Mounting ring for Busch + Mueller IQ-X bicycle lamp

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

Busch + Mueller make a load of high quality bicycle lights, in my opinion the best out there for dynamo-driven lights. They cost a ton of money, but if your life depends on it (as mine does as an all-year commuter), the best light is worth it.
But the big corporate fuck up is that their top of the line IQ-X front light, while made out of aluminum and with otherwise top-notch mounting hardware, has a plastic bracket around its circumference that is not up to their usual standards. One day I come up to my bike to find the lamp hanging limply from the cables, with a broken plastic bracket. No problem, a 100 Euro headlamp will have an excellent spare parts service to go with it, right? WRONG. Busch + Mueller do not sell this part as a spare, even though it's a totally separate piece, not snapped or glued onto anything. They probably expect you to buy a new lamp if this piece costing a dime breaks.
Lucky for me I have a CAD system, a caliper and a 3D printer, and after half an hour's design work and an hour of printing, I had my own replacement part. My design should be stronger, I made it with a slightly thicker shell and reinforced the area where it's prone to break as much as was possible without compromising the fit.
You lose the sidelight function (the original ring has a translucent section that lets a bit of light shine out the sides of the lamp). I might add it in at a later date, but it's problematic to print and would need the original cover to keep it waterproof.
I printed it and it fit on the first try. It's a pretty tight fit though, you have to have your printer calibrated well or be prepared to spend some time reworking it.