This 114-Piece Tape Measure Was 3D-Printed in One Shot

Additive manufacturing has made huge strides in high-resolution and multi-material printing, but this is still pretty amazing: a functional tape measure that was printed fully-assembled. Made by a mechanical engineer who goes by the name Brian Daniels, the tape measure has a total of 114 individual parts.

As you can see in the video, the tape measure is fully functional, with a tape made of half-inch articulating segments that are graduated down to 1/8 inch. The entire thing is about the same size as a traditional tape measure, but as you might expect, you can fit a lot more thin metal tape into a traditional design—Daniels's design fits just over 52 inches of tape, versus 25 feet in the regular model he compares it to.

The large hole designs on the tape measure's case are to help clean out support structures required during the printing process. "To remove the support I used a small high pressure water sprayer," Daniels said in an email. "The support material is most similar to low density wax and comes off fairly easily."

The 3D-printed model also has a crank, as printing a working spring is currently impossible. It does have a locking mechanism and belt clip, just like the tape measure in your toolbox.

In a blog post accompanying the video, Daniels writes that he would have preferred to print a one-piece flexible tape or one that could be retracted by a spring, but was limited by what materials he could use for a quick project. He says he used an Objet Eden printer made by Strasys, which can print rubber-like materials.

I asked Daniels if using a flexible material would be possible for the design, and he said that it likely would be if you used a multi-material printer.

"You could print a flexible tape given the right material," he wrote in an email. "There are materials the Objet and, I assume, Strasys makes that would work. I purposely tried to make it so my tape measure could be manufactured with only one material. That way it can be made on a wider array of machines and not just ones capable of printing dual modeling materials. I would love to see this DMLS'd out of steel or even inconel."

In the post he makes it pretty clear that such an effort would be basically impossible using a single print material, as he did:

Springs are one of the things that are difficult to print, especially in a brittle material. Springs with a preload are, as far as I know, impossible to print. The retract spring is a very large spring that would have to work over 10+ rotations and not be susceptible to material creep. The tape itself is also a spring. If the tape was printed outside of the tape measure body, out of a flexible material, and that material wasn't very creep sensitive it would be possible to print a one piece tape. The printer would have to be very large though. All that being said, I still think it would be cool to further investigate these options.

"Why do this? Because it's awesome. Is it useful? Questionably," he wrote in the YouTube description for the above video, which seems a fair assessment, if a bit critical. Sure, it may not replace your regular-old tape measure, but it's truly fascinating work, especially the fact that Daniels was able to design and print such a complex set of interlocking segments inside of an outer framework.

Daniels appears to be a true 3D-printer maestro, with an amazing set of printed dial calipers also on display on his blog. That's not to mention other cool projects, like a microplane that weighs a paltry 390 milligrams. But the complexity of printing a working tape measure out remains eye-opening. As he wrote in his post, "My calipers had 9 pieces, this tape measure would have well over 100… Now things were getting interesting."

Update: This post was updated to add emailed comments from Brian Daniels, who was originally referred to by his YouTube handle, Angry Monk.