Your saddle bag hooks look great.
Mine were printed in PETG (like I know what that means )
All I can tell you after today’s ride is that I didn’t notice the new saddle bag which means the hooks did their job, and it was nice to know at the outset that I had all the kit with me that I needed. My last few rides have been naked as I haven’t ridden with any tools etc because my bag setups were so poor.
PETG is probably a better filament for this kind of work than PLA due to its better mechanical properties and greater environmental resistance, but honestly it’s fallen out of favour generally due to improvements in PLA blends (PLA+, PLA-ST etc.) as it’s harder to print with now not that many benefits.
As it’s harder to print, you can often also find that the theoretically greater mechanical properties are actually no better (or even inferior to PLA) due to the worse quality of print that arises if everything’s not really well set up. The quality of layer adhesion can play a huge part in the strength of some parts, and it’s harder to get this right with PETG.
It also absorbs moisture more readily so has to be kept very dry or dried before use to ensure it’s at its best.
I’m lazy with my PLA+ and it just sits on my printer in open air for months on end.
What issues did you have with the top tube bag? Could you just not get it secure enough?
It seems like when you’ve got a bent bar like that it’d be ideal for having your phone for navigation as well as snacks and other easy to access things. Far safer looking for a phone on a unicycle than a lot of mounts designed for handlebars that don’t take UPDs very well.
Topeak have a system called QuickClick which they have on some of their underseat wedge packs. I’ve got a few of these of different sizes and associated mounting hardware on various saddles so I can easily and quickly swap packs between various bikes without faffing with straps.
Ergon also do a Topeak mount for one of their bike saddles which just screws onto the saddle base with a single Allen screw rather than having to have mounting hardware attached to the saddle rails:
Those had been my hopes, but it never tightened securely, the straps were clearly designed for the depth of a bike top tube and the spindly nature of the touring handle was never going to help. This led to the next issue which was the straps being a nuisance as they were flapping all over the place (an aesthetic issue mostly). Also the bag was too big for what I carry and so it rattled a lot which was quite annoying. Having said all that, the option of having the phone there was very good.
Oooh. I had seen that, but had forgotten about it.
The mount might have to be quite sizeable in order to clear the rear bumper, but it looks like a good option, especially if you already have that kind of bag.
I’ve always been a fan of Topeak bags and still have a couple in my shed from my days of MTB & Road cycling. The small one that sat on my touring handle (see photos above) was Topeak but sadly it broke and they don’t make them anymore.
Their QuickClick is decent but for me @mowcius solution with the 3D printed saddle-bag hooks is perfect and very cost effective.
I suppose if you’re paying for a 3D printing service, when you’re getting to the size of mount that something like QuickClick requires then it could get quite expensive.
It wouldn’t be all that much if you’re printing it yourself. Perhaps £1 of plastic and a few pence of electric.
Yes, I thought it might need something fairly chunky to get the clearance, and it might be an issue getting it to sit flat on the bumper – might be something to incorporate into a custom bumper though
I need to get myself a 3D printer, the problem is I’ve got far too many other things on my plate and roads for money to run, it could be a useful distraction though!
I wasn’t meaning the large bag in the thumbnail for the video (I assume that is what you are referring to?), more one of the small wedge-packs like the one in the photos above that (which is probably about the same size as the Lezyne one discussed previously).
That may be true for attaching it to the saddle, but I very much doubt that there’s enough plastic to create a slot/hole big enough for either Topeak clips or the velcro straps on my Lezyne as seen above.
If you’re looking for store bought alternatives, then you might be able to get away with using a long threaded eye bolt (if your bag strap is flexible enough) or a tie down ring (designed for kayaks and similar).
What do you use for 3D modelling BTW? I’ve got ProgeCAD (an IntelliCAD based tool ) and TurboCAD on my Mac, I’ve mostly just used these for 2d drawings.
Yeah I wasn’t going to bother doing a design yet, but I stumbled across a few copies of the mounts for bikes on Thingiverse yesterday and just copied the sliding part. I’m pretty sure I can borrow a bag off a friend to get the design functionally correct for mounting to unicycles in the future but for now it was just nice to make a start.
So for these things so far I’ve been using Solidworks, but I also use FreeCAD (when I hate myself, but don’t want to be pussyfooting around the student SW license that I have - which is also partly why only the STL files have been provided), and very occasionally use OpenSCAD (but never really put the time and effort into really learning the more complicated things it can do, mostly because the rendering time is often stupid, which slows down the design process).
I’ve tried most things, but all of the online tools frustrate me with their sluggishness, and having leant Solidworks first, the huge omissions (or super bizarre order of operations required) from most tools means I keep coming back to the big guns. Titans of CNC Academy (free) gets you a big discount on the student Solidworks…
If I was to be looking to sell any of these products/designs then I’d redo them from scratch in FreeCAD, but it’d take me longer.
Ahh yes, I had presumed you were all set. My comment was mostly for others who might be reading the thread and looking for off-the-shelf options.
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