3D Printed Climbing holds - finishing tips for great texture

[@DawnxMoon]

I'm waiting on a printer but was planning on making a bunch of holds for a home board. Genius tip for the texture! I was originally thinking of coating them in a sand-filled resin but this is way simpler. For larger holds, my plan was 30-50% infill + some sort of internal 100% filled structure around the screw holes, and then flooding the empty space with resin to solidify the whole thing.

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

Nice idea! Be careful baking the resin, lots of resin gets very smelly and weak when baked. The 3d printed parts need to be 100% infill because the plastic melts and flows. I think for bigger holds sand and paint would work well, I've done another video about making volumes that has some discussion of this process, would probably be applicable to printed holds. For bigger slopers or chunky jugs concrete works well, done a video on those too

[@DawnxMoon]

@@gilesbarton-owen6783 yeah I meant bake with sand/salt first and fill the void with resin once the texture is set. You could fully pack the inside of the hold with salt/sand as well to stop the melted plastic from deforming all over the place. Something to experiment with I guess.

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

For sure, I'd probably print basically a thick shell (3-4mm) then pack, bake, then fill the back in with resin. Let me know how it goes! Was thinking of doing the filling step with concrete as I've got a load laying around

[@MichaelTheGuy]

This is so awesome! I’m gonna definitely try this over my spring break

[@jeralm]

I've been designing a part for my printer which I want to be as strong as possible, and I've designed it to be remelted in salt, while mounted in it's mating aluminium parts. The part is basically a very short M8x1 hollow bolt printed in PETG, so the remelting in-place will be necessary to ensure the threads stay sharp and the tensile strength il sufficient. Having messed with salt remelt before, I knew that these voids show up at the high points of the part, even with 100% infill. I suspect that this is partly due to small air voids that are left in even 100% infill areas. I know this is something that is visible when you try to print transparent parts; bubbles are very hard to avoid. Anyways, the point I wanted to get to, is that I designed sacrificial sprues into my part, so that the void can "flow up" the sprues, which can then be cut off. I'm not done designing the whole system so I've yet to actually try the remelt and see the result. I've also been concerned with finding some sort of mold release agent for the PETG threads, I hope vaseline will do an adequate job

[@jeralm]

Also, I've found that pool salt is a very cheap source of pure, nearly food grade salt. With the quantities pool salt comes in it could become pretty economical to make very large, multi-part holds, that are simply melted together for assembly. Maybe even use pellets instead of filament to bulk them up in the oven

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

Good idea! Will try it next time I'm remelting!

[@MakiMakixc]

Uhh .. I like to try this! I'm new to climbing and would like to try and 3D scan (with some app like Polycam) existing boulders in the gym .. mix mash them around and build them with your method for a nice little privat training wall.

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

I'd encourage you not to just copy someone else's work unless they give explicit permission. Hold design is a skill that deserves to be respected. Natural rock is a great candidate for scanning, or try and design your own using inspiration from holds you love. Good luck!

[@PebelWasTaken]

@@gilesbarton-owen6783 I think for personal use copying holds is no different than buying them second hand. Both of these options give no money to shaper.

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

@@PebelWasTaken I disagree, I think it's distasteful to copy someone's work. Where as second hand value is an important part of first hand value. When making a hold you have the opportunity to make something original so why not!

[@PebelWasTaken]

@@gilesbarton-owen6783 I am not onboard with the idea that copying is wrong or distasteful. I also dont think everyone needs to make something original every time. If you start making your own holds it is inevitable you will start designing your own but as this commenter said its their first time printing anything for climbing. Making the process work alone is hard so if your end products are bad even when you get everything work its going to discorage you from trying again. All artisans copy to learn.

[@MichaelTheGuy]

I have a question- is there something about PLA that makes this process work? Would it be worth it to try this process with a stronger plastic like PETG?

