Weather Vane Connector

Beginning of March in Chicago we had strong winds gusting as high as 40mph. Our weather vane could not withstand the wind forces of mother nature. For the first time in sixteen years the weather vane blew off its stand.

A new connector had to be designed to connect the Vane to the directionals. Using AutoCAD Mechanical 2017 I designed a new connector piece. I exported the model to STL format, and generated G-Code using Simplify3D. The new connector was printed on my 3D printer FlashForge Creator Pro. I used exotic filament Stainless Steel PLA supplied by ProtoPasta. The 3D model was printed at extruder temperature 230C and platform temperature 60C. The 3D model took 6hours and 4minutes to print. The results are good, and the connector fits perfectly. The Stainless Steel filament came out really nice and has the feel and weight of real steel. I used 220 grit sandpaper to polish the stainless steel connector. This was a fun project to create, design and model the replacement part and