How to repair a Bugaboo Pram with 3D Printing

Pram connoisseurs out there will know that the Bugaboo is by far the best pram on the market for style, function, ergonomics and collapse ability, unfortunately they are also very expensive to buy and even more expensive to repair, until now.... 

With the increased accessibility of high quality 3D printing thanks to Shapeways, you can get your Bugaboo back on the road for $25, not bad considering I was quoted $250 for a repair.....

Following is a step by step guide to repairing the handle lock, without which the pram is near useless.

I 3D printed my replacement parts in stainless steel using Shapeways, you could try ABS and do it much cheaper but I really recommend stainless steel.

Step 1 Pry Off That Hub Cap

Ok the first step in creation is destruction.
You need to pry off the hub cap to get access to the broken part.
I would recommend using 2 flathead screwdrivers, but a swiss army knife and a bottle opener will do the job,
Take care not to transform the surrounding plastic into a gnarled mess, the wife will appreciate that.

Comments

[OH2BIO]

If I were factory supervisor, I would send these (obviously cheaply made) parts for free to the customer who has ability to do the job himself. Anyway, your fix is better and you have made an interesting job.

BTW: eBay has two sellers selling these in UK. Other one is made of stainless steel and the other one of hardened aluminium. Seller of the aluminium ones says that he has f ixed over hundred prams last year! What on Earth!

[caitlinsdad]

Was there a safety recall on that part? For such an expensive carriage, I would think you could get warranty service or at least order the part since you took it apart. I think if it is determined that it is defective design causing the part to break, the manufacturer would want to know about it and remedy the situation immediately being the business they are in.

Be aware that replacing metal parts with another metal part in a critical application you have to know that the structural properties are the same or exceed the specs of the original part.

[dscott4]

The response from Bugaboo was VERY slow and they only replied after 3 emails. The closest authorized repair center is around 900 miles away from where I live (In Australia) so I would have to send to get a full quote, at my expense... I had read around online and there seemed to be a lack of support post warranty.
The material I used to 3D print with Shapeways is 420 Stainless steel which is really quite strong .
http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=972

There is a far greater likelihood of the small plastic pins that the steel component locks into failing before the stainless steel would.

[tensegrity]

The Shapeways 420 stainless looks like an interesting material. According to the specs, it has properties comparable to normal stainless (EDIT-not exactly comparable, but quite decent). I couldn't tell from the original picture if your original part was stamped or cast alloy or something else, but the shapeways part looks quite adequate as a replacement.

That being said, as per caitlinsdad, you have to watch out anytime you are changing materials, especially if it were a more critical application. 3D printing is awesome, but people need to be aware that sintered materials do not behave the same way as other metals, for example rolled steel, and more importantly, they don't fail in the same way. Sometimes, hard or rigid metal parts are good, sometimes it's the opposite of what you want.

[Fiction]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing re:replacing a metal part with an (inherently brittle) sintered part, but looking closely at the original pieces, it is almost certain they were some garbage zinc-alloy or aluminum castings anyway...

[Joseph Lau]

I just geeked ... this is awesome!

[mhayes5]

For this type of work, I would recommend Alibre Design. They have a free version and it is very good for designing precise solid parts at a fraction on the cost of Solidworks.

[rrwood]

I take it that you designed the replacement part yourself before ordering from Shapeways, right? Any comment on how difficult that was?

[dscott4]

I have a background in industrial design so the CAD part was very easy for me.

If you do not have CAD skills you could even trace it in Illustrator and use the Shapeways Image Popper to extrude it to the right depth.

http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/816-Introducing-Image-Popper,-a-new-way-to-easily-3D-model-and-3D-print.html

The only slightly tricky part was getting the angle and radius right, but modeling and printing (on paper) 1:1 to check made me fairly confident...

[rrwood]

Interesting!

I do some work for a Wired Magazine blog called GeekDad. Would you be interested in doing a short interview for a posting? If so, get in touch with me as roy-at-geekdad-dot-com (you know how to parse that ;-) ).

Proof of identity is here:

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/author/rrwood/

[dscott4]

Cool, email sent..

[fungus amungus]

This is great. What software did you use to model the piece?

[dscott4]

I used Solidworks, but you could just as easily use Autodesk 123D or SketchUp which are both free,..

The STL file is available to download if you want to tweak or print at home?

The tricky bit was measuring the angle off of the curve and the radius off of the angle.