Free beer 3D Prints and ongoing issues

It’s a long story Hivers so grab a can and sit down.

Back at the end of October last year I noticed my local pub in Newton the Taproom at the Teignworthy Brewery was having issues with the beer signage on their taps.

Because their selection changes frequently they were just using Bluetac to stick a beer mat to the pump which did not alway work that well. So Sticking my 3D Print head on I came up with a solution that would hold the mat in place and allowed it to be changed easily.

The design wasn’t too difficult but I thought it would be the hard bit, how wrong could I be. The holders take about 2 hours to print so a few days and they were all ready to go.

After cleaning up the taps the first option was to use a PVA glue to stick the beer mat holders into the pump. All seemed great in the beginning but they only lasted a day or two then they all fell off. So Failure number 1.

Back a while later with what I thought would be a great solution my trusty hot glue gun. And the first indication was a success but not for long. They lasted about a week then started to drop off. Unfortunately I ended up rather ill after Christmas so couldn’t follow up on the progress or more accurately lack of. So failure number 2.

Back to the drawing board and third time lucky. More 3D printing as the hot glue while dropping off the taps with ease it was impossible to remove from the 3D printed beer mat holders.

After some Internet searches and going down a few rabbit holes I came across 3M VHB tape It’s a thin foam sandwich with a waterproof and very sticky adhesive. It’s used for sticking trim to car body panels and GoPro mounts among other things So fingers crossed.

I just did one pump as an experiment to start off with and 2 weeks later it’s still solid as a rock so time to finish the job.

So where do the free beers come in well rather than pay for the prints in cash I’m being paid in pints which I’m more than happy with, especially when they have plum porter on tap.

So if the 3M tape fails what’s the option, I don’t plan to give up for a start but I will have to redesign the holders so that they clip in without the need for any glues or tape which will take a lot longer to print and be a very different design.