Step 1: What’s out there already?

During my initial research, I found that there were a few models already out on thingiverse, which gave me a good place to start. At least I could use the measurements and dimensions of the license plate mount! And just to begin, I was only able to speculate if the parts out there would fit my ’22 Grom, even though the parts I found were designed for a ’18.

From what I understand, there was a pretty good amount of bodywork that was updated for the ’22 Grom, so I would definitely be surprised if the part designed for a ’18 would fit, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

Not surprisingly, the part didn’t fit, but it was a great starting point because at least I had something I could mount the tag to, as well as a pre-designed fitting for the stock tag light housing.

Step 2: See What I’m Working With

The part of the part (engineering is difficult to explain!) that holds the tag was great and was perfectly fitting to reuse in the first iteration of my redesign. From ’18 to ’22, the undertail had been pretty well redesigned, meaning the ’22’s undertail was much narrower and a completely different shape. The ’22 has a sort of trapezoid shape that is inset for the tail with asymmetrical holes for bolts and wires. With that in mind, and a caliper in my hand, I got to work jotting down all the measurements.

Step 3: Crack Open A Can of Blender

With measurements in hand, I went ahead and began working on the design. I was able to import the .STL file from Thingiverse which gave me a good starting point. The only strange thing with .STL file imports from online is the scaling isn’t always preserved. For some reason, the .STL was something like 10,000 times larger than Blender scale. For 3D prints, I typically use millimeters as the default unit of measurement since my print volume is 220mm*220mm*250mm. Luckily I was able to fix the scale by changing it from 1 to something like 0.0001 (again, not sure on the number of zeros, but I got it eventually).

Using my measurements from the garage, I was able to create the shape of the volume to fill the inset of the undertail. Once I’d modeled everything to scale, I scaled everything down just a “smidge” to ensure that the piece would fit. After all, making a peg with the same dimensions as the hole would ensure that the peg won’t fit in the hole. So there’s a little bit of “feeling” that goes into the calculations.

Step 4: Discover Your Oversights

This one was tough because it really required me to be intentional about making absolutely sure that the turn signals had enough room to be mounted flushly against the side of the tail tidy, while at the same time, not interfering with the overall design in such a way that would prevent the entire part as a whole from not fitting within the undertail inset. Again, kinda difficult to explain, but once you’re this far in it, I just kept feeling my way through it until I got it right. Luckily I had some filament I didn’t mind using to create these early prototypes. That way I can just print my next iteration and discover its flaws as I try to install it.

Step 5: Redesign, Reprint, And Discover Your Other Oversights

In my second design, I knew I had to bring the turn signal mounting holes up forward, so they weren’t up against the tag mount. In doing so, I also took the liberty of making some holes to route wiring that made more sense and aligned with existing holes in the underseat bodywork. With those changes made, I cleaned off the print bed, re-leveled the bed, and sent the print off to run overnight. This one was much closer, and the part fit more suggly in the undertail inset. This time, because the turn signal mounts weren’t flush with the edge of the part, mounting the signal was impossible. Also, the mounting point was so high against the undertail, even if it was flush, the signal would not be able to clear the bodywork to achieve a flush mount.

Step 6: Redesign, Reprint, and Barely Get Away With It

With the turn signal mounts finally low enough and flush enough to mount actual turn signals, the rest of the design worked pretty well. It took some finagling, but I was finally able to run the wiring that previously existed in the huge stock fender back up underneath the seat. A last minute change in version 3 was the decision to increase the angle of the tag mount so that the tag faced more upward instead of being so flat as you can see in the next to this paragraph. Unfortunately, that decision ate into the space I needed to mount the stock tag light housing (which turned out to be required, due to the sizing and spacing of the holes above the plate. They were designed to mount the stock tag light housing).

However, I was able to use a part of the stock tag light housing to mount the light and get it working. For the time being, I’m totally fine riding with a bare bulb for the tag light. If I were to do a version 4, I’d probably make a version that can accommodate the entire stock tag light housing, as well as an alternate version that would have a custom tag light housing built in. If you guys are interested in me doing that and making it available, just let me know and I’d be happy to design and print it for you for $25 plus shipping.

Step 7: Shred The Streets

That’s it for this design and build, thanks for checking it out! If you’d like me to design and build any other cool Grom accessories, I have a ’22 Grom now, I freaking love it, and I’m probably going to print more stuff for it. Ride safe and praise God always.

The First World Problem

When I first got my 3D printer a few weeks ago, my mind was racing and coming up with all sorts of crazy stuff to print. I still constantly think, “Can I print that?”. Learning about the limitations of what a printer can and can’t do is definitely interesting and presents a sort of fun challenge. After burning through all my sample filament after initial setup on my first weekend of printing, I wanted to make my first roll of “real” filament count. So instead of just printing a bunch of files I found online (most of which disappeared under the piles of toys in my kids’ room) I wanted to print something that would actually server a purpose and be useful instead of a Flexi Rex. No offence to Flexi Rex- He’s definitely a cool way to learn about 3D printed hinges!

