Hey everyone! So the flower box is still taking shape since I had a few minor setbacks with it. one huge thing I learned so far is the following: print plastic gears at 100% infill, especially in situations where they will be taking some stress! I tried printing one with lesser infill, and the teeth snapped off. Also, there is a track that the gears ride in in order to make the petals collapse back into a dome shape when you spin the center collar of the box.. That track is incredibly finicky. If you don’t sand it enough, the gears mesh too tight and break the track, causing the whole thing to not work. you can see some nicely shredded tracks in my 2 most recent failures pictured here haha:
you can see that the chunks that were taken out of the topmost track are a lot less severe than those taken out of the bottom track. That’s because the top most track had been sanded, while the bottom one had not! However, I didn’t sand the top one enough, only taking off 1/100 of an inch. It definitely worked much better than the bottom one, but it wasn’t as buttery smooth as in the original youtube video:
I think that’s because I have to sand even more! I’m going to take 3/100 of an inch off now (3x as much as I took off previously and see if that helps the movement at all. I also beefed the infill up on the track too! With 100% infill, maybe the track will be a lot stronger and hold up a little better. Maybe with all those modifications, I’ll finally have a working box! Stay tuned.
John (aka the Mad Printer)
The Mad Printer 