How to print a cylinder form part, that can adapt to slightly different outer diameters (no fixed solid)?
I had printed connectors for paper drinking straws:
The initial set of 100 paper drinking straws had inner diameter 5.65mm, and my connectors did fit that well.
So well, that the whole 96cm high C60 fullerene (truncated icosahedron) does hang fine 3m high on ceiling without any glue:
I bought a 2nd set of "same" 100 paper drinking straws, but they had slightly different inner diameter (5.4mm vs. 5.65mm):
https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/english-forum-awesome-prints-hall-of-fame/toothpick-polyhedra-fullerenes/#post-607105
I did print connector as single solid, and that cannot fit both 0.25mm different inner diameters.
Question is, whether another (not single part) construction is possible, which allows to fit well 5.65mm inner diameter paper drinking straw as well as 5.4mm inner diameter?
RE:
I can think of two ideas, based on what your intent is.
If you're planning to print connectors that are unique diameters based on the size of your straws, you can simply scale the model by 0.95 in Prusaslicer. This will shrink the straws in all dimensions (5.65 * 0.95 is about 5.4) so they should fit the smaller straws. Each arm will also be a tiny bit shorter but that shouldn't make a difference.
If your intent is to design one connector that fits both sizes, you can have a short constant distance on each arm of the connector and then taper it slighly toward the end. The smaller straws will slide up a bit less than the wider straws but with 0.15m difference in ID I don't think you'll see an appreciable difference.
Formerly known on this forum as @fuchsr -- until all hell broke loose with the forum software...