I recently got a new toothbrush and it didn’t fit in the built-in holder in the bathroom. Yes, first world problems, I know, but just for the sake of creating something that was a “custom” design to solve a problem and be useful, I thought this was a good starter candidate. Hopefully I’ll get better at solving issues with better, smarter 3D prints down the road, but this will be a fun learning experience!

Some measurements had to be estimated just because I couldn’t exactly wrap the caliper around certain parts of the brush and the entire caliper wasn’t capable of measuring the entire length of the brush. So as a rough estimeate, I held the caliper beside certain design elements of the brush just to get that individual part’s size. I measured the handle and the brush head separately. I think this worked out better anyway, simply because the handle is a lot bigger in diameter than the brush head anyway, plus the tapering of the handle into the shaft of the brush head was a design feature that I wanted to take note of, especially since I was designing the toothbrush holder to be compatible with this specific model brush.

Step 1: Measure Everything

The first step was to get as many measurements of my toothbrush as I thought would be needed. I measured the base, the handle, and brush heads in both directions which essentially produced a box model that represented a bounding box for my toothbrush. With those dimensions in place, it was time to start my simple toothbrush holder design.

Speaking of being compatible with this specific model of toothbrush, I wanted to design a wall-mounted toothbrush holder that could accommodate two brushes, as well as allow both of those brushes to be charged simultaneously as they were being stored. My original design was a small, miniature table-like design that would have sat on the countertop beside the sink. However, after rethinking the idea, there’s not a ton of countertop space to spare, so I switched gears and started thinking about a wall-mounted design that achieved essentially the same functionality as the original plan. Just hang two brushes and allow them to charge while hanging.

Step 2: Creating a Rough Scale Model

Once I had collected all of the measurements of my toothbrush, it was time to crack open Blender and enter in all my measurements. Once I created some basic bounding boxes for my toothbrush measurements, it almost, sorta, kinda began to look like a toothbrush.

Once I had the toothbrush modeled, I was ready to begin work on the design of the toothbrush holder. Just to illustrate my first idea, it was going to be a sort of table-top design with two large holes for the handles that stepped down into two samller holes that extended through the bottom of the frame. The smaller holes would allow for toothbrush charging while resting on the platform. The platform would be supported by 4 legs at the corners. As I mentioned before, this design was okay, but meant crowding up an already limited countertop.

Step 3: Modeling the Holder

Once I had the toothbrush reference model in the scene, I was ready to begin designing a simple wall-mounted holder. Since there are a zillion toothbrush holder out there already, it wasn’t hard to settle on a simple, tried-and-true hanging design. The holder would consist of a main panel with small hooks protruding from it that would cradle the brush head.

Step 4: Exporting For Cura

This was the sleeper challenge on this project. For some reason I hit a wall going from Blender to Cura for printer export. Even though I had modeled everything to scale in millimeters in Blender, for some reason, I kept getting issues when attempting to import into Cura, my slicing program. Long story short, and after several several several failed export attempts, I think I can fairly safely conclude that most of the issues were caused by not running the model through the 3D Print Toolbox addon. During the modeling process, I employed a stack of modifiers to get the design I was looking for. Even after applying scale, rotation, location, I was still getting import problems from Cura saying the model was extremely small and had to be scaled up 10,000 times, and it still wasn’t visible. Finally, I realized I wasn’t running the 3D Print Toolbox addon, so I gave it a shot. To my surprise, I found faces that were inside the mesh that weren’t supposed to be there (as a result of a mirror modifier). After cleaning up over 400 duplicated vertices, I re-imported. It came in, but the scale was still messed up. I ended up scaling 1000% in Cura and double checked the dimensions to ensure they were the exact same as the dimensions coming from Blender. The seemed to match, so I went ahead and sliced the model.

Once the print came off the bed, it was time to see if the brush actually fit. It did… kinda. Turns out I was a bit TOO precise with the exact width of the brush neck and ended up modeling too close to my reference. It kinda fit, with the bristles facing outward, but it fits much more confortably with the bristles facing right or left. Just not to self, leave room for error, leave room for breathing, leave room for ease of putting the brush in the slot imperfectly. Other than that, it works!

The Research

Last weekend, I started doing research on 3D printers. It’s crazy to think that 3D printing has already been around for 10+ years! So, like with anything in the tech world, the longer it’s available, the better the technology gets and the lower the price gets. Who knew that you can get your very own entry-level desktop 3D printer for around $300? So I started researching all the different types of 3D printing, different methods of printing, different types of filament, the different physical characteristics of filament, etc. I’ll spare you all the details, but I ended up settling on a printer that was released in 2020 (last year, at the time of this writing). So it was relatively new, and the price point was just what I was after. There were lots of benefits to this printer and having a large community, software availability for Linux, and a sub $500 price tag were my top 3 criteria.

