Designer seeking feedback

I am trying to improve my design skills, especially around end use FDM 3D printable files. I am looking for some feedback on this dust collector shoe that I designed to fit the Shapeoko2/DW611 spindle combo?

I gave myself 5 criteria (besides being functional) to meet in the design.

  1. Must print with few or no support, on 200mmx200mm printers (beginner
    friendly)
  2. Must allow for clear Z motion on the majority of spindle
    mount options from Inventables/Improbable Construct
  3. Must re-route sufficient airflow from cooling fan to allow for cooling and block down draft from blowing onto cutting area
  4. Must offer hard mount and clamp option
  5. Must allow for multiple hose sizes

I would really appreciate any feedback the community can provide on how I did against the criteria, as well as any additional thoughts you may have for areas where I should think about making changes or improvements.

Your time is appreciated! Thank you!

Hi CollectorCNC,

Great project you have going on first of all :slight_smile: I unfortunately cant be any help on criteria #'s 2-5. As for your design there are only a couple little things I can see in regards to your concern on the use of supports.

On the vacumm hose adaptor, (black in your photos) you may want to extend the inner pipe down to the build table to avoid supports in this area.

Also on the adapter. The upper lip has a small horizontal piece that could be modified if it still allows proper attachment of vacuums.

If you could remove this small horizontal it may print nicer. Maybe continue that 45? degree angle all the way into the cylinder. That should give zero supports and beautiful prints :smile:

You’ll have to forgive me but I will call this the router side?

The Blue & Red arrows in the above photo may be a little steep of an angle more so on the red arrow. Maybe instead of a peak roof on the red arrow, a semi circle/half moon top could work better if you are having issues with drop from the angle being to high. Your photos look good from what I can see, so it may be a non issue.

The blue arrow slots look like they had quite a bit of ‘noise’ in them. I am guessing this is due to the small gap between each slot. Moving the slots further away from each other could possibly help this. If you are able to print with 2 perimeters going inside to outside in this area that will help.

I am assuming the green arrow could be a bit to steep of an angle. Are you having issues here?

Cutter side file looks good :). I like the design I think it is really nice.

Hey Chris,

This is awesome! You really went above and beyond to make sure your feedback was clear and easy to understand!

I feel kind of dumb, these are both very obvious and I should have caught these!

I really like that suggestion! I think it will also allow me to decrease the overall height of the clamp which will make it more compatible with additional machines like the X-Carve, which use pretty wide mounting clamps.

I was going for slots that would kind of match up to the direction the air coming off the fan, and you are right, there was a ton of noise in the print. much of it can be cleaned up (I got lazy here and wanted to post the design quickly) but I would like to make this easier for a beginner to print without taking away too much material (making the part weaker). Do you think wider spacing and wider slots that were slightly more vertical would fix the issue and make it easier to get a clean print regardless of the perimeter count (I agree inside to out would have helped here)?

Actually no issues here. The print didn’t require any clean up on this area

Thanks again, I really appreciate the feedback and suggestions. I’ll make some mods and publish new files this week!

It should work. I am trying to think now if it would be a better alternative to the current peaked roof style you have. That is a hard one. You could always try it and see which performs better.

Ahh so there are slots in the router themselves that expel the hot air? And you are trying to match those slots in your print to allow the air to get out from both the router and your print? Could you post a photo of the slots on the Router?

I think wider spacing on the slots and wider slots would allow better quality between each slot. However, I think with the right settings your current slot style would come out looking nice. But if you have designed the slots to match the router I could see that as an important trait to keep in your design to show your attention to detail. If I could get an idea on the router so I fully understand that would be awesome :slight_smile: Maybe there is an alternative method that could be employed here.

Here are a couple of pictures of the fan outlets on the DW611

Ahh I see now. So because the fan outlets would be hitting the 3d printed part, you’ve added the vents on the side of your print to help disperse the air. In that case, those side vents may be better off with a different top on them as well, possibly another semi circle top to avoid the need to bridge or run supports in there.

As for the very bottom where your fan outlets from the router hit your 3d printed part, you might be able to get crazy technical and add little channels that are half the depth of your 3d printed part. These channels would run from the fan outlet areas of the router to atmosphere through the side of your 3d printed part. Its sort of hard to explain. Either way, that might be over complicating things :slight_smile: just trying to think of everything.

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UPDATE:
Loaded new Router side clamp/top plate file. The clamp has been shortened by 10mm and the peaks have been rounded off with semi-circles. Please let me know what you think of the new test files.

Thanks!

I like it! I hope it prints out well with those design changes :slight_smile: I forgot to ask, there are 2 bolt holes on the bottom of that piece that appear to be counter sunk needed supports. I would imagine that is so that the bolt holes are out of the way of the bottom of the piece?

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Hey Chris,

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions! I hope to try an FDM print to validate the design when I get back to my Underground Lair week after next. I may try a tough resin print on the Form 2, but that thing is so expensive to print with, I try to limit it to paid work only.

The screw holes are an interesting problem. The stock screws go into the plastic spindle lock assembly and are too short with the shoe in place so you have to find longer coarse thread screws to use the mount. My local hardware store has bulk pan head phillips screws that are the perfect length and thread pitch (about 4mm longer than stock) but for some reason countersunk screws of the same length and thread pitch are not available off the shelf. Wierd…

Either case, countersunk holes would print better, but I was hesitant to commit to making the holes for countersunk screws as not everyone has a grinder to custom size a screw that fits (although while I am writing this I am now thinking why would you have a cnc router but not some sort of grinder or rotary tool with a grinding bit…)

Good point Chris, I’ll re-fit the holes for countersunk screws

Thanks again, and if anyone reading this wants to test print the new version and post the results it won’t hurt my feelings :sunglasses:

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Ahh no worries! Even the little bit of support to print that would come out pretty easy. Best to keep the hardware to simple stuff.

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@CollectorCNC How are you making out with the project? Did your changes make the difference you were looking for? :smile:

@Chris_Halliday
Now that I am back, I’ve got a few additional improvements to add this week and I’ll re-publish the design.

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