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As far as I'm concerned this is one of the main killer apps for 3D printers - making battery packs for vintage electronics. It's great to breath new life into o

As far as I'm concerned this is one of the main killer apps for 3D printers - making battery packs for vintage electronics. It's great to breath new life into old equipment which just needs a shot of lithium to be revived. I'm not a huge fan of Thingiverse but I still try to curate a couple of battery related channels there: https://www.thingiverse.com/dosman33/collections/two-way-radio-battery-packs-chargers-cradles-etc https://www.thingiverse.com/dosman33/collections/two-way-rad... https://www.thingiverse.com/dosman33/collections/power-tool-batteries-adapters-etc https://www.thingiverse.com/dosman33/collections/power-tool-... I also released a universal battery charging cradle system I call the Gadget Hamper to help people out who design new battery packs: https://github.com/dosman33/Gadget-Hamper https://github.com/dosman33/Gadget-Hamper

dheera 6y ago
I've thought of this but people also would need to use something durable, e.g. carbon-fiber-reinforced nylon. You definitely don't want your battery pack shattering if you drop it. The 3D printer world today seems to have an unfortunate love affair with PLA which is for both temperature and durability reasons a very bad choice for battery pack enclosures, and a bad choice for just about everything else. I'm really not sure how to get the word out there that PLA is outdated and should be deprecated for just about every 3D print use case. (Personally I use PETG For just about everything, but for a battery pack I'd probably want something carbon-fiber reinforced.)
- NegativeLatency 6y ago
  There is a slightly higher difficulty with petg, my first print was with pla and had no issues, with petg I have had slight heat shrinkage and adhesion problems
- dosman33 6y ago
  I've become a large user of PET-G for some of the reasons you outline. I've never had a problem with strength the way that I use it in my designs, PET-G is plenty durable for a small device which spends 99% of its life inside a larger device. Also the heat resistance makes it tolerate the summer heat of cars which is also important. Also PET-G has the added benefit of not giving me cancer like ABS. It definitely has a learning curve and I wouldn't fault anyone for going other routes rather than taking the time to get a feel for it.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Yep, same reasons. My printer prints PETG pretty cleanly with no fuss. I imagine if someone used the same exact printer (Prusa i3 MK3), the same exact filament (eSun), my same exact settings (https://github.com/dheera/3d/blob/master/settings/slic3r-config-bundle-esun-petg.ini https://github.com/dheera/3d/blob/master/settings/slic3r-con...), and my same exact textured bed sheet, same exact procedure (Windex, then Magigoo, then print), they should have zero problems as well. It's not even tricky. It prints just like PLA with this "recipe". The only problem seems to be that there is a lot of conflicting information about what works for PETG but people just need to think in terms of configuration sets like the above. If you use the Prusa PETG settings with eSun filament it fails miserably -- the prints come off the bed mid-print.
- StillBored 6y ago
  I think the larger concern should be fire safety. Normal 3d printer filaments don't have the fire retardants required by UL/etc for power electronics. I've experienced power supply and battery failures that were contained by their enclosures enough times in my life to take this very seriously. Had any of those cases been wrapped in common PLA/PTEG/ABS from a 3d printer, i'm sure it would have been much worse. So, if your printing anything that has a likelyhood of catching fire you should probably be doing it with something like: https://www.3dxtech.com/flame-retardant-filaments/firewire-flame-retardant-abs/ https://www.3dxtech.com/flame-retardant-filaments/firewire-f... or just wrapping that part of the design in sheet metal.
  - dheera 6y ago
    How does this flame retardant ABS work in the event of a lithium battery fire? Are there flame retardant PETG? Are they any better than just printing with normal filament and spraying flame retardant on it? I've been hesitant to use lithium batteries in home robotics projects, but I can't find charging and power mux boards for NiMH, so that has been a huge blocker in making robots that charge and operate at the same time. Also I wonder if it is possible to put mini pressurized CO2 balls inside the battery enclosure such that if a fire happens they explode and release CO2, putting out the fire?
    - StillBored 6y ago
      I suspect to have the right answer you will need to read the relevant standards/cert and understand how it interacts with your design. But the general theory as I understand it generally is not that the plastic may not burn, only that they are self extinguishing. V-0 like that filament means it will extinguish itself within a maximum of 10 seconds after the ignition source is removed. Regular filament acts more like an accelerant, put a flame near it and it burns quite vigorously, and for a long time. Meaning anything near it that can burn will likely catch fire too.
    - mschuster91 6y ago
      > Also I wonder if it is possible to put mini pressurized CO2 balls inside the battery enclosure such that if a fire happens they explode and release CO2, putting out the fire? No, that may momentarily put out the flames but as long as the thermal runaway condition is still present it will reignite. The only way to stop a battery fire, which is actually a metal fire, is to permanently suffocate it - usually by dumping heaps of salt, cement or salt on it which melts and so removes oxygen from the fault area - and then, at least for electric cars, to dump the car in a container full of water and keep it there until dismantling, so that the water acts as a thermal buffer to prevent reignition.
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  > I'm really not sure how to get the word out there that PLA is outdated and should be deprecated for just about every 3D print use case. It works fine for 90% of use cases and is easy to use. Aside from that, you can buy virgin PLA filament which is pretty darn nontoxic. Most other plastics have a variety of negative effects on humans, from physical interaction with the finished product but also from the printing process.
- f0xf1re 6y ago
  My former employer wraps battery packs in flexible fiberglass sheet before potting them in epoxy; it makes them shatter-resistant.
Topgamer7 6y ago
Start using myminifactory like the rest of us who got pissed off with how they manage (well... don't manage) thingiverse.