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

Nothing particular about pla except in terms of ultimate tensile strength and stiffness it is more or less second only to polycarbonate. Petg is significantly less strong but much more flexible, however, flexibility isn't a desirable property because the resin itself is quite brittle. The tough pla I use mediates between the two properties nicely to give stiff, strong but not too brittle parts which makes them a pragmatic hold to set with, with less likelihood of cracking when overtorquing. Stefan over on CNC Kitchen has done some fantastic material tests looking at actual strength numbers. There's also the question of bonding between the plastic and the resin... I'm not sure how Petg stacks up but the bonding with pla is pretty poor so I doubt it will be a huge factor. I'd say if you have a lot of Petg lying around, it would work well, probably better than regular old pla due to the cracking issues

[@jamster2400]

I reckon the holes in the back could be shrinkage in a similar way to an injection moulded part would … maybe

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

That's definitely one of my hypotheses, otherwise it's: voids in the initial print (pretty sure it's not), mold swell (my current hypothesis) or the plastic soaking into the salt enough to reduce the volume (definitely a factor). I suspect it's a combination of all of the above and the shrinkage

[@JZUCF30]

Do you have an oven just for baking plastic? Cause I know it's not safe to bake plastics in a conventional oven

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

What do you mean "not safe"? Very specifically what aspects of heating tough pla to those temperatures are not safe and how does it effect the oven? I'm much more concerned about ventilation than I am about the oven, which is a strong argument against doing it in your kitchen but I'm pretty sure the oven doesn't matter

[@JZUCF30]

@gilesbarton-owen6783 sorry I forgot to clarify, conventional oven as in the same oven you use to cook food. You run the risk of contaminating your food with toxic fumes

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

It's something to worry about for sure, I'm not hugely concerned because it doesn't leave a smell in the oven, compared to the direct fumes that you're breathing in. Definitely would want to have a dedicated oven if you were doing it at all often

[@markwrightakalefty]

Guys that do wooden inlay work often use a pot of sand under that’s being heated to create dark areas on the wooden pieces (Playing with light and shadow). You say hot salt has a corrosive nature I wonder if you could do something similar with salt and a wooden hold to impart a texture on a wooden hold. Just thinking out loud! Ha

[@msglk]

Are the models for those hold somewhere online? Didn’t find them, but they look cool 😁

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

www.thingiverse.com/gbartonowen/collections/23940070/things they're mostly here

[@earthsmedicine445]

I designed my own 5 in 1 PLA pinch block, haven't printed any climbing holds yet though. Theres a setting in CURA called fuzzy that lets you adjust the abrasiveness of the surface as well.

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

I was thinking about curas fuzzy setting, I haven't got round to using cura yet but it sounds really interesting. I do wonder if it would end up the right sort of grippy, compared to real climbing holds, but definitely worth a shot

[@earthsmedicine445]

@@gilesbarton-owen6783It takes some tweaking to get the right finish but I think it works work. I haven't designed much of my own designs and still learning how to use Fusion 360 + cura. Lots of test cube prints to get the grip I like, great share on the salt annealing with the heat too

[@ttttiiiieeeessss]

I printed a few holds in petg and one pla+ with the fuzzy skin setting, if you give it a finish with a wire brush or a light sand with some 200grit it becomes quite grippy, its still a slight directional grippy-ness tho but totally good enough.

[@nicolasdziemian9942]

Why is it expensive? After initial set up costs, I think it could come out cheaper

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

Definitely depends on the size of the holds you're making, PLA is £20/kg vs resin costing much less. If you're making large simple holds its potentially cheaper to buy them just from a material cost point of view. Of course having a 3d printer etc is not a free thing. For small crimps they're definitely price competitive even with processing time factored in

[@nicolasdziemian9942]

@@gilesbarton-owen6783 Yeah sounds like a good option for home wall holds

[@ttttiiiieeeessss]

@@gilesbarton-owen6783 I managed to get one bouldering route per spool of filament, printing some one hand sized holds, crimps and pinches and a couple of toe steps. Great value for at home and or testing your own hold designs.

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

That's so cool, nice work!

[@Abovethesuns1]

I have these holds on my home wall

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

Awesome!

[@tokagehideto]

Are these prints PLA? this look amazing. I really want to try this process but my printer don't want to 😂

[@gilesbarton-owen6783]

Yep, normal black PLA printed at 100% infill. I've been printing on the hot side, 207C. Definitely doesn't matter if the print quality is a bit lacking especially if you wet the climbing surface and sprinkle some coarser salt on those bits first.