ZMT 16 Bends for flexible tubing

thingiverse

A lot of people are moving back to flexible tubing - myself included. But when space becomes tight and you need to get around a corner, a flexible tube is prone to collapse. These nifty little pieces I designed solve that problem. R50 works like a charm but takes up a bit of space. R30 is a tighter fit but still works. The 180 degree bend only works in R50 that's why there is no R30 of it. How to make one bend: Print two halves and two end caps. Slide the end caps over the tube first, then place the tube in one half and the other half on top. Slide on the the end caps to lock it in place. You will find that the two halves still show a gap in the middle. That is why I added a boss so you can bolt them together with an M3x15 hex bolt (standard 3D printer dimension). Since I'm lazy and you are too, the two halves are identical so the bolt will stick in both. If you don't want that, use a 3 mm drill to make one half a loose fit. The printed size is 2.9 mm for the hole but it tends to print slightly smaller. The end caps are designed with a 0.2 mm gap all around but they are a pretty close fit with the tube adding compression from the inside, and I guess my printer slightly overextruding. Let me know in the comments how your fit is, and if you have suggestions for more pieces - this is a parametric design, and a variant is easy to set up.