dheera 6y ago

I've thought of this but people also would need to use something durable, e.g. carbon-fiber-reinforced nylon. You definitely don't want your battery pack shattering if you drop it. The 3D printer world today seems to have an unfortunate love affair with PLA which is for both temperature and durability reasons a very bad choice for battery pack enclosures, and a bad choice for just about everything else. I'm really not sure how to get the word out there that PLA is outdated and should be deprecated for just about every 3D print use case. (Personally I use PETG For just about everything, but for a battery pack I'd probably want something carbon-fiber reinforced.)

NegativeLatency 6y ago
There is a slightly higher difficulty with petg, my first print was with pla and had no issues, with petg I have had slight heat shrinkage and adhesion problems
dosman33 6y ago
I've become a large user of PET-G for some of the reasons you outline. I've never had a problem with strength the way that I use it in my designs, PET-G is plenty durable for a small device which spends 99% of its life inside a larger device. Also the heat resistance makes it tolerate the summer heat of cars which is also important. Also PET-G has the added benefit of not giving me cancer like ABS. It definitely has a learning curve and I wouldn't fault anyone for going other routes rather than taking the time to get a feel for it.
- dheera 6y ago
  Yep, same reasons. My printer prints PETG pretty cleanly with no fuss. I imagine if someone used the same exact printer (Prusa i3 MK3), the same exact filament (eSun), my same exact settings (https://github.com/dheera/3d/blob/master/settings/slic3r-config-bundle-esun-petg.ini https://github.com/dheera/3d/blob/master/settings/slic3r-con...), and my same exact textured bed sheet, same exact procedure (Windex, then Magigoo, then print), they should have zero problems as well. It's not even tricky. It prints just like PLA with this "recipe". The only problem seems to be that there is a lot of conflicting information about what works for PETG but people just need to think in terms of configuration sets like the above. If you use the Prusa PETG settings with eSun filament it fails miserably -- the prints come off the bed mid-print.
StillBored 6y ago
I think the larger concern should be fire safety. Normal 3d printer filaments don't have the fire retardants required by UL/etc for power electronics. I've experienced power supply and battery failures that were contained by their enclosures enough times in my life to take this very seriously. Had any of those cases been wrapped in common PLA/PTEG/ABS from a 3d printer, i'm sure it would have been much worse. So, if your printing anything that has a likelyhood of catching fire you should probably be doing it with something like: https://www.3dxtech.com/flame-retardant-filaments/firewire-flame-retardant-abs/ https://www.3dxtech.com/flame-retardant-filaments/firewire-f... or just wrapping that part of the design in sheet metal.
- dheera 6y ago
  How does this flame retardant ABS work in the event of a lithium battery fire? Are there flame retardant PETG? Are they any better than just printing with normal filament and spraying flame retardant on it? I've been hesitant to use lithium batteries in home robotics projects, but I can't find charging and power mux boards for NiMH, so that has been a huge blocker in making robots that charge and operate at the same time. Also I wonder if it is possible to put mini pressurized CO2 balls inside the battery enclosure such that if a fire happens they explode and release CO2, putting out the fire?
  - StillBored 6y ago
    I suspect to have the right answer you will need to read the relevant standards/cert and understand how it interacts with your design. But the general theory as I understand it generally is not that the plastic may not burn, only that they are self extinguishing. V-0 like that filament means it will extinguish itself within a maximum of 10 seconds after the ignition source is removed. Regular filament acts more like an accelerant, put a flame near it and it burns quite vigorously, and for a long time. Meaning anything near it that can burn will likely catch fire too.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > Also I wonder if it is possible to put mini pressurized CO2 balls inside the battery enclosure such that if a fire happens they explode and release CO2, putting out the fire? No, that may momentarily put out the flames but as long as the thermal runaway condition is still present it will reignite. The only way to stop a battery fire, which is actually a metal fire, is to permanently suffocate it - usually by dumping heaps of salt, cement or salt on it which melts and so removes oxygen from the fault area - and then, at least for electric cars, to dump the car in a container full of water and keep it there until dismantling, so that the water acts as a thermal buffer to prevent reignition.
the_pwner224 6y ago
> I'm really not sure how to get the word out there that PLA is outdated and should be deprecated for just about every 3D print use case. It works fine for 90% of use cases and is easy to use. Aside from that, you can buy virgin PLA filament which is pretty darn nontoxic. Most other plastics have a variety of negative effects on humans, from physical interaction with the finished product but also from the printing process.
f0xf1re 6y ago
My former employer wraps battery packs in flexible fiberglass sheet before potting them in epoxy; it makes them shatter-resistant.

Topgamer7 6y ago

Start using myminifactory like the rest of us who got pissed off with how they manage (well... don't manage) thingiverse.