3D Printed Tape Measure, 4ft

thingiverse

**Sorry for the subpar video quality. I was stuck with inadequate equipment back in 2014. Still am today...** This is a fully 3D printed, in situ tape measure that I designed several years ago. It contains approximately 4 feet of tape (labeled with whole inches and graduations), 114 individual parts, a belt clip, a fold-out crank with detent, and lock for the tape. I printed it on a polyjet printer which utilized a wax-like support material. The process took around 2.5 hours to clean out all the support and free up all the pieces. I also had to clean it a second time after more support material worked its way out of all the hinge joints. This design can only be printed on a polyjet or SLS Nylon printer. The walls may actually be too thin for SLS Nylon, so maybe printing at 1.5x scale or higher will be better. This would obviously throw off the length of the tape but at least it would print successfully. The SLS files are in inches. Use Google or math to convert to millimeters. I included a 1-foot and 2-foot section of tape for those experimenting with printing this. If you can print these pieces successfully, then you should be able to print the whole tape measure. When cleaning out the tape measure, be sure to take your time. That's the key. Pull out small lengths of the tape and clean what you can. Then repeat. Remember: you have to pull out the tape by hand (maybe with a little help from the crank). The crank is really only used to reel the tape back in. Running the crank in reverse will jam up the tape inside the body. More information can be found here: http://thecornercase.blogspot.com/2014/03/3d-printed-tape-measure.html Not amazing, self-conscious Darth Vader video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1z5zAEpUIw