Thursday, May 25, 2017

Working model: sports bottle top

I now have a working flip-up sports bottle top ready to try out in real life. A few adjustments I've made since the last post:

  1. Created a nylon gasket that fits into the bottom cylinder to act as a seal.
  2. Reduced the bottom cylinder height so it doesn't bottom out before the bottle neck contacts the nylon washer. Since the top cap is of equal height, the whole thing is now a few millimeters shorter.
  3. Reversed the positions of the balls and sockets in the hinge. Now the outer part is more robust and shouldn't break.
  4. I found an error in the parametric design of the plug. Once circle wasn't bound to another, so when I resized the cylinder a bit the plug didn't fit the hole. That ruined one perfectly good print - the cap wouldn't snap closed.
As long as it's screwed on to the bottle tightly it doesn't leak. I'm hoping the snap fit of the rim and plug don't wear too much and get loose.