Fasteners have been a staple of our designs since the beginning. But with the rising cost of living and everything else they’ve pushed some of our products outside of a reasonable price.
With this in mind I took it as a challenge to find a cheaper alternative, and to bring more of our production in house. The result was this: 3D Printable Screws.
We call them 4N screw. The N stands for Nanometers, and the 4 is the width of the Nozzle which is 0.4mm or 4 Nanometers. Like usual, our files are available to download on Printables, which you can download here!
They way these screws will be used at our store is not as an outright replacement of the metal fasteners, but as a cost alternative to the metal ones. We’ve gone through and re-designed our products to accommodate the 3D Printed Screws, and still be compatible with the #10-32 machine screws we’ve been using up to now.
New Designs
Take for instance our GBxCART case. As you can see in the images below, we now have threads modeled into the design for the 3D Printed screw. This allows for a secure and tight fit. This also give the new design a added bonus, metal screws will more securely cut into the part.
We have thoroughly tested the screw and broke and ruined many prints. The result of which is an extremely reliable screw, which will is perfect for their use cases.
A perfect example of this, is our redesign of the Virtual Boy Tripod Kit. Smaller, lighter and no longer compromised since I can now design the screw I want for it.
The smaller design is thanks to our new 10mm screw, along with threaded holes where ever we needed them. As a result this TriPod Kit is 100% 3D Printable and only has 1 ware part. Which actually makes it longer lasting than the original.
Material Changes
None of these changes come cheap to us. It took months to thoroughly test, and in our testing we make a concerning discovery. PLA is not a good mechanical plastic. PLA is our default plastic of choice when it comes to our designs and parts due to it’s ease of printing and costs. However PLA can be brittle if used in a mechanical application.
Which is why we spent a lot of time extensively testing our new default material PETG. We started using PETG back in the early 2020’s due to it’s heat resistant properties, as well as it’s ability to print in Clear. But it came with two drawbacks, stringing, and not being good for Stylus.
For the stylus problem, due to Nintendo systems using PET as the plastic for the touch screen we needed to use a softer plastic than it to prevent scratching the screen. Since PETG is a harder plastic than PLA, we’ve elected to continue printing our stylus in PLA.
For the stringing problem, this was solved with filament management and dryboxes. We are still in the process of learning to keep our filament as dry as possible. But the print results are fantastic.
The metal fasteners are not going anywhere. But now with my 4N screws I have almost full control over my supply chain and can make a 100% in house product. If you are interested you can buy a Kit today with our screws in it at the 16 Bit Store on Etsy or eBay.