Is this printable? Ray-Ban Clubmaster sunglasses

I saw this awesome design today on thingiverse. They are Ray-Ban Clubmaster Sunglasses. They are made by a student, but he has not tried printing them. What I was wondering (as he is too), is if these are actually printiable. Could the thin frames actually be printed without breaking or getting messed up in the process? Would they hold us if I were to print them out and then buy the lenses from Ray-Ban?

http://thingiverse-production.s3.ama...w_featured.jpghttp://thingiverse-production.s3.ama...w_featured.jpg

The fellow that designed these did so using AutoCAD 2013. I must say he did any awesome job. I just don't know if I want to attempt to print them, as I hate wasting filament :)

What do you think? Printable or not?

It's definately printable but there are a few issues you'll have to address and figure out. One is the thin lens retaining ring at the bottom. That's so thin that if it's ABS or PLA it will likely crack off. PLA might be better as it's not as brittle. Nylon might be a better material. Printing the groove in that ring that holds the lens might be hard to get too. You can't really print it with support because you'll break it when you try to remover the support. If you have a dual head printer, you can print support that can be dissolved.

You most likely won't get the thin elements that attach to the nose pads in a 3d print. They are too thin to have the neccessary structural rigidity. They'd snap too if 3d printed and that shape would be very hard to achieve anyway. Metal is better for those and then you'll have to figure out how to attach them. Remember, 3d printing is not the universal solution for "any" part fabrication. It's great for a lot of things and not good at all for others. It's your job to figure out what it's not particularly good for. Experimentation will teach you that. What's even better is that filament is pretty cheap. Those glasses probably take less than a couple of meters of filament if that. So why not just go for it? You'll learn a lot and maybe wind up with something you can use. However, it's not the easiest project out there to start out with. I has a number of tricky elements.

But you know, where there is a will there is a way. I'm sure someone will make these and spend 10 or 20 hours doing it and have some fantastic glasses. It really boils down to, is it really worth my time because you can buy fantastic RayBan fakes that are almost indistinguishable for the real thing for less than $20 on the street in NYC. So, I'm sure they are on the web somewhere. And, you'll likely never print your own that even come close to the durability and nice radiused edged, turtleshell knockoffs.

The only thing I might suggest on the lower "bar" that holds the lens in is to just use a section of filament cut from spool. Leave holes in the upper frame to glue it in place. As for the nose rest, you are on your own with that.

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just use a section of filament cut from spool

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I think that's actually a really great suggestion. The unextruded filament straight off of the spool seems to be a bit more flexible. You could take a section and tape it to a table. Then take a dremel and carve a groove along one side of the filament so when you glue it in the lens has a trap.

I think I've seen nose pads that screw into the frame. You might be able to buy two from a glasses repair site.

You could diverge from the design a bit and create a new nose support that would be compatible with 3d printing and not go with the wire and pad style. There might be a cool way to bring the upper rim down into a nose support. Face it, you are never going to print glasses that will trick anyone into believing that you are wearing a nice pair of Ray-Bans. But, you can certainly create your own style based on the popular Ray-Ban style.

In fact, it just got me to thinking. Here are a couple of ideas. Obviously there are dozens of ways to accomplish the task but here is a start.

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