110mm fixture for "Floating" tensegrity table with built in tensioning mechanism

prusaprinters

<p>After printing the parts for a floating tensegrity table (see the remix source) and assembling the hardware, I realized that I wasn't looking forward to trying to thread this and get the right estimated lengths before tensioning. So, I fired up FreeCAD and made this little 110mm long fixture. The idea is to tape three of these to three places around the perimeter to hold the top and bottom at 110mm and allow me to pick it up, rotate it, and use both hands for threading and tying while keeping the top and bottom in the desired geometry. I used blue painter's tape and taped the fixtures just to the inside of where the holes are to help me line up the rotational relative positions of the top and bottom. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to take any pictures of them in use, but the concept should be pretty straight forward.</p><h3>Print instructions</h3><p>The included .3mf file was generated in PrusaSlicer 2.2.0-beta and uses two new features, minimum bottom and top shell thickness. I set these to 1mm to allow the adaptive variable layer height to properly choose the number of top and bottom layers. I also used 4 perimeters to make the body quite stiff. I also hand tuned the rectilinear infill to get the diagonal portions to touch or overlap at the side of the inner volume, hoping to enforce a truss pattern of additional strength inside. I don't know if it mattered, but I felt better doing it. ;-) I applied all the settings changes directly to the object so they aren't lost when choosing different print/filament/printer profiles.</p><p>I printed it out using the Prusa (Filament PM) silver PLA (same type that came with my MK3 back at the beginning of 2019).</p><p>Because PrusaPrinters doesn't (yet) support FreeCAD files (which has my parametric model), I did provide a step model if anyone wants to remix it starting with a solid model instead of a mesh.</p><p><strong>Edit (2022-03-30)</strong> Realized that I hadn't uploaded the original FreeCAD file once this site supported that filetype. Just added the original FreeCAD file.</p>