[ Piotr Barcz wrote in 201209 MMDIgest;

> There is a problem with this idea, though: the filament for the
> printer is pretty expensive, making printing large numbers of
> flanges too costly. 

I just ran Ian Hamilton's design on Thingiverse [201205 MMD] through
my slicer program and it shows the cost of the two pieces of a flange
(printed with PLA filament) to be about 11 cents and takes about one
hour to print. The fun thing with 3D printing of these is that you can
make them any color you want!

There are plenty of sources for fairly inexpensive PLA filament,
ranging from $18-$30 per roll. I believe the calculation for mine was
based on a roll cost of $22. ABS filament runs in the same price range,
perhaps a little more expensive but not by much.

I haven't printed the design yet but plan to at my earliest convenience
to see how it works. Personally I would prefer to have a one piece
design as opposed to the two piece one here, but at least it's a
beginning.

Rich Sitler

 [ I have printed the design and they came out very nice.  And I agree,
 [ the cost to print is very low. One of the options in the slicer is how
 [ "solid" the interior of the print is.  In most cases, you can cut the
 [ cost and improve the dimensional stability of the print by using an
 [ infill that is substantially less than 100%.  For those that would like
 [ to experiment, the Prusa Slicer is free and you can use it even if you
 [ don't have a 3d printer.  The slicer will let you inspect the layers
 [ that will be printed and it will give you an estamated cost of material
 [ that is pretty accurate.  It is fascinating.  The pair of roll ends
 [ that I printed weigh 16 grams.  At $17/kg for the Overture PETG I printed
 [ these with, that makes the material cost about $0.28 per pair.   --Jody