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Where to start?!
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31-03-2021 4:58am#1
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oscarBravo wrote: »Most smallish prints take at least an hour. It's not an instant gratification hobby. The slicer will tell you.
Well was thinking more to cover it when not in use, but great to know!
What would you define as smallish. How long do you reckon would it take to print something like the image below (in the hand) and also is PLA hard plastic or is that ABS or different material. Will be mostly printing small things like adaptors caps for camera, mostly stuff for camera and telescope maybe the inevitable orange peeler.0 -
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iLikeWaffles wrote: »Forgot to ask is there any good books on the subject?
Books? What are they ...? :pac:
Since there was talk of 3-D printing on the woodworking thread, I've been thinking a bit more about getting myself one, but two doubts have (so far) held me back. This seems like a good place to address them:
(1) For an occasional user, how much material are you likely to waste, on account of false starts, forgot-to-change wrong settings, critical defects in small pieces ... ?
(2) How easy is it to accurately replicate an existing part, either to replace it like-for-like, or to make some small change? Most of the examples of things I'd like to print would be (very) small parts that have snapped or worn, and which include a threaded section, or teeth (on a cog), or have tabs that snap into another part.0 -
CelticRambler wrote: »Books? What are they ...? :pac:
Since there was talk of 3-D printing on the woodworking thread, I've been thinking a bit more about getting myself one, but two doubts have (so far) held me back. This seems like a good place to address them:
(1) For an occasional user, how much material are you likely to waste, on account of false starts, forgot-to-change wrong settings, critical defects in small pieces ... ?
(2) How easy is it to accurately replicate an existing part, either to replace it like-for-like, or to make some modification based on the original? Most of the examples of things I'd like to print would be (very) small parts that have snapped or worn, and which include a threaded section, or teeth (on a cog), or have tabs that snap into another part.
Was thinking about threaded parts also. I guess a regular die and tap set would work very well on plastic after a print!0 -
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oscarBravo wrote: »One of the biggest challenges is DFM - design for manufacturing. You can make a 3D model of almost anything you can imagine, but the hard part is designing it so that it's easy to print. I try to design everything to avoid having to print support material, for example, and to ensure there's enough bottom surface area for decent bed adhesion.witnessmenow wrote: »The other bit of advice I would have is to start off printing by using a slicer (personally I like Cura) to put files on an SD card and print from that.
Hmm. What I'm getting from this is that for someone like me who very much wants to create one-off technical pieces, and not very often, is that it'd probably be enough to stick with the CAD software and take a ready-to-print file to someone with a machine.
And also that the machine should ideally have its own (semi-)permanent space in a workshop or studio?
From a practical perspective, and in the context of a non-lockdown life
complete with real-world distractions, how long would ye say it takes (very approximatively) from when you first get an idea of a piece you'd like to make, through the design stage and trial prints, until you have the final usable piece in your hand? 0 -
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Maybe. It's definitely harder to iterate designs that way, unless you're really friendly with the printer ownerCelticRambler wrote: »Hmm. What I'm getting from this is that for someone like me who very much wants to create one-off technical pieces, and not very often, is that it'd probably be enough to stick with the CAD software and take a ready-to-print file to someone with a machine.
That's advisable, yes. Mine live on a side table in my home office.And also that the machine should ideally have its own (semi-)permanent space in a workshop or studio?
It definitely varies, mostly dependent on the size of the model (and therefore how long it takes to print a draft), and also on how many iterations you go through. Anything from half a day to a couple of days, in my experience.From a practical perspective, and in the context of a non-lockdown life complete with real-world distractions, how long would ye say it takes (very approximatively) from when you first get an idea of a piece you'd like to make, through the design stage and trial prints, until you have the final usable piece in your hand?0 -
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Print time is more of a function of size than complexity. Design time is obviously the other way around.CelticRambler wrote: »:eek: That quick???
Surely it depends on complexity rather than size?
It depends what you're designing, what it's for, and what your expectations are. We discussed the example of a lens cap earlier - I've designed models for similar applications in an afternoon.My 3-D modelling experience to date has mostly been in the realm of animation and very intermittent, so I'd expect to be slow enough, but even the people I know with a fair bit of experience in that area would spend anything up to two months working on a single model.I'm a little bit put off, too, by the suggestion that it's relatively normal to have to go through several printed iterations. Are my expectations too high in thinking that whatever I design in the computer will appear on the printer bed exactly as I designed it, correct to the nearest 0.1mm?
Let's look at the example I mentioned earlier - the bracket for my bike. At first I designed and printed something like this:
It's basically a truncated cylinder with a cone subtracted from the end (to match the top tube of my handlebars), and a torus through which I can feed a zip tie to attach it.
It worked quite well, but was too low. I came up with a more complicated double-cylinder design, incorporating a built-in hinge (printed in place - that's a really cool ability of 3D printers) that allows me to swivel it out of the way when I fold up the bike:
In cross-section it looks like this:
I wasn't sure about the tolerances of the printer, so I printed the first centimetre or so, then stopped it and remove the print to see if it swivelled correctly - it didn't, so I adjusted the horizontal expansion parameter in the slicer (easier than changing the model) and printed again. I could see a visible gap this time, so I let the print finish.
The first design took me maybe an hour, and another hour to print. It took an afternoon on the bike to figure out that a redesign was needed, something like two hours to knock up the second revision, and two hours to print.
Will your printer produce your model accurate to a tenth of a millimetre? Maybe, if you've spent a long time obsessively tuning it in - bearing in mind you'll also have to tune it for each roll of filament, because different filaments have different printing properties. I just find it easier to iterate designs until I get a finished product that does what I need it to do.0 -
Here's another example, which you can see in action here.
I designed the brace for the oven's rear foot first. I wasn't completely happy with the fit, so I tweaked the design and printed another one, which worked fine. Incorporating what I learned from that design, I was happy with the first iteration of the design pictured - once I had printed and tested it, I flipped it horizontally in the slicer and printed another one. All three designed, printed, tweaked, printed again and ready to install in about a day, all told.0 -
As an aside and just to point out for future reference - the example I gave is a Bahtinov mask. It is used as a focusing aid when focusing on points of light such as stars. Basically it diffracts the light coming into a lens into an even pattern so when you're in focus & out of focus it is obvious; there is a centre spike that helps you find the correct focus which works like this:
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iLikeWaffles wrote: »As an aside and just to point out for future reference - the example I gave is a Bahtinov mask. It is used as a focusing aid when focusing on points of light such as stars. Basically it diffracts the light coming into a lens into an even pattern so when you're in focus & out of focus it is obvious; there is a centre spike that helps you find the correct focus which works like this:
Very cool, ta! I must get printing...0 -
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oscarBravo wrote: »
Great, lots of amazing things on that site, you see something and it gives you an idea for something else, love it! This would have been a question, no doubt. Guess you answered it in advanced.
Where to browse for projects....0 -
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