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Ask Slashdot: For What Are You Using 3-D Printing?
An anonymous reader writes: I've been thinking about getting a 3-D printer for a while: the quality is rising, the software is better, STL files really do seem a sufficiently good standard ("sufficiently standard," that is — I'm not worried that printers are going to stop supporting it anytime soon), and prices have dropped quite a bit. Importantly to me, it also seems like less of a jumping-off-a-cliff decision, since I can get a completely assembled one from places as wild and crazy as ... the Home Depot (not that I plan to). However, even the stretchiest practical things I can think of to print can't truly actually justify the price, and that's OK — I hope not to require enough replacement knobs and chess pieces to necessarily *need* one, and playing around with it is the main likely upshot, which I'm OK with. But still, I'd like to hear what uses you have been putting your 3-D printer to, including printers that aren't yours but belong to a hackerspace, public library, eccentric neighbor, etc. What actually practical / useful tasks have you been