1:25 how did you get microscale footage that crispy? That is an insane level of quality.

People are so smart, its insane

This is more like what’s sometimes called “mushroom tape”, like 3D Dual Lock. That uses mushroom-shaped towers instead of the hook and loop of Velcro. Regardless, this is really nice work and a very thought-provoking video.

I don't know if I'll ever use this 3D printed Velcro, but this is truly awesome work which I'll keep in mind. Thanks for the OpenSCAD work too, you're efforts are impressive!!

You gotta make these tests last 24 hours, most failures of Velcro happens after days/weeks/months of stress

Would have been interesting to see how the various different materials worked with each other. Combining a ridged side with a flexible one.

I liked Senna's jacket, as a Brazilian, Senna was one of my heroes. The best pilot ever.

6:40 - Michael, on the material data sheet for hook and loop products, a standard woven strip can hold: 12 PSI in shear, 6 in tension, and 2 in peal strength. It looks like you have about 30in^2 (3" x 10"). It would take 360 pounds of force (or 1600 Newtons) to shear the sheets. Please don't hurt yourself, or your floor.

I love that this video comes all the way back around to "Instead of modeling and printing the exact thing you need, you can just make a large generic sheet of 3d-printed velcro and cut it to size!" ... Which is what you can do with normal velcro lol

Great for a stack of computer components that don't get very hot, but can slide if bumped: attach a DVD drive, an external hard disk, and a hub - print the holders separately and just stick them together without committing to a single large print to hold them all that must be reprinted as things change.

This seems more similar to dual-lock (mushroom hook) type fasteners rather than velcro (hook & loop), which also use plastic symmetrical towers rather than two different surfaces (hook & loop) to stick to each other. Strong, but a lot more fiddly than actual velcro and takes much more force to close. In terms of your OpenSCAD customizer values, it would be more useful to have the generator specify an X/Y coverage area in millimeters rather than a number of tower pairs because as you demonstrated, changing the other parameters makes the total size of the pattern change which makes this design difficult to integrate into other designs as-is.

I like this as an alternative to magnets for making objects that connect together temporarily, modularly or in configurations. Such as webcam mounts, cable hook holders for running cables, workstation configuration, light fixturing, etc.

I spotted this on Printables the other week and printed a small sample piece out and was blown away by it.

In an ideal world, the 3D printing community is decentralized. In reality, I think the sheer volume of content you produce makes you a pillar of the community. (where content is videos, guides, and 3D models)

Muscles also use this principle of strength in numbers. Each piece actually creating a force is microscopically tiny but there are so many that animals can push and pull pretty hard.

Stuff like this is why you're my favourite 3D printing channel and educator! You're awesome!

I hit like as soon as I opened the video. The fact that something like this is actually possible amazes me. Thanks so much for letting us know!

I believe you can get command strips that work nearly exactly like this but much tighter. would be interesting to see comparisons between that, especially since command velcro is rated super high for it's size, and both sides are the same.

I wonder how many cycles this can go through before the towers start to delaminate. There's strength in numbers when loaded but unsticking pulls individually on the towers. In any case, this is pretty cool, gonna have to try it soon

i'm not sure about this, because it could be that the tiling of the pins is not exactly hexagonal, but if it is, you should be able to rotate the halves in 60 degree increments and they should mesh properly.

As a big fan of OpenSCAD i tripple-approve for idea, execution and tools used 🙂

You may be interested in checking out 3M Dual Lock Reclosable Fasteners. Very similar product but they use mushroom shaped pins to increase connection suface area and require a steep engagement/disengagement angle.

thank you for what you do. you are actually the one who got me into 3d printing!

Would love to see that in PrusaSlicer to "paint" that structure on 3d models like they've done with some other joints.

This type of fastener has been sold by 3m and others for years. 3m call it dual lock, and it's frequently used because it holds more rigidly that hook and loop. The commercial versions aren't limited to the parts being axis aligned. It's very interesting that it can be 3d printed

Seriously love what you do! Teaching and providing!

Wow! Awesome! Excellent work! Thank you for sharing and creating the parametric version !

The one I designed last week got 3.5 million views. definitely an interesting concept

The strength test was surprising. I didn't expect the PETG velcro to be as strong as it was. Its strength reminds me of the Yellowbook test the MythBusters did back in the day. Individually, the friction between pages and the velcro is really small, but you add enough pages or hooks, and the strength increases drastically. Also, similarly to that MythBusters test, the weakest point was actually at the base/spine.

Intuitively I guessed this would fail at the layer lines. Interesting to see how strong it is, going to give it a try.

