Mrs. Lion is visiting with her kids. They are spread out a bit on the East Coast, so yesterday she had a very long drive to see her oldest. She spent the night there and then drives all the way back today. She’s based at her daughter’s home.
I’ve been comfortably locked in the plastic cage since Sunday afternoon. I’m so impressed with the design of this cage, I sent an email to the maker and asked if they will sell the product with a smooth finish. This will take a certain amount of work on their part and will make providing colors more difficult.
I’m not going to mention where to get this product until it is improved. It saddens me that the male chastity device with the best design is the victim of incomplete manufacturing. My cage is a custom model (1-1/4 in long and 1-1/4 in diameter). This product is 3D printed. The seller sends design files to a public 3D printing company, then ships the finished product to the buyer.
The custom product costs over $300 USD. I investigated 3D printing costs and there is a lot of profit margin in the device. I don’t want o minimize the amount of time it took to revise the cage design to fit my order. I’m sure it takes time. I think that if the price went up $50 and I got a fully finished device, I would be very happy paying the larger bill.
Normally, I would review a device, note the good and bad points and then move on. But in this case, the device fills a real niche in the market. The Holy Trainer Nano is an off-the-shelf competitor. It doesn’t replace a truly custom device. I care so much about this one because it has the potential to be worn through airport security with no trouble. That’s what interested me at first.
When I tried to wear my Jail Bird with a removable plastic seal, I painfully learned it doesn’t work. The cage pivots on the round locking bar. It turns out that the plastic cage is designed with a “track” in the ring into which the cage slides. It can’t rotate. A lightweight, plastic seal is sufficient to hold the cage in place.
OK, that’s great. By itself it isn’t enough to get me to reopen my conversation with its maker. It also turns out that once smoothed, it is the most comfortable chastity device I’ve ever tried. I decided to see if there could be a way to deliver this gem without its sandpaper finish.
I could have done all this in the background and then if I had success let you know. That’s the way I would usually handle this sort of thing. But this time I decided to share the process as well as the outcome with you.
Each time I write about this device, one of our readers reports “fixing” the finish problem with a coat of nail polish. I don’t think that’s a good fix. The polish will flake off the nylon and there is no certification that nail enamel is safe against our most tender parts. No, I’m standing by the idea that if you buy the roughly finished product, you will need to put in considerable time and effort to make it wearable.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
Depending upon the material with which the device is printed, there are various solvents that can be used to create an extremely good finish on 3D-printed parts. I print quite a bit using ABS plastic, for which the solvent of choice is acetone.
The procedure is simple: The 3D-printed item is placed on a platform in a container with the solvent, and the container sealed. Note that the item isn’t actually immersed in the solvent – merely the vapors contact the item. Depending upon the solvent, the container may need to be heated to increase the vapor pressure of the solvent, but with acetone this isn’t necessary, although it speeds the process up.
After a fairly short period of time (~15 minutes with ABS and acetone, with a bit of heat), the item will have dramatically smoothed, and in fact an have a better finish than even an injection-molded part. Obviously, if there is more than one part to the item, they must be kept separated to prevent them from becoming permanently bonded together.
The toxicity of the solvent doesn’t really matter much. In the case of acetone, it’s not even a toxic chemical (perhaps surprisingly), but in any case the solvent is completely evaporated from the part when the process is complete. Solvents are available for most plastics, including the common PLA. TPE is often used as the plastic (or as a component) for medical devices; here the solvent choice is more complex, because “TPE” may be made with any of a number of different plastics to optimize various characteristics (including solvent resistance), but one can almost certainly be found that will work.
Perhaps you can ask the manufacturer what the material is; a bit of Googling will probably reveal an appropriate solvent. This could make your (or the manufacturer’s) finishing task *much* easier.
Interesting. It’s a nylon material used by public 3D printing companies. The people who sell the device are good with CAD, but clearly uninformed about the way to improve the finish.
Nylon is comparatively tough, in that it’s not sensitive to most common solvents. An exception though is phenol, which is quite inexpensive and also very aromatic, which makes it a good candidate for vapor polishing.
It is somewhat dangerous, in that it causes chemical burns, and can also cause systemic poisoning since it can be absorbed through the skin. In other words, if you’re not experienced working with hazardous chemicals, and have the necessary equipment (a fume hood or outdoor work area come immediately to mind), then you probably shouldn’t try this at home. For an industrial/commercial process, though, it would be relatively straightforward.
If the product is indeed nylon, then I’m not surprised that you had to put a lot of work into mechanically smoothing it. In addition to its chemical resistance, it’s very robust compared to most plastics, and also quite resistant to abrasion.
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(It’s not really *that* bad – my comments above are conservative, and I’d be comfortable using it on my workbench – it’s roughly comparable to MEK. In fact, it’s present in minute amounts in some scotch whiskies. Still, one should be careful…)
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How would the home version work? You are right. It was horrible to sand.
Is there source for me to buy phrenol?