In the Netherlands it is quite common to hang panes of glass in lead in front of your windows as decoration. It adds some color to the space and privacy. These panes are quite heavy and require a metal loop to be welded to the frame to hang it. I tried soldering on a metal loop but it was not a strong enough connection (again, these panes are heavy).
These panes stood on the floor being useless for over two months until i randomly got an idea. The idea was to 3d print a corner that can hold the pane on each side and have a rope around it to attach and hang it. After some drawings I came up with the following designs.
How are the corners attached?
The 3d printed corners are not attached to the frame of the glass. They need to be held together by distributing the downward force of the glas pane inward using a wiring method I created. The following images shows three prototypes that each have the same wiring method openings at the top (clearly visible in V1 and the gif). The initial sketch shows it too.
Let’s start printing
Instead of the typical support my prefered choice is ‘tree support’. It requires less fillament thus faster to print and has less points of attachment to the printed part for easier removal. In the final design I found a way to not need support at all. It reduces printing time per part from 3 hours to 2.
The final result:
