Three failed prints and what they taught me

The Switchless design wasn't conceived on paper and then printed. It failed three times, and each failure left a rule that is still incorporated in it today.

One: the dock detached from the bed

The Hue dock is 114 mm long, which is exactly the size where shrinkage stress takes its toll. The part detached in the first layers and was dragged into a lump. The model was fine; it was adhesion. Since then, the approach is fixed: degrease the plate, add a brim, place the long part along the direction of bed movement, and print the first layer at half speed.

Two: the steel rings were dragged along

Steel is printed into the dock so that the Hue dimmer stays on it magnetically without a visible magnet or glue. This is done via a pause in the print: on the layer where the cavities are still open, you place the rings and then continue printing. The first attempt failed because the cavity was 1.4 mm high and the rings were 1.6 mm. They protruded, the nozzle dragged them along, and tore open the surface. Lesson: the cavity is now calculated from the thickest ring in the bag, not from the size stated on the bag.

Three: the rebate bridged over air

The holder's edge initially had a rebate in the visible surface of the front, a recessed edge into which the edge would fall. That surface prints with the visible surface on the bed. A recess in it is therefore only bridged at depth, over air, and those strands sag. Exactly on the surface that you see later, there was a messy band. Since then, the hardest rule of this project applies: never have a recess in the surface that prints face-down. It's allowed on the back, because there the cavity opens upwards during printing.

What's in it now

The current design prints support-free, with the visible surface on the bed and all recesses on the back. What you see is a first layer on glass, no layers hanging over air. That wasn't an aesthetic choice; those three prints decided it.