Barebow tab (Fairweather-inspired design)

prusaprinters

I am an avid archer, archery-coach and -trainer. I shot many styles of bows (recreational and competitive) but mainly stick to barebow. Wisdom comes with years, I guess ^^I recently bought a Fairweather Barebow-tab. These are excellent quality and the used leather is superior to all other types of leather I ever used: does the job as it should .. and VERY! consitent.However, I have smaller hands and found the tab a bit “bulky”, big in my hand. Therefor it was not perfectly easy to use the stringwalking-technique, AND to bend my fingers easely around the string. I thought a slimmer finger-ring would help to position the tab deeper into the hand.As I discussed this FW-tab with other archers, I noticed that more then one had the same idea: the FW-tab being a bit too bulky to be perfect.So that's why tried my own version of this design with the goals being:keeping the excellent leather-mounting-ideabeing slimmerbeing able to be redesigned, adaptable to any size anyone asks me (thus using Fusion360 in which I can easely alter dimentions)using a slimmer finger-ringbeing able to print this in metal-infused-PLA so to make this tab a bit heavier, which gives a natural fun feeling when in use.with very visibly clear markings (I use glasses to read but not when shooting) … but also the posibility to have no permanent markings and to provide a bit of tape and make your own markings.I designed this in fusion360 and made different sizes of the ring.As I went on designing I also made …A lefty and a rightyOne for 3mm of leather, one for 4mm of leatherA design which can be mounted using regular m3-bolts and nuts and a design wich uses threaded m3-inserts (which I prefer myself).You can find these on https://cnckitchen.store/(credits to Stefan from CncKitchen for his feedback on these: https://www.cnckitchen.com/blog/threaded-inserts-for-3d-prints-cheap-vs-expensive )A template for the leather. IMPORTANT:Check out the fairweather-website. All my credits to them. I would never have discovered the excellent quailities of kangooroo-leather without this tab.https://www.fairweatherarchery.com/Also, check out their page on sizing:https://www.fairweatherarchery.com/sizing(bottom of that page)!!! I noticed that the FW-rings are a tiny bit wider then the marked dimension.A Fairweather 22-ring actually has an inner diameter of 22,5mmMy rings are actually the correct diameter, so a 22 is exactly 22mmI guess this may be due to different manufacturing: 3d-printing versus molding ??The rings should be printed out of TPU.I printed my rings out of Fiberlogy Fiberflex 40D and they came out perfectly “rubbery”Printing the rings out of PLA is absolutely a bad idea. They will break too easely. (I tested it). Maybe PETG might do better? TPU it is for me.you will NEED to use supports when printing the rings … and TPU-supports are a pain to remove to my experience, I know :( Pitty. No supports needed for any of the other partsI printed these using different colors of PLA to highlight the markings … but found it far more easely to just print them in once color .. and highlight the markings with a sharpy.LEGEND:Base stands for the bottom-plateTop stands for the top-plate703 stand for length of 70mm, leather-thickness: 3mm704 stand for length of 70mm, leather-thickness: 4mmnuts: mounted using bolts and regular m3-nutsIf nothing mentioned, then intended to use threaded inserts (see  pictures) as I did with my prototype.Markingsno markings … duh?LBB stands for LudoBareBowAll feedback is strongly appreciated.Also, I also made some personalised designs for a couple of  (internet-)friends, collegue-coaches :)