Shokudaikiri Mitsutada - Tsuba

Full-sized tsuba for Shokudaikiri Mitsutada's blade. This should fit fine on the average metal katana blade, and non-metal blades with similar dimensions. For non-metals blades with a substantially different cross section, you will probably need to recut the hole in the middle.

Files

• micchan-tsuba-full.stl is the entire tsuba as a single piece, for printing on a resin printer or fancier industrial processes
• micchan-tsuba-hiltside.stl and micchan-tsuba-bladeside.stl are the two model halves, split for printing on a home filament printer. They have alignment holes that fit short lengths of 1.5mm filament to line them up for gluing. Important note: The tsuba design is not symmetrical along any axis. You cannot flip one of the halves to get the other. Flipping parts will result in them not lining up!
• micchan-tsuba-test.stl is a chunk of one of the split halves that includes all the geometric features so you can test printer settings without running through a ton of a filament.
• seppa (simple) - thick.stl is a basic seppa (spacing washer). Typically you want two, one for each side of the tsuba, but you could cut them out of plastic or sheet metal instead fairly easily.

Filament Printing Tips

This model has some geometry that is not particularly printer-friendly - notably a lot of very shallow sloped curves, and rounded edges on everything. I recommend using the thinnest layers your printer can print reliably, optionally with Cura's adaptive layer height or similar, as bottom layers can be printed thicker, up until the curve starts. You will also most likely need to increase your number of top layers to keep holes from forming in the thin layers. Finally, ironing is a godsend to reduce the amount of sanding you need to do for finishing.