収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Last weekend I took the 3D-printed PHA-filament bike trailer adapter and cargo trailer on as long of a run as I really intend to take it, a trip to another town’s QFC.

The last time I tried it was with this same design, but printed using a fairly cheap PLA filament. The PLA survived all the previous short test trips (including two with actual cargo), but absolutely didn’t make it to this store.

This time had the additional complication of an adventure wherein I went down a handicap curb cut on the way back, but not in the exact middle of the cut. This meant that one of the wheels dropped a a little off the curb as I biked into the roadway. It didn’t drop far – less than half the curb height – but somehow this cause the entire cart to flip over, hard.

I’m still confused about why. I didn’t even have it loaded high or heavily. All it had was half a grocery bag full of frozen veg some cheese, and a couple of other small items, along with three boxes of cereal, held in place with an elastic cargo net. It stacked so low in the cart that I left the roll bar/cover assembly down, lying flat against the sides of the cart, as if it were empty.

And yet, flip! I just don’t know how the fuck that happened.

But! It appeared to be intact, and the bike was okay other than the rear fender getting kicked off centre and having to be aligned back again, so I just flipped it back over, made sure everything was still inside, then biked the rest of the way home and it was okay.

(The bike is definitely fine, I had it out the next day and the day after for a long ride, and no problems.)

Anyway, I finally took the cargo trailer hitch adapter complete off the bike for a proper examination, and the result is…

[Windows TA-DA.wav]

…it’s fine! 100% good. The extra flexibility of PHA really seems to have helped. Either that, or the layer adhesion vs. PLA is as much better as the old Filaments.ca makers claimed. Or could be both. Either way, it’s dramatically more durable.

The soft metal support bracket – the part that makes it the “hybrid” dragon model – bent a little. I straightened it out, and made some adjustments for a slightly better fit. Just to be safe. But it really was fine; I could’ve kept using it as it was.

So as of now this is the production model, I guess! Not that there’s going to be a production run since it’s built for exactly my bike and this cargo carrier, lol, BUT it does seem to work and even with the inexplicable trailer flip came through the long ride completely functional.

Even the little crack I’d talked about before – on a part I’ve since engineered out – turned out not to be a crack. Just a weird printing seam caused by the way I set up the variable infill on the model.

And that really sorts out this project – I think it’s done. Victory again for TAK! I guess. 😀

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.