Yup! You read that right, I printed some skateboard wheels in PLA using an FDM 3D printer just to see how fast they disintegrated.

Short story: fast. Slightly longer story, I rolled down my sidewalk and one of them already made creaky noises. After that I rolled off of a freshly re-paved sidewalk with a deep gap around it.

I’m not sure if that damaged the one wheel which fell apart faster or if I had over tightened it while adding the wheel to the board. Either way, it fell apart completely. I was able to get down the street and around the corner before the one wheel flat-spotted and stopped dead. So I walked with it to the grocery store and picked up some things.

On the way back I tried to take advantage of the extremely flat freshly paved road near the grocery store, but that wasn’t going to save the wheel. It was already too far gone.

One could have seen this coming from a mile away. I certainly did. I just wanted to see exactly how bad it was.

The general idea is that I will make a mold with silicone that I can use to cast wheels in resin or urethane or something more durable later. That will be the real test of these snaking wheel designs.

By Lilithe

Dork.