I didn’t see your first post, so excuse my ignorance of what you may have already covered. I’d like to know if you are offering to make these for paying customers, and what your pricing structure would look like. I have a rough Blender3D file of what I’d like to have. It would need a lot of work to make it suitable for sending to a printer. I wanted to buy a printer myself for this, but I can’t make it fit into my budget right now.
Is the head and body one piece? How does the lens and drop in stay in?
I printed this one before I increased the build height of my printer so it was printed as 4 parts, tail, body, head and bezel. I used a mixture of acetone with dissolved ABS filament to weld the head and body together, once welded you can not separate it without totally destroying it, I can now print the head and body as 1 piece.
The drop in and lens is held in with a printed bezel, if you notice the rings around the light, this creates a locking mechanism when tightly fitting two pieces together, tolerances can easily be adjusted and a new part printed until satisfactory, of course threads could be printed as well if needed. I’ve dropped this light from about 5 feet high while working on cars and have treated it pretty rough for at least a year and the bezel has never came loose.
I have never considered that, however I will think about it and get back to you.
What do you think the max drive current is before its to much heat for the plastic host? I’d be worried about the emeitter cooking way before the body melting, is that not the case? whats the melting point of the ABS plastic its made from?
Ok…biggest question…HOW MUCH? 
Seriously…this is way cool!
Yeah, the plastic won’t be a great conductor of heat, remember even though it’s plastic it’s a much better conductor than static air
oh and Hi-Beam, did you do the tinfoil wrap mod on the pill to help move some of the heat away from the pill…even though it’s a plastic host?
The point at which the plastic deforms to the point of failure would be below this, at 491f it would be “runny” not pliable.
Pliable would allow the metal parts to start deforming the ABS.
I don’t know how hard you could push it before failure, honestly I just printed 3 of these when I first caught the light bug and have not experimented with them since. Hence the simple design just as proof of concept.
There are higher temp nylon filaments available if you really wanted to push it.
The drop in is pulling 2.5 amps and still continues to function normally.
Hmmm, lets see I have about 6 cents worth of filament in this thing, a 7 dollar drop in and some scrap aluminum tubing so…
No, I was not aware of the tinfoil wrap method at the time.
no no…just the host…would be cool to buy a few from you
ABS is very temp stable(a small window between pliable and liquid) I cannot extrude even the smallest amount at anything less than 455 degrees so I would guess that it could begin to deform somewhere between 435 and 440, at this point the emitter, driver board and solder would have already failed.
Maybe we need you to fix us up with some Texas Torture Testing hosts, so we can further prove out the concept…
that should be a pretty good torture test all by itself. 
I call him Demolition Dan, if that means anything
D³ (Demolition Dan’s Dad)
I’m liking the sound of that, I don’t know a lot about 3D printing but it is the way to go.
I post on another board, British Blades, and there was a post recently about a 3Dprinted knife handle very cool.
what printer are you using?
Depends on what grade of ABS. Most ABS would soften at a lower temperature, if exposed for a long period of time, to that lower temperature. Of course, the real problem with plastic is that it is a good insulator, so the pill would get hot much sooner and it would not be good for high power mods.
Would it be possible to print around metal? Sort of like having a plastic bezel, head, but with a metal section where the pill was and then plastic after that? This would give some of the heat a chance to get to the outside, through the metal.
It's an interesting concept and I would think sooner or later someone will make some form of printed light that will be sold.
I’d be interested in a host or several as well. Plain yet very cool, especially with very little cost in materials.
Perhaps a variation on what Hi-Beam said— design the body tube so that a metal
sleeve can be inserted/pressed into place. Maybe a perforated print style body to allow ventilation.
I am not too sure—but isn’t the metal sleeve/surrounded by ABS body tube
similar to the Surefire G2’s construction?
Like I said it was just a guess at what point the plastic would begin to melt. Every manufacture uses a different blend in their formula. With every new spool of filament I purchase I have to adjust the printer to find it’s most favorable temp. Some much higher, some lower so this proves the wide variance in formulations.
I don’t think this will be adequate for power hungry modders and I have no doubt that it will melt.
You could print parts that would screw together around a head section or print at least 80% percent of a light and incorporate an extended pill section turned on a lathe and threaded.
I don’t think there will be widespread use of printed flashlights, there are better ways of building plastic lights. 3d printers are very finicky and require lots of attention to achieve acceptable results, this creates lots of wasted filament and inconsistency between parts and the finished product is nowhere near the quality of vacuum formed parts or parts that have been casted.
As you said plastic is not a good heat conductor, it’s cool, it’s novel, it’s fun to play with but it is still plastic.
I’m not looking to sell these guys. I recently built a new shop and moved the printer into it but have not set it back up yet. Since many of you have expressed interest I may refocus some attention towards these printed lights and do some actual testing and better design work.
I will post my findings and distribute a few to interested members for verification and further testing.
There are great possibilities here but there are limitations as well.