Suspension Fork Bottle Cage Mount

[Karl]

Been making things on the printer and decided one of the areas I want to improve was water storage on the full susser. I have a frame bag which I don't use at the moment due to carrying my water in bottle cages and don't fancy carrying a hydration sack/rucksack. Fast forward to my new suspension fork bottle cage mounts. I need some shorter bolts and to warm up the mount with a hairdryer to remove the hairy bits but overall pretty happy (all nuts are captive as well ):

[Bearbonesnorm]

Very nice Karl.

[sean_iow]

Nice I assume you will paint them so the blue matches the shade on the Salsa decal? or get custom decals made in a matching blue?

[belugabob]

Very interesting, and nicely done

I've not really delved into 3D printing, so only have a passing familiarity with it. I thought that printed components were relatively fragile, and not necessarily suitable for high load applications ( such as resisting the forces imposed by upwards of half a litre of water making a bit for freedom )
Or have things progressed in recent years?

[redefined_cycles]

Its (raw and) beautiful... hope you're gonna get a blue bottle in the Salsa blue to go wirh it

[Karl]

Very interesting, and nicely done

I've not really delved into 3D printing, so only have a passing familiarity with it. I thought that printed components were relatively fragile, and not necessarily suitable for high load applications ( such as resisting the forces imposed by upwards of half a litre of water making a bit for freedom )
Or have things progressed in recent years?

Definitely things have moved on but as always it the materials which make the finished article. I used this filament type

https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/filament/79 ... 500g.html

I've placed captive steel nuts into the print material and used more infill to withstand the compressive force from tightening a bottle cage onto the mount. It's a very flexible filament with quite and abrasive resistant finish so should be durable to impacts. To ensure the strength when clamping I printed with the flow of the filament (aka filament is printed in same plane as the clamping band).

To show how flexible it is here was my first print (changed it slightly) in it's printed state and also "rolled out".





Now I've said all you know what'll happen next

[slarge]

Looks good Karl,

what CAD package do you use? It's 20 years since I last used CAD (when it was all wire frames and 2D) and I fired up a freeby package a couple of months ago but it seemed to take a lot of learning (as in "I couldn't make it work for me!!")

[Karl]

I use Solidworks, very expensive but it's for my everyday work so needs must.

I've tried to use Fusion 360 a while back and it just doesn't flow for me. Think it's the age old can't teach an old dog new tricks (or it might just be not very user friendly).

[belugabob]

Thanks Karl - very interesting

[shutupthepunx]

looks brill well done