Themed Radio Flyer Red Wagon Brackets and Railing

prusaprinters

We recently took our twin girls to an outdoor storytime for kids at a local bookstore. While we were there, I noticed another family hauled their kids to the performance in a Radio Flyer All-Terrain Steel & Wood Wagon. We currently own a well-used basic version of the company's iconic red wagon that had been given to us by a co-worker (who bought it at a garage sale years before for her kids). This model caught my attention, though, because—in addition to the "rugged all-terrain air tires"—it included tall wood side railings that held the children securely in the wagon and allowed the parents to carry more things thanks to the higher walls. You can buy the All-Terrain Steel & Wood Wagon directly from Radio Flyer (the picture below is from www.radioflyer.com), but there is no option to purchase the railing option to add to an existing wagon. Furthermore, the railing and supports supplied by Radio Flyer consist of clear-coated, sealed wood which, in my opinion, doesn't really match the "classic red wagon" theme. After a moment of disappointment, I realized this was the exact situation that I'd bought a 3D printer for in the first place! So, I began designing a set of brackets and rails for my girls' wagon that would not only thematically match the classic looks but also—and much more importantly—keep them from falling out of the wagon…I initially thought of using solid-color brackets and railings but ultimately decided on a checker pattern design. The colors on the wagon are red, white, and black, so I decided to maintain that color scheme for my design. Sadly, I don't have the MMU, so I tried to make the multi-color print with as few changes as possible because I had limited time. As a result, I made the brackets and logo containing bars only have color on the top and bottom surfaces (based on print orientation), and the multi-color portions are only 2-3 layers thick (depending on nozzle and layer height).For the brackets printed in the pictures, there are only ten color changes (initial set of 6 and then a long run before the final four color changes) which made each set of 4 brackets printable in 1 - 2 days, so not bad. If you don't want to have multiple colors, you can use the same 3MF and stl files to print it as a solid color to make it simpler and faster. Since the brackets cover some of the logo on the side of the wagon, I wanted to make sure the logo was still entirely on display by adding it to the railing. These are only two colors, so there are fewer color changes (only 6). All the logo brackets print at once, so it's not that much extra work for the dramatic increase in flair! By the way, I scanned the Radio Flyer 90 logo for the rails directly from the side of the wagon I have. I don't know much about the history of the Radio Flyer, but I think that logo indicates there's a good possibility this wagon is over 20 years old.  Print SettingsI used PLA for all of these prints because I had a lot of PLA already, and I live in a climate that does not get that hot in the summer. If you live in a hotter climate, I would recommend PETG to give better performance in the hotter temperatures.Even though they're still only toddlers, my children can be very rough on their toys, so I did extra infill and perimeters/solid layers. The brackets are larger, so they are a little lower on the infill and layer count. If you are using this for gentler children or for adding extra hauling capacity to your wagon for non-living things, less infill and lower perimeters/solid layers would likely work fine and save quite a lot of filament and printing time.Because I was using the manual filament change option, I could not get the smart wipe tower to work. I noticed that the first spot it printed with a new filament seemed to over extrude, as if it thought it had previously retracted the filament. The over extrusion would cause blobs and blemishes in the final print. To eliminate the blemishes, I created my own wipe tower that it starts printing first after every color change to accumulate all the blemishes on a sacrificial part, effectively making my own wipe tower.Brackets0.3mm layer height5 perimeters5 solid layers for both top and bottom50% Infill, rectilinear patternThe order in the print files i generated for the brackets is 1: Black, 2: White, 3: Red, which makes the color change order for the file:B W R B W B W R B W1   2  3  1  2  1   2  3  1  2   Bars0.3mm layer height5 perimeters7 solid layers for both top and bottom80% Infill, grid patternNote: I arranged these to not have to have supports when printing, but this means that when assembled, adjacent bars will have alternating top and bed touching surfaces, so i would not use a texted bed with the print orientation that i posted in the GCode files. You could flip over the “long outer middle no logo” bars and the “short ends” bars and use supports and then you would be fine if you are using a textured bed surface.The order in the print files i generated for the logo bars is 1: Red, 2: White, so start with red filament. Hole Guide0.3mm layer heightvase modeI used the following screws to affix everything together: Teks ¾" long #8 diameter sharp point metal lath screws. These are nice because they have effectively a washer built into the head of the screw to get more surface area of contact between the screw and the printed parts. I also already had them on hand… Assembly and Installation InstructionsEach long side of the wagon uses: 4 brackets2 “Long End” Bars2 “Outer Middle No Logo” Bars1 “Middle Logo” BarEach short side of the wagon uses: 2 brackets2 “Short End” Bars (the stl contains both)1 “Middle Logo” BarI assembled all the brackets and bars together and then used the assembly to mark the locations of the brackets on the wagon sides with a dry erase marker. I then aligned the “screw hole guide” that is just a hollowed-out version of the bracket inside the markings from the whole assembly to mark where the screw holes go on the wagon. With all the screw hole locations marked, I then used a ¼" drill bit to drill the holes for the metal lath screws to go through in the wagon side. Once the holes were drilled, I then held the assembled brackets and bars back up to the wagon and screwed the lath screws into the brackets to hold them in place on the wagon!NOTE: Since screw holes need to be drilled in the wagon for this design, permanent modification of the wagon is required.Customization OptionsI have included all the 3MF model files and STL's that I created for this project in case anyone has variation ideas to improve the design. Given the design as I have posted here, there are several options available:You can choose if you want the logo in the bars or not since the non-logo version is the same dimensions as the one with the logo. You could also have multiple logos per long side if you want as well! For the brackets, I included the different colored squares as individual STL files to make doing the multiple extruder option with PrusaSlicer easy to implement. This means that you could set all the squares the same color and still have a stripe, you could set the body of the bracket the same color as one of the squares, or you could print the whole bracket in one color without messing around with manual color changes at all. While I printed the version of the bracket with only one mounting point for the bars, I have also included STLs of the bracket body with 2 and 3 mounting holes so that the choice is yours if you want more bars to contain the load in the wagon better. The topmost screw hole is the same between all the bracket body variants. The multiple mounting hole bracket options have the extra holes evenly spaced over the remaining area to make them more visually appealing.