Thursday, September 8, 2016

[Stokke Bathtub] Design and 3D print a replacement piece to fold the Stokke Flexi Bath

Short new project that i needed to tacle due to space constraint we have. We own a Stokke bathtub for baby that can fold and has originally an attach to keep it folded that is part of the tub.
Unfortunately, the attach fell off and without it the tub stay unfolded and take much more space.

The idea was to take the already existing design for the attaching side and incorporate it in a 2 headed hook that would manage to keep the tub folded.

For that i took a few shots of the broken part and imported those in Adobe Illustrator in order to trace a profile of the part. With this profile path line, i could generate a .svg file that can be imported as a sketch in 123D Design

The broken part from top and profile :


Then i  designed the profile and i came up with that seemed to be the closed to the real hook. I generated a .svg file out of illustrator which can be read by the CAD software :

After importing the .svg file in 123D Design, i could extrude the volume out of the profile. For additional fun i also decided the incorporate the real logo of Stokke in the design :


After having generating the .stl file from the CAD software i handed it to my electronic shop that own a 3d printer (http://www.wigi.fr/) and they nicely printed it in a nice shiny black.

The final result is quite nice for a small piece. There are slight issues arround the edges of both hooks, but that is normal since this was printed without any support material. 


And then how it looks when used with the actual bath tub !


Contact me directly if you have any question, do not hesitate to ask. I will put the design on thingiverse when i have time. 

EDIT : The thingiverse link with access to the .stl file for your own convenience ! 
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1760627






Friday, June 3, 2016

[Chariot Station] Custom made station for Thule Cougar Chariot


Just wanted to share how i built an extremely simple docking station for my Thule Cougar 1 Chariot.

Due to my garage being pretty small, i need to detach the chariot from the bike overnight. The idea is to be able to keep the Chariot while in "Bike mode" (with the bike connecting arm) but detetached from the bike. Without a docking station the bike arm would touch the ground and might be destorded over time.

Here is a view from the bottom of the chariot with all the useful measurements



With those measurements I could then design my docking station. The dock is pretty simple and is made of 4 pieces of mdf wood. The dimensions are so that it fit perfectly with the plastic section on each side of the front of the chariot.

It is made with 2x 11,5 cm x 15 cm and 2x 11,5 cm x 44 cm to fit as following:
Each pieces of wood are connected with wood screws with countersink in order to avoid having the screws scratching the chariot



Here is how it looks like when finished :


And with the chariot docked on it :


Don't hesitate to comment if you have a suggestion or if you like to know anything about the chariot from Thule (great piece of equipment by the way !)