I've been designing some geothermal greenhouse/duck-coops. They transform twice a year to swap between a winter-coop and a summer greenhouse. I've planned a system of cranks to roll the winter skin down over the south side. I've been looking for a way to adhear the insulated skin to plastic covered uprights. But UV rated Velcro, and of the sizes I need, is prohibitively expensive. This likely solved my problem. I think ASA velcro will be perfect!

This could be a game changer. I’m impressed.

This is cool, it can definitely improve a number of different designs I've seen.

I may have to redesign my pedalboard for my guitar rig. This sounds interesting. Thanks!!

I would suggest testing with a 75D TPU like NinjaTeks Armadillo or a PCTPE (Nylon and rubber blend) like Taulman PCTPE. I use both. Phenomenal layer adhesion, very strong, and semi rigid. I think for this application either one would give better results.

Would be good if there was a formula for calculating how much surface area holds how much weight. With pool fence certification, everything is geared around a 25kg child. I've got some hanging lanterns within the NCZ of one of the barriers that most likely would need to be gone when getting a certification - but to add on a hook-and-loop fastener that is rated to say 10kgs then when the certifier chokes on their coffee at the blatant code violation, you can calmly ask them to test how much weight it holds and watch their disappointment set in when they realise they're not getting their extra re-assessment fee later.

This is very cool. I'd love to see someone try to print a more traditional version. Small nozzle width loops and a bunch of hooked nozzle width strings and see if it works at all.

Outstanding. I am truly impressed with this nice work. Also, I certainly enjoy your way of teaching. Thank you.

It could work best as one side PLA and one PETG. You would get some elasticity in one side but rigid and hard on the other.

Great post and great pedagogy. Thanks a lot. It's always a pleasure to be notified of each and single post of yours... despite your monotone tone😉

wow even more amazing things I didn't even imagine, putting out some bangers lately

Look at 3m Dual Lock, that‘s a similar system, but commercial(ly produced). I‘m pretty sure their design is well optimized, I have some of it in use and it works really well. Could serve as inspiration for further 3D printable velcro designs.

I've been waiting for this for more than 2 years haha.

the demonstration with your fingers sold me. take my sub. take my like. more finger stuff.

the metal mushroom type used by the American military is incredible and extremely strong !

i absolutely love your channel, the F1 shirts and jackets adds a lot crediability as a technical guy, EXCEPT when you wear RB, looking forward for Mercs jacket! cheers ( JK OFC keep it up)

Just a note on the finer printed velcro (from MMprinting) that you showed off, you should be able to get the two pieces to mesh after rotating either piece 60 or 120 degrees.

Well that was cool! I super appreciate you sharing and working to improve the design. Videos like this inspire more people to enter into 3D Printing which compounds development and creativity!

As a Brazilian myself can't ignore your hoodie, Senna was amazing!

You could always make the opposite (Negative) of what shape you want, and import it into a slicer as a negative space

10:41 I think it's also worth noting that whatever your base is should be a multiple of whatever layer thickness you're slicing at, otherwise you're either going to get more or less thickness than you're expecting

Great gift to the community - thank you!

Textures like this always end up in my mouth.

Dear Michael, thank you for this and your other awesome videos! I just subscribed as I've been forgetting that multiple times despite watching almost every video you put out. This idea is really cool and could be very useful - I will try that out. Maybe, we could come even closer to a real hook and loop system by choosing e.g. petg and deliberately (in other use-cases) bad temperature and cooling settings to get an enormous amount of stringing which could form "loops" (like super small bridging towers) and hooks for the other side. I hope someone comes up with a suitable idea to circumvent the layer adhesion problem of those basic cones. Maybe we could subdivide rows of those cones and print them on their side individually to profit from the better print orientation and then afterwards interlock those rows (melt together?) to a velcro pattern.

Wow, what a *fantastically* useful video! My immediate thought was to use it for a tool wall. I don’t like the hexagon-based walls; besides being ugly, they force you to use a fixed grid, inefficient when trying to arrange tool-holders as tightly as possible. I have a tool wall that’s just plywood , with 3D printed tool hangers stick on with 3M Command adhesive strips. I’ll very rarely move the hangers, but didn’t want to mar the backboard when I did. It works fine, but the Command strips are kind of expensive. 3D Velcro would be ideal for this use! The only thing is that I’d prefer the backplate to look “clean”, without the stringiness of PETG. Maybe I could use PLA for the backplate and then PETG for the backs of the hangers? I need to experiment with it a little… - But this is a fantastic solution to add to our bag of general “removable attach object A to object B” bag of tricks! THANKS!!! 👏👏👏👍

thank you for the video Tom Cruise!

