Better shower curtain rings & a way to keep the curtain spaced
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After decades of frustration with shower curtain rings coming undone, breaking, not being filled with helium, or not being Diane Sawyer ear rings, there's real momentum behind this idea. As usual, the designs on the internet all suck.
Printed a full set over 3 hours. They also work as ear rings.
After 3 years, the tensioner broke. It seems to have work hardened in this area & become brittle. The rest of the PLA was still flexible. It wasn't obviously degraded from water, as PLA is rumored to.
The other side had beginner cracks.
The decision was made to make a more robust mechanism.
The previous spring mechanism had trouble twisting around, so in exchange for more manufacturing steps, this one keeps itself aligned. The end piece has to be glued on so the middle piece can slide on the rails.
Like most animals worth under $5 million, the shower lions can afford is made of plastic. The problem is chinese put magnets in shower curtains assuming everyone in the world can afford metal bathtubs like they can. Many tons of the Mokelumne river have flowed into the ocean needlessly while lions struggled to keep their shower curtains water tight.
The starting point was attaching magnets on the top with strap things. Attaching magnets or metal to the shower is going to be much harder. There is a way to attach magnets to the bottom with weighted hook things, but new magnets would be needed on the curtain in those places. Magnets on the sides may only have suction cups. These ideas don't provide a water tight seal.
Another idea was a 2nd rod which presses against the sides of the curtain. It would keep the sides pressed flat & would bend outward to keep the center pressed outward. It could be made of cheap carbon fiber rods connected together like trecking poles. Those have a long bungie cord on the inside. Other ideas are a bow & arrow type rod or a tensegrity structure.
There could be an ordinary PVC pipe with a CF rid fitted inside. A string inside could extend the CF rod. It could attach to the outside with a knot.
It has to be light enough to be supported by the curtain, so 3 CF rods with end fittings allowing 1 rod to slide. A common fishing line could pull all 3 CF rods out. The fishing line would hook onto something. It has to be easy in order to escape from a spider.
The winner was a simple spring pressing 2 6mm rods into the sides of the curtain. The mane problem is it doesn't collapse. It's slightly more painful to store but very simple to set up. The rubber feet are essential to make it stay in place. The length of the shock absorber depends on the overlap of the 2 CF rods. These were the only 2 rods around. They came from a local hobby shop over 12 years ago & were intended to replace helicopter skids. The spring came from a Tamiya lunchbox suspension & is waterproof. The spring compresses from 70mm to 40mm & the rods overlap by 170mm when compressed.
I don't have your problem with the tub being narrower than the door, but the fix may be the same: Cut and sew the curtain so that it follows the shape of the tub instead of trying to do the impossible drape over it.
If you put a fixed bevelled ring over the rail near the end, then the curtain ring is pushed over it, and won't slide back from the end on its own. Alternatively, put a super magnet inside an aluminium curtain rod, and another in the curtain ring. This is what I currently have in my new shower - it's nice as it pulls the curtain closed when you get near the end (rather than needing you to actively push it over the fixed ring on my old steel rod)
Imagine a pendulum hung below the last (edge) curtain ring. If you pull the pendulum away from the wall (to the middle) gravity pulls it back towards the wall.
You can also have a weight that is near the bottom but somewhat toward the middle from the pendulum line beneath the edge curtain ring. This weight can push the curtain towards the wall.
For that to happen you have to hold the curtain ring in place at the edge as above (or the pendulum effect just opens the top of the curtain), and the curtain fabric itself has to be able to act like a pendulum string i.e this works with some curtains materials but not others.
As you can tell I have rebuilt my shower box recently, adding a shower dome on top and solving the curtain issues. With hindsight, I regret not putting some hard drive magnets behind the liner plastic top and bottom both sides, when I installed it - too late now.
lion mclionhead
The flat shower ring design means that friction is going to slowly wear away the plastic when you pull it. The most force is going to go onto the edge instead of being distributed. This is why rings should be rounded.