Solving Another Problem With 3D Printing

Thanks to the Shitty Camera Challenge going on right now, I busted out my Digital Harinezumi 2 and have been shooting with it recently. You may have noticed in a previous post that I had blue tape on the DH2:

This is because the battery compartment lid broke a while back and it doesn't completely latch shut. The tape was doing an okay job keeping it shut, but I had to peel it open all the time because the micro SD card is in a slot in the battery compartment.

My first request to my husband (the CAD designer in the family) was to make a sort of cap to slide over the side of the camera with the battery compartment. But he thought that due to its smooth shape, such a cap wouldn't really be able to latch onto anything to stay secure. I figured a TPU (soft, slightly stretchy filament material) something or other would work, so I kept thinking about it.

I found a small, wide-ish rubber band and placed it across the area so it would cover a good portion of the battery compartment cover, and it kind of worked, especially if I wrapped it around the area twice, but of course, it is a very janky solution. I think some participants of the Shitty Camera Challenge would say that using a rubber band to hold together a "shitty" camera is quite appropriate (😆), but I still wanted something more custom and less janky. So Hubby printed out a TPU band wide enough to cover the area:

Eh, voilà! Nicer than a rubber band. We'll see how well the TPU lasts over time, as I noticed it was already feeling a bit stretched out when I eased it off the camera earlier today. But the nice thing is I can reprint it any time, in a different TPU (I have a translucent one with shimmer in it that I'm tempted to use ✨). Also, Hubby could potentially make a regular PLA (plastic) version of this band that might be a more durable solution. We'll see.

This is obviously a very niche problem, but again, it's what 3D printing is so good for! We're inching closer and closer to the replicators in Star Trek. 😀