The thread for my sample clip on the delta stage is too loose. I’m not sure if it was a print defect or me stripping it by accident. Is there anything I could do to fix it except spending another 17hrs to reprint and buying extra filament and o rings?
Edit: Except the two holes that are required for the sample clips, the rest of the holes are fine.
The Delta Stage is a generation behind the OpenFlexure Microscope. One of the many improvements for the Microscope v7.0 has been eliminating the failure mode from stripping the the M3 threads in plastic by having nut traps instead.
In your case the only options are to print a new body (!) or to do some kind of hack or repair (!). If there is space in your setup you could just move the sample clips to one of the other sides of the hexagonal stage. To keep the clips where they are, you should be able to drill through the stripped holes and get a nut under the stage to give something to screw into. It will be a bit fiddly to hold the nut while installing the clips, but it only needs doing once. Trying to glue the nut in place is not a good idea here, you would need to be very, very careful not to get anything on the flexure bridges that join the stage to the legs.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I ended up trying to model a new clip that doesn’t block the LED grid so that it can go in the holes that are still fine. However, I do have a gut feeling that it might not be durable (either the threads are gonna get stripped again or the clips might break due to stress/strain). Any opinions on the design will be appreciated.
I’m including the stl here in case anyone has a similar problem. (v1 has not been tested. Use at you own risk):
newclip_v1.stl (8.3 KB)
Update: The stl works
I don’t have much feeling for how well those clips will work. Try them 
Looking at your render, I have a separate suggestion. You are using the LED array holder and illuminaton dovetail from the Delta Stage STLs. There is an equivalent holder in the v7 Microscope build instructions (find the zip of all STLs), which goes on the new more robust locking dovetail developed for v7. The mounting positions are the same for both Delta Stage and Microscope, so you can use the improved parts here.
Thanks for telling me about the new dovetail. I’ve managed to find it.
It would be really really great to upgrade the delta stage and block stage based on the work we have done for v7 of the microscope.
Unfortunately, there is more work to do than just specifically adding in nut traps. We did a big code reorganization to make sure that the code is more modular and doesn’t rely on globals. It is quite some work to do it, but once it is done the code should be much easier to modify for different uses
