OT speaking of (heath) kits and 3-D printing

So my son (age 16) bought a 3-D printer kit from here.

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(shipping took a while.)

He built it in 2-3 evenings, no real help from me.

His first print worked fine. It's a new air nozzle for the extruder.

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(oh boy, it says welcome to the new dropbox are all my links broken?) Let me know if you can't see the link.

~$170 to get started. very nice. We'll have to learn how to make the models from a CAD file.. or whatever is used.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold
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Actually, the lingo is that the 3D model is in the CAD file, and you make a part with the printer.

Hopefully the printer works with common CAD formats -- there are some big- name consumer 3D printers out there that try to capture you with their proprietary CAD file format. I doubt that the kit people would want to do that, though.

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Tim Wescott 
Control systems, embedded software and circuit design 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

OK, so is it easy to go from the 3-D cad file to (whatever) to the slicer? My son is much more knowledgeable than I on the whole subject. Any cheap (free?) 3D cad software?

Yeah at the moment he's downloading files from thingiverse. (I assume they are "standard" format.)

I think he's hoping to sell stuff to his friends at school. (darn capitalist :^)

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Den torsdag den 6. april 2017 kl. 17.44.55 UTC+2 skrev George Herold:

gotta love this part: "Made from piano-black laser-cut acrylic frame. To maintain the garage-built feel and the handmade charm"

afaict all 3D printers that aren't stupidly expensive is basically a tool for a hobby that involves 99% tweaking settings and 1% making stuff

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

I see it comes in piano black or waste brown.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Take a look at 123D software for 3D printing. It is free and I think pretty good. It is an Autodesk product.

The local maker group and the library have done some classes on using it. I am not a user, but did have a look at it.

Dan

He could also advertise doing programming and printing on Craigslist.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

That may be a fair assessment -- I think it depends on what you want to *do* with the printer (i.e., the printed works).

I was disappointed in the "cosmetics" of the parts that were available from the printers to which I have "free" access. And, the mechanical strength of the products.

[Fine if you want to print some "curio" to set on your desk!]

And, if you want to *design* something (instead of "printing from a catalog" -- why not just ORDER the printed part??), the effort to build the 3D models represents a far greater "investment" than the savings of 3D printing (vs. having it cut from a block of aluminum/etc. with a wire EDM)

I think for the industry to move beyond hobbyist/tinkerers, there needs to be an easy/reliable/accurate way of building a model from a tangible part (i.e., 3D scan) coupled with a way of producing a printed part that is of comparable mechanical and cosmetic quality as the "original".

Reply to
Don Y

snips

I expect a very soft xray scanner could do that

cosmetic: acetone. mechanial: post heat treatment (so I hear)

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Home 3D printers are a great tool for those that enjoy fettling.

But sending STL files to a commercial printing house is a great way of getting remarkably cheap and good complex designs fabricated. The wide variety of materials is useful.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Dunno -- I believe so. The closest I've gotten is making 3D models and emailing them to a friend with a printer.

FreeCAD is free open-source 3D software. It's evolving rapidly, I believe in thanks to 3D printing.

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As is typical of FOSS, the documentation sucks but the web forum is excellent. I'm pretty sure that at least one of the regulars on the "newbie help" forum is a developer, and there's a lot of helpful power users.

STEP and IGIS are the two common standard formats.

I think there's going to be a lot of cottage-industry style 3D printing. Lots of gizmos to be built -- I visited one of my customers a few weeks ago and they were showing me their 3D printed cases.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

So far so good... he (my son) futzed around a bit getting the bed level, (they have a screw at each corner.) But after one failed print... it's been all printing and no tweaking.

We'll see how it goes.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

We (where I work) do low volume things, a 3D printer might make sense for that type of stuff.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

I think it is like PCBs, in most cases you are better off getting someone pro to do it for you

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

A lot depends on how you want to express your design.

If you want to start with basic shapes (spheres, cuboids, cones etc) then add/subtract/rotate/translate/scale/shear them using a declarative programming language, then take a look at OpenSCAD and its many brethren. Some are installed applications, some are executed in the browser.

For simple "cleaning up" the generated triangles in the STL file, use netfabb basic.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

I use OpenSCAD from here

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Looks and feels like a programming language, so familiar to me. Good documentation, and easy to use.

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Regards, 

Adrian Jansen
Reply to
Adrian Jansen

Freecad and I think google sketchup are pretty much free. Freecad may have more bells and whistles, and probably a script interface.

Cheers

Reply to
Martin Riddle

One of the benefits of 3Dprinting is that you can make stuff that you can't make on a mill. Internal/externally inaccessible cavities, for example. Scanners aren't very good at "observing" those features. A feature that's shadowed or "inside" won't be captured correctly.

I've been observing a newbie with an A8 for 4 months. He's made a lot of gizmos that improve the machine...stuff that should have been included with the machine. You can't make a decent print without a better cooling nozzle. Why can't they just ship it with the correctly shaped nozzle?!!

He's burned thru a lot of filament, but never made a single useful thing that wasn't an improvement to the machine, and has no plans that require doing so.

If you can imagine your part as addition or subtraction of spheres, cylinders and cubes, TinkerCad is trivial to use. There are more complex base shapes, but the concept is the same.

One issue with printers is that many use proprietary "chipped" filament spools that cost 3X the price of generic filament. Yes, it removes some of the variables, but you can't easily tweek the parameters when it doesn't work right. And PLA gets brittle with time. If you don't use it, you lose it. I've read a lot of opinions on why, but they conflict.

There are a lot of options for having your designs fabricated. Must be a lot of bored people with idle printers, cuz there are ads for printing services on craigslist.

I live two blocks from a UPS store with a 3D printer. Their sample ABS prints are amazing. Problem with all the options is the high cost of getting it done. UPS quoted $26 for a case for an EBAY circuit board designed on thingiverse. Not gonna happen.

If you have an obsolete tool with a busted plastic piece, you can imagine making the part. How often does that happen?

I'd like to have a 3D printer. I keep a running list of all the things I'd print if I had one. After 4 months, it's still blank. But I'm still gonna buy one as soon as I meet that person who's finally realized that they'll never use it and puts it out at the garage sale.

Reply to
mike

Reply to
dcaster

Have you used this Tim? I've only used 2-D cad programs, pretty basic stuff. I wouldn't mind paying ~$500 (one time) for something with a nicer interface/ documentation. I think my son is using Autodesk inventor at his school.

I got home from work last night and it was buzzing away in his room. He's got orders for three "spiny things" at school... and is already dreaming of different plastics and colors. So I'm feeling somewhat motivated to be able to design my own gizmos.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

I've only done 2-D cad. lines and circles etc. with a GUI.

OK thanks I'll look at that too.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

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