Horizontal Locking Rods for Collapsible Yarn Swift

While printing the original for a friend, I was struggling with getting the rods to print as well as I'd like.

Printing them vertically made them look nice, but the prints took a very long time and were prone to bed adhesions issues. Printing them horizontally, while cutting the print time by around 50-75%, took a lot of support material- and resulted in a rougher area that caused a little too much friction.

I ultimately ended up just printing them horizontally and sinking them into the bed 1mm, which removed the need for supports everywhere except for the male insert. This worked pretty well- it even gave a good anchor spot for the collet screw to settle on.

After some usage tests I also found that the nut at the top of the male end would very slowly tighten itself out of the rod, causing the top collet to topple off if I wasn't careful.

My solution: cut 1mm off one side of both of the rods, allowing them to print horizontally, add a notch to the male end and a cutout to the female end- removing the need for any supports at all, and change how the top nut is inserted into the top of the male rod- it's now inserted through the side of the male rod with only a screw hole at the top so the nut cannot pull itself out.

A note: the slot for the nut can be snug. If it doesn't slide in, you can use some pliers to give it some assistance.

I altered them in TinkerCAD

Male rod: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/emeVwMYrTok-male-rod-horizontal-for-collapsible-yarn-swift

Female rod: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/fF3h7hCvIui-female-rod-horizontal-for-collapsible-yarn-swift