Polypanels Filament Lock

myminifactory

Here's a slight variation on the basic polypanels that uses standard 1.75mm printer filament as hinges to join the panels together more securely. If you want a polypanel creation guaranteed not to fall apart on you (short of breaking or melting) then these are the panels for you. The connectors are identical to the standard ones except a 2.15mm hole is cut through the centre of the hinge. Any 1.75mm filament can be pushed into the hinge, and I tend to use a pair of pliers to do so. The excess filament can then be trimmed away easily. The pins generally hold themselves in place, but it's easy enough to flatten the ends of the filament with some pliers to ensure they don't come apart. The hinges can then be pulled back apart again by pulling the filament with some pliers or pushing it out with another piece of filament. The walls for the hinges are somewhat thin, approximately 1.4mm, but can actually hold quite a significant load. I haven't been able to break a single connection with my bare hands yet (without breaking the frame of the polypanel first). I re-made all the standard polypanels in their different variations as well as my previous square centre joint panel, to use these pins and adjusted the basic polypanel design slightly to add extra strength for the hinges. Any polypanel with standard connectors can be adjusted to use these hinge pins by cutting a hole through its length. If you're using Devin Montes' original Fusion 360 file to make your polypanels (as I did with all of mine), then simply edit 'Sketch 1' in the file. Draw a 2.15mm circle in the centre of the larger circle in the sketch, and add two tangent lines at 45 degrees either side of the top of the circle and a straight line across the top to make the hole printable with only 45 degree overhangs. Then reduce the large fillet on the snaps from 2.49mm to 1mm, which adds strength to the connector. After that, just before the first 'Circular pattern' feature in the timeline, extrude cut the hole all the way through the hinge. Then complete your polypanel as before.