Okay! Here it is! I give up! I’m releasing all my designs to the world for free. Many years ago I said I would do this if it all got too complicated for me to deal with. It has gotten too complicated for me to deal with.
But! Before you slide down the page to get those designs, you would be REALLY SMART to read the information below FIRST!
Apparently bronze-infused stainless steel is now a dinosaur and is extinct in the 3D metal printing world. All of my 3D printed caps have been printed in this material. I am unable to find anyone in the world who still prints in this material. Part of this may be due to the increased cost of copper. Maybe that cost increase is due in part to the tariffs that have been levied recently (2025). Maybe the equipment to print in this material has met its “senile date” (old and worn out). I’ve been told all sorts of things by the printers who used to print this bronze-infused stainless steel.
All of my caps have designed to print properly in this material (which is now gone).
Could my designs be printed in other materials?
Yes. Maybe. But, there are a number of issues of which you need to be aware.
Issues
- Bronze-infused stainless steel works okay as a cap material because the bronze mixed in there is pretty okay at conducting heat away from the cap into the flow of fuel/air vapor through the cap. Caps are fuel/air cooled just like a air-cooled engine. Bronze is pretty okay at conducting heat into the fuel/air stream.
- Straight 304 or 17-4 stainless steels, titanium and Iconel steels are very poor conductors of heat. Use of these materials may cause issues with cap overheating and resultant underburn.
- All my cap models are engineered for printing in bronze-infused stainless steel. Bronze-infused stainless steel has significant shrinkage from actual model specs. All my cap models are designed to be 2% oversize to account for the overall shrinkage that occurs during production using bronze-infused stainless steel. Additionally, for unknown reasons, the exit holes of the cap models shrink more than the rest of the model when printed in bronze-infused stainless steel. To compensate, the CAD drawings of my cap models have the exit holes drawn oversized by about 6-9% larger so they will come out the right size when printed in bronze-infused stainless steel.
- Other materials such as titanium, 304 or 17-4 stainless steel or Iconel metal may (probably do!) have different shrinkage rates. My tests with 304 stainless steel show that printing in this material is pretty doggone close to the actual model CAD specs and that holes come out too large and the model is overall 2% bigger than it should be for use with the stove or to match the bronze-infused stainless steel models.
- If you are choosing to download and print any of the models below, you are going to have to adjust overall size and also exit hole size on the CAD drawing to suit the material you wish to print. Otherwise, you will likely have overheating and/or underburn with the designs. You may also have overheating and underburn due to the poor conductivity of these other materials.
- I also tried (very expensive) solid brass printing done with investment casting but found the oversize exit holes to lead to overheating/underburn. But, otherwise, a pretty good premium material I feel would work if the exit holes were properly resized.
Production notes
Base Plate Diameters – If you choose to download my CAD drawings and print your own models, you need to resize the overall size of the CAD drawing to match your printing material. Typically, a 2% reduction, but may vary with your material/process. Here are the outer diameter base plate specs you should strive to approximate with your model printing. PolarDawg 38.5mm diameter. OmniPup 34.5mm. Minicap with or without Legs 35.0mm. OmniDawg 40.2mm. DragonTamer 40.7mm. Dawg-A-Nova 37.3mm. XGK Dawg 40.2mm. WideBody 45.7mm. Top Dawg 56.1mm. PuppyDawg 28.7mm.
Exit Hole Sizes – The exit holes in the caps vary, but are always no bigger than 0.0520″ (1.321mm) and no smaller than 0.0430″ (1.092mm). Most caps should have all exit holes be 0.0430″ (1.092mm). Minicaps use the larger exit hole size 0.0520″ (1.321mm). The PolarDawg and the Top Dawg use a combination of exit hole sizes starting with the larger at the bottom row and graduating smaller by the top row. These are the correct exit hole sizes used throughout the stove industry since 1898. Stick with them and avoid experimentation.
The Big Disclaimer – If you download any of my CAD files for printing, you do so completely at your own risk. All files are in STL format and are in ZIP files for reduced size. I do not have files in any other format. You’ll need to unZIP the files you download. If you do not want to work with STL CAD files, you’ll have to reformat/convert on your own. I do not and cannot make any guarantees or give any customer support for any 3D prints you make from these CAD files. This is your project. It’d be great and I’d really appreciate it if you could erase my logo and branding for what you print but, given how people and the world have become these days, I don’t really expect folks will do me that courtesy. I’m going to imagine someone(s) will come along and try to go into business selling these models. I get it. But, if you buy one of their prints, you’ll need to contact them about problems and issues if you should have any.
Here are the cap instructions as I made them for my caps: https://www.berniedawg.com/berniedawg-silent-damper-cap-instructions/
Below you will find the files for the various cap models for you to download. Here’s an index for which cap goes to which stove: https://www.berniedawg.com/berniedawg-silent-cap-index/
Minicap w/o Legs Minicap-No-Legs-b.5.stl
Minicap with Legs Minicap-with-Legs-c.5.stl
DragonTamer DragonTamer3-c7.stl
Dawg-A-Nova Dawg-a-Nova-c5.stl
OmniDawg OmniDawg-c7.stl
OmniPup OmniPup-c3.stl
PolarDawg Polardawg-d2.stl
XGK Dawg XGKDawg.stl
Top Dawg TopDawg-b.1.stl
Wide Body WideBody-with-notch-2.stl
PuppyDawg Puppydawg-silent-burner-cap.stl
Primus 100 Flame Plate primus-100-flame-plate.stl
Juwel Flame Plate Juwel-Stove-Flame-Plate.stl
All Models in one file (about 35.1MB big) All Models with stl
If you have questions, you can email me at bd@berniedawg.com . But, please understand… I am not able to lead you through the process of choosing a 3D metal printing service or helping you choose a CAD editor program or downloading CAD software or teach you how to do any or all of that. It’s all beyond me at this point. There is no way I can keep track of all the resources/methods/techniques available for these resources. Happy camping! BD
