[HN Gopher] STEMFIE, a 3D-printable construction set toy
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STEMFIE, a 3D-printable construction set toy
Author : _Microft
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-07-13 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.stemfie.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.stemfie.org)
| michaelmior wrote:
| Very cool! I still think to date one of the coolest uses of 3D
| printing I've seen is the Free Universal Construction Kit[0].
| There are adapters for any pairing of LEGO, Lincoln Logs, K'NEX,
| and several others. This is something that would likely never
| happen commercially due to licensing issues.
|
| [0] https://fffff.at/free-universal-construction-kit/
| _Microft wrote:
| I had heard of people creating adapter parts for different
| systems but from what I remember, these attempts were by far
| not as broad as this one. Thanks for sharing!
| bitwize wrote:
| I thought, that was an unfortunate choice of acronym. Then I
| checked the domain: Austria, home of the village formerly known
| as Fucking. So it tracks.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Hahaha it's for sure 100% on purpose
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 3D printing obviously wins for low barrier to entry, but I wonder
| if it wouldn't be faster and cheaper at scale to make some of
| those parts the "traditional" way with molds or such. Maybe worth
| a group buy?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Injection molds start at 6 figures and you need a different
| mold for every part.
| echoangle wrote:
| Theoretically you could have a large mold with multiple
| different parts, kind of like plastic model kits.
| amelius wrote:
| > Injection molds start at 6 figures
|
| This was the same 30 years ago. Why is this stagnant?
| buildbot wrote:
| It's not, xeometry can do it for much less! Or hubs.com
| (now part of protolabs)
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Moreover, some of the STEMFIE parts have complex internal
| shapes and overhangs which would be extremely difficult to
| form with injection molding. Unfortunately, the same
| properties pose problems for hobbyist-level alternatives like
| resin casting, too.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I was looking at the threads/screws when I said _some_
| parts might be worth making with traditional methods, yeah.
| Even so, if you can make even some of the parts more
| cheaply /quickly it seems like a possible win.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Apparently, for low volume production you can 3D print
| injection molds.
|
| Ex. https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printing-injection-molds-the-
| ultimat...
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yes, if you want a stainless steel mold to very fine
| tolerances which will hold up for very long production runs.
|
| There are more affordable options these days, but whether or
| no the newer options would be suitable for these parts or if
| these parts would be suitable for molding (usually that
| requires designing the part to take the requirements such as
| "draft angle" which helps get a part out of a mold) would be
| something which would need to be researched and accounted for
| and so forth.
| jkestner wrote:
| 4 figures. You can get P20 molds, good for 20k cycles,
| <$5,000 in China. And of course, you can get family molds
| that make more than one part at a time, though most of the
| savings is in per-part cost.
| jhardy54 wrote:
| This looks like it would solve a problem for me, thanks for
| sharing! Candidly, I'm a bit turned off by the name, the framing
| as a "toy", and honestly the ergonomics of the website (compared
| to similar systems like https://gridfinity.xyz/ or
| https://gridbeam.xyz/), but the underlying system seems like what
| I'm looking for.
|
| I've been prototyping some models with a 3D printer, and have
| unfortunately been building my own sort of "construction set" so
| that I can minimize my print times and only reprint the parts
| that have changed. This means that I can mostly print flat
| pieces, which take an hour rather than 12 hours, but trying to
| invent a modularity system takes time (and iterations), which
| detracts from iterating on the thing I'm actually working on.
|
| For anyone having trouble navigating the website, I'd recommend
| starting at https://www.stemfie.org/parts?view=category&id=14, or
| maybe skimming
| https://thangs.com/designer/Stemfie3D/sort/downloads if you just
| want to see the most commonly used pieces.
| kragen wrote:
| yeah, this website is like endless ikea. is there a word of
| explanation anywhere?
| skrebbel wrote:
| I don't think this is a name clash in any meaningful way but I'd
| nevertheless like to share that in Dutch, a "stemfie" is a selfie
| that you take from inside the voting booth and I love that we
| have a 7 character word for that.
| TOGoS wrote:
| I like the idea of this sort of thing. Lots of different
| predesigned parts, cool, cool.
|
| But it's axe grinding time.
|
| As I recall from digging into STEMFIE a while ago (because I
| can't find this information on the site), they use some odd base
| unit like 12.5mm, which I assume is chosen because it's
| approximately half an inch (12.7mm), but "more metric". Which as
| far as unit systems goes, gives you the worst of both worlds, in
| that it will almost, but not quite, fit with your 1/2-inch based
| construction systems (like Erector Set/Meccano beams), and the
| metric numbers end up being not all that nice anyway (if you
| subdivide a beam in half or thirds you up with 6.25 or 4.167mm),
| so you may as well have picked exact compatibility with an
| existing system, anyway.
|
| I wish people were less afraid to use "half an inch" as their
| base unit, if that's the size they want. It's as if they hear
| 'metric is superior' in grade school and think that means that
| real-world objects that happen to be designed around something
| other multiples of 10 of some metric unit are yucky and they'd
| better adjust it slightly so nobody notices, even if that means
| throwing out compatibility with a lot of existing stuff.
|
| Okay rant over.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Lol I'm laughing about the time I designed a circuit board with
| standard 0.1"/2.54mm headers but accidentally ordered 2.5mm
| headers. The small 2-4 pin headers went in just fine and then
| when I went to put the big 20 pin header in... no dice.
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