Distance piece / spacer factory

thingiverse

You can create custom distance pieces for flexible tubes without causing damage. I had a specific application in mind when designing them, such as fitting lamps or speedometers onto a bicycle. The smaller the angle of one piece is, the better it will fit on the tube. You can leave an arbitrary gap between the start and end parts to ensure a good fit. I believe a clearance of 0.1 should still print well without support, given its flexibility for the intended use. For larger clearances, however, you risk the print failing (at least without support). To address this, I've added a "flat printing" version where the distance piece is unrolled. This design may provide greater strength to the pins but requires printing with support in this case. The flat printing version only works for relatively small angles of individual chain links, depending on spacer thickness. If the angle is too large, chain links will overlap. Note: it appears that Thingiverse Customizer has issues displaying this design, so use openSCAD instead. It should work fine.