but then how do they print? Are they small enough that they can basically just break away? I've heard ironing is the key to stacked, separable prints (like miltiboard grids). I'd that (a) necessary, (b) unnecessary but helpful, or (c) irrelevant for these fins?

P.s. while I was internet searching to try to understand this, I found a cute video of his from 3 years ago where he is explaining the same concept, but with less polish and less good vtuber equipment. Still neat, and neat to see how he has and hasn't changed over time.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

If I was doing this design, I would build the fins from lower and taper pocket the bottom edge with a 45° pocket that enables them to print unsupported. It is possible to just leave a gap, or make a single wall riser near the tip to anchor the bridge but this will need printer and materials tuning with inconsistent results in my opinion. I think he was mostly showing off the abstract application of an unexpected idea people are likely to watch.

Ironing is as much about hardness as it is about smoothness. The extended heating will make the lower surface harder and might be workable on your home machine. Your flow rate in slicer settings will be critical for ironing because any bulldozing of material left behind will wreck you. Plus all that extra heat in a solid stack of layers is going to strongly promote warping.

If you're really tight on clearance for something like this, I have used typical glue stick. You just add a print pause and either some tape or very carefully apply glue stick just to the overhang clearance with a 2 print layer height gap. The glue may take a day of soaking in water or alcohol to completely soften and dissolve, but that is basically poor-person dissolvable print supports. That trick is really only worth doing for stuff like mechanical prints you want to embed in an assembly with tight clearance. It is a pain in the ass and certainly not a transferable design for a farm or file sharing.

[–] zipsglacier@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks! I wondered about the glue stick trick, but I think you're right that a taper would be better. I have to wonder why he didn't say that, but maybe he was tight on time or some other thing.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

YouTube has video nerds. There are very few advanced Makers on YT. People like Ben from Applied Science are on the short list. I tried making content for YT a few times but that is like a full time job. YT stopped promoting real low level Makers and community stuff around 2017. Prior to that I had something like 1k5 people I followed on there. When they got integrated into ISP with local caching they had to limit what people watched by promoting a much smaller slice. The result is that now advanced content is not promoted well. YT only wants people that can churn regular garbage like cable TV all over again. So he probably didn't even know. Still his niche is in transferrable design for a farm and that can be interesting.

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