This style works in both tension and compression (pulling parts together and pushing them apart) and is great for hard to reach locations. The nut in this design is retained by one detent resembling a speed bump. The second type is 'slot style' as the right part in the intro picture illustrates. A downside is that you must have access on your part to the outer face of the pocket. This style works great in tension (pulling parts together) and is easiest to install the nuts. As you will see this style captures the nut using detents (little bumps) in the corners of the pocket. The pocket style is shown as the left part in the intro picture. I call the first style 'pocket style' as a hexagonal pocket is used to hold the nut. I will show you my two different styles for capturing the nuts. Your 3D printer must be well calibrated dimensionally or you will need to adjust my numbers to suit your printer. Punch or screwdriver for driving nuts into holes.CAD (Computer Aided Design) software capable of saving.3D printer or 3D printing service such as 3DHubs and through Instructables.Nuts and bolts (I am using M6 in this example).I hope I can save you time, teach you a CAD trick, or inspire you to come up with a better way to hold onto your nuts! While this isn't a revolutionary idea, I have scientific testing behind the sizing of these captured nuts. I have used many sizes of these in fixtures that have been through 10,000 cycles of fatigue testing at 800g's without failure or loosening. In this Instuctable I will show you my technique for creating captured nuts of any size that can be placed and strongly retained after the print is complete. It is possible to add a pause in your 3D print and embed nuts, but often my prints last days and run when I am not around to place nuts in the print. Regularly my designs require the use of captured nuts to joint parts together. I am often responsible for rapid prototyping parts on the job as a mechanical engineer.

FOKKER 7 STL FILES FOR 3D PRINTING