I’ve been designing and printing furniture all week. I’ve about figured out drawers, but functional hinges have me stumped. Of course I’d like them in perfect scale and style; most I’ve seen are clunky barrel hinges.
Any suggestions?
Aren’t most hinges barrel type of some sort? You have to have a pin that allows rotation of the door…are you looking for ornamentation of a common hinge, like a butterfly or dragonfly design?
Even my antique boxes have barrel hinges but they are more ornate…the only other kind of hinge like thing I have seen are leather hinges…
I think it is wonderful that you are looking for true functionality and realism in your printing!!! Look forward to seeing more miniatures!
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I’ve seen excellent mini hinges made from pop can metal & dress making pins. Bit fiddly but great finishing look.
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Yes, but what I’m seeing is out-of-scale clunky hinges, huge, visible tubes.
I assume the issue is how small the printer can go and still have the strength to hold the door on.
I’m hoping there’s some alternative.
Oooh, there’s the kind where you pin down through the top of the case into the door (and up through the bottom). I’d forgotten that technique, I’ll have to experiment.
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Yes, those are cool!
You could as was said make hinges out of pop cans and use a chopped up straight pin (for sewing) you could insert it into the hinge from the top which would hold it.
Or wire hinges like this, you could glue rather than solder on the wire tubes.
How small can you go???
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Those wire hinges are super tiny!!
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I bet the chunkiness is a limitation of the 3D printed medium, too. But that swing door style would probably work as you could get chunkier w/o it really showing! And now that I think of it, that’s what gets used in a lot of children’s plastic toys and that is probably one of the main reasons why.
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I’ve got an experimental model printing now.
For some reason, I chose a complex cabinet with four doors at different levels; I spent hours redesigning it, and it takes 4+ hours to print. I need to get into the habit of creating simple samples.
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Success! More or less.
1mm holes and sewing pins work great together, don’t even need glue. It was a little tricky to engineer, I hope to be able to cut and paste it in future projects.
When good prints go bad:
It was printing fine when I left the house, but I came home to steel wool. At least it printed enough that I could fit the doors in.
This new filament warps and doesn’t hold to the bed well, I’ll have to experiment with skirts and brims and things.
I like skirts for prints that need just a bit more hold. What kind of printer & filament?
I like the pin style hinges - they came out great! I also like to use use the bump and divot approach with 3d prints - a little half moon bump at the top and bottom on the doors with matching (slightly larger) divots in the frame.
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I’m using an Ender3 with PLA; the problem filament is Monoprice, which usually works well, but this silver color is warping and not sticking.
I used a brim and raised bed temp last night for a chair and things went well; I’m trying the cabinet again with the hotter bed and a skirt to see if that solves the warping. The first layer of the skirt is not stuck perfectly…
I’ve already put a warning label on the filament roll. It may be more trouble than it’s worth. It’s also a boring color; it’s not shimmery silver, more like the flat gray primer you see on cars.
Oooh, I like Ender3s. And I print in PLA too. There’s definitely some rolls that I’ve had to bench for being bad. Then just use them for quick or sloppy stuff. Does the Ender do ok with rafts? You could always go up to that, though it might make the hole exit in the bottom tricky. I have really liked the shiny colors from MIKA3D.
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The warmer bed and skirt seem to have solved the problem. I have both a large, flat item (cabinet printing on its top) and tall, skinny chair printing from the legs up on the printer now, and both are looking good.
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