3D printed BNC cap for Hamamatsu R6095

[stamasd]

I am just building a probe around a Hamamatsu R6095 (from Iradinc on ebay) with a 30x30mm NaI(Tl) crystal. The PMT came without a cap to mount a BNC connector so I made a quick project and 3D printed one. I wanted to share it here in case anyone is interested. These PMTs seem pretty popular.

It's a very simple object, essentially a hollow cylinder with OD=30mm, ID=27.5mm, h=30mm, one end closed with a 3mm thick plate that has a 10mm hole in the middle for the BNC. I printed one out of ABS and it turned out just the perfect fit. Thinking back I should have printed it out of dark plastic not white, ho hum. I'll fix that with some black tape later on.

I'm attaching some pictures, and also the .STL project file. I'm not including the printable .gcode because that one is specific to my printer and needs to be recreated for your printer (if you have one you know what I'm talking about). The only special thing that I did while compiling was set the infill to 1 so there won't be any hex air cells in the middle of the structure but rather the whole inside of the object is filled with plastic.

[Sesselmann]

Yep, 3D printing is all the new rage at the moment, and it certainly has some good uses, but I find a lot of the younger generation either have no manual skills or don't want to get their hands dirty, so stuff one can make in 5-10 minutes by hand is laboriously designed in 3D followed by a 12 hour wait for the printer to make it.

Here is essentially the same job, turned on my small lathe from a small piece of plastic rod off cut.

As an ex dental technician, I find that my manual skills need to be continuously used, else I feel myself clumsy and unable to do stuff that I know I can do.

IMG_0868.JPG

[stamasd]

Actually that required 10 minutes of intensive design, and took 12 minutes to print. :)

I agree that a lathe is very useful. If I had one I could advance much faster in my fusor build. However I would need one that can turn 5cm pieces of steel; I'm in fact actively looking for one, and from my research what I find is either:
-very expensive
-too large/heavy for the space I have available
-unreliable, with bad reviews
-not powerful enough to be useful to me.
Pick a minimum of 2 out of 4 above.

As for manual skills... I don't know what the state of 3D printing is these days because I haven't exactly been following it. But the printer above I built from parts about 4 years ago, and it requires constant fine-tuning to keep its alignment correct. At least it did until I built for it an auto-leveling system, but it still requires one-point fine adjustment with tweezers and a magnifying glass. :)

I'm thinking more and more of building a CNC router. It might substitute for a lathe at least for some types of parts I need done.

[stamasd]

Updated design of the BNC cap for R6095 and similar 1-1/8inch tubes, since I'm planning on building some detectors soon and I didn't like the previous design anymore. Too square, new one more rounded. Cosmetic update only. The zip file contains the stl object.