This is a really innovative and absolutely practical useful idea, great. I hope this Slant 3D dude who talks about "mass production" in 3D printing sees this xD

I noticed a lot of them use Cleat Clips instead of conventional Hook and Loop. Notably Velcro makes lines using those as well. Of course using more advanced manufacturing equipment they can make them a lot smaller. It is notable that many of their "professional" lines use Cleat Clips.

What an awesome idea! These days, I'm working on a 3D printed arm that I can clamp to my desk to hold my second monitor wherever I want (in height, depth, rotation, and with a ball head to choose the monitor's angle). Adding patches of "velcro" to it could be super useful for cable management add-ons. I might actually add velcro bars on the sides of the main tower in a new iteration!

For some 3d models where I want to customize I use Blender and it's Boolean modifiers. I imagine if you rendered the large matt of velcro, but wanted it in the shape of the heart you cut by hand, you could instead just overlap the heart model and the velcro model and apply a boolean to get the desired shape, though I can imagine that some of the edges would need finessing to prevent weird islands or floating geometries.

3M Scotch Dual Lock system is very similar to these designs. There are little stems with small ball head on top (mushrooms) lined up in wavy pattern. I have bought some and they work better than velcro. You need like a spatula to separate the two apart.

Fantastic! Thanks a bunch, Michael! 😃 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

Its incredible how usefull petg is!

man, I haven't even try 3d printer myself, and it already took so far, can wait

I wouldn't mind watching a short OpenSCAD tutorial

With the repeating pattern, there is a huge boost for slicing algorithm someone could unlock, to not repeat all calculations for each tiny tower, and but just copy it over.

Thanks! This is great. Very cool concept

Very interesting, but I'm not sure I'd class any of them as velcro though. I'd put them in the clips department.

Would have liked to see a vertical strength test as i mostly use velcro to attach power bricks and stuff to the underside of my desk

If you add a rigid sleeve to slide over your plates once joined you will get a connection that will never separate without the plastic itself failing. For the design that has larger pins if the base plate has dents in it and the pins have a bump that matches then once it snaps into place there will be no room for horizontal movement.

This was pretty interesting. Didn't know about this being possible until your video. Very cool!

There's similar fasteners (pins with wide tops that trap each other when pressed together) produced through some non-3D printing method (I'd guess moulding plastic pins onto a surface, and pressing them against a heated plate or roller to squish the tops into mushroom caps) on the market. Notably, unlike hook-and-loop fasteners, they don't have a 'gender', which can be good or bad depending on your application. All pieces from a system are alike, and will stick to each other. Hook and loop fasteners have two different types, that don't stick to 'themselves'.

Thank you Michael for content like this!

Had to subcribe with that Senna drip alone!

Finally! My stringy prints are of use now!!

I’d be curious to see how the materials would have interacted. Say PETG on one side and PLA on the other, etc.

Unrelated, but I want to see a challenge to print the best possible shoe on a standard FDM printer. it should be scalable for different shoe sizes.

Velcro™ lawyers inbound with their hook and loop bop 😂

4:07 you can turn the small, hexagon based one as well, just by 60 degrees instead of 90.

Nice Senna sweater! Very interesting video!

This looks great for toys on a base.

Isn’t that test technically shear strength?

Loving the micro scale animation.

Nice! And thanks for scripting up an openscad model.

Love the hoodie! Great video as well!

thank you very much for the inspirations. it got me thinking and started to play around with it, which led me to other tools and helped me organize and set up my print area. good video with good explanations and thanks for testing it with different materials!

Nice hood! SENNA 🇧🇷

Well that was a little bit fantastic. 😉 Cheers, JAYTEE

The only acceptable name is Klettverschluss

The MM Printing model is more like 3M's Dual-Lock self-mating fastener than traditional hook and loop.

Concept of 3d printing a Velcro type material is interesting. Of course this design suffers from the weak z axis bond. Often I think problems can be resolved by breaking away from the typical layer by layer printing. Generating gcode to draw one whole hook at a time might be the answer here.

Amazing. Very surprised at just how strong it can be

this demonstrates that Velcro is the magic behind Legos

no way you didnt let us here the clicking of the interlocking parts, would of been so satisfying

lol perfect timing, I was going to buy some to build something for my window but never mind, may as well use this

What a nice jacket you have!

this is perfect for a magnet less gridfinity stystem

Well, this one's interesting. Not sure WHAT I'm going to do with this right now, but you've given me a toy to play with for the Holiday Weekend at the least. Going to try this with ASA (There's a reason...) and a few other filament types other than the PETG....

great to see. glad i subscribed! can we 3d print out velcro sheets in a COLUMN or a ROLL? to save space, on smaller 3d printers?

time to go print this 👍