The Build

There will likely be people out there who would chalk this one up as a negative thing for the Creality Ender 3 V2, but I personally didn’t mind. There was a decent amount of setup before you could do your first print. Now, keep in mind, I’m brand new to 3D printing, and I had almost no idea what to expect. Some printers like MakerBot and some others are ready to print right out of the box. However, because there is so much assembly on the front end, I think it helped me gain a better understanding of what everything does, where everything goes, and how it all works together. That way if (when) anything breaks or wears out, I’ll know what it is and how to replace it. So first up, get everything out of the box.

The Instructions

It’s all too easy to criticize some instruction manuals, but this manual, I think was fair. It got me most of the way there. The only thing I had to go beyond the manual to figure out how to do was bed leveling, because the way I was doing it was going to take me legitimately 2 hours. The pictures were pretty clear, but you did have to pay very close attention to them! Some of the parts were EXACTLY the same, with the only difference being where holes were drilled. I did have a couple of times where I put a part on, then realized I had to take it right back off because there was physically no way to assemble the next part with the previous part still on.

Note: The soldering iron was not included or required for this assembly. It just happened to be sitting on my desk.

Step 1

Install the Z-axis profile (left). This was pretty straightforward. The only thing that was a little tricky was the Z-axis limit switch. Once you figure out the method used to attach it, the same method is used to attach other components the same way.

Step 2

Once the left Z-axis profile is up and the Z-axis limiter switch is installed, you’ll want to install the right Z-axis profile. In the manual, all this happens in one step.

Step 3

In the photo above, you can actually see the Z-axis motor kit and T-type screw have already been assembled and installed. The T-type screw came with a protective rubber sleeve. You’ll want to remove that before installing.

Step 4

Install pneumatic joint, XE-axis kit, and synchronous belt. Sounds complicated, but it’s not that bad. I did have to run a search for the pneumatic joint, just because I was unfamiliar with what it looked like and how big it was. Once I saw a photograph, and not a drawing, it was easy to find. 2 pneumatic joints are included with the printer and they’re both in a small pouch with some other parts. So if you’re not exactly sure what you’re looking for, it can feel like it might be missing or something. Once the XE-axis kit is assembled, you roll on the nozzle kit from the END. At first glance, I was under the impression I’d have to remove one of the wheels on the nozzle kit to have it hook over the edge of the XE-axis it. Great news, you don’t have to go through all the trouble. Simply slide the wheels over the end of the gantry bar. By the time you’re done, you’ll have something like the pics below.

Step 5

Install the X-axis tensioner. This one, for me, was pretty confusing. The way the illustrations were drawn made it seem like I was missing a pulley wheel that went on the right end of the X-axis profile. Turns out, by the time I’d finished this step, the artist just drew the X-axis tensioner belt unnaturally curving around an invisible part that wasn’t addressed. Once I put that together in my head, the rest was easy. I kinda group a few of these steps together and skipped ahead just to see if the next steps would give me clues on how to complete my current step. That method seemed to work for me.

Steps 6-9

By this point, your build should be really starting to look like the picture on the box. The only steps that really remain are applying the gantry, which just screws into the top of both Z-axis profiles, install the material rack, and plug in each of the components. Once you follow the wires and look at each of the connections, it’s pretty easy to hook up. Each of the connections are pretty dummy proof. Once you install the screen on the right side of the base, you’re almost ready to print!

First Boot Up

My First Mistake

It was bound to happen, so I guess it was best to go ahead and get it out of the way before I even printed anything. I’d assembled everyhing and just turned on the printer. it was idle, just sitting at the start up screen. Awesome, no problems. Next came the step where I needed to level the print bed. There are wheels under each of the corners of the print bed that adjust the hight of the bed to make sure it is level. Right out of the box, who knows what level they’re at. Unfortunately, there’s no real warning in the manual, so I figured out how to ACTUALLY level the bed after I’d layed a huge scratch into the bottom edge of my print bed. I hit “auto-home” which sent the nozzle to the bottom left corner of the print bed. I adjusted that corner, then with servo motors engaged, told the nozzle to move to the other corner of the bed. It started scraping its way to the other corner and there was nothing I could do. The motors started grinding and popping and then it hit the clip on the bottom edge that holds the glass in place. It was so awful, but now at least I know to ALWAYS level the be with servo motors DISENGAGED.

Get On With It Already! Let’s Print!

The SD card that comes included with the printer has two default “test” files that are already on it. They come in the form of .gcode files. .gcode is essentially the result of slicing software, but it’s path instructions for the nozzle. Where should it go and when it should start and stop the flow of print filament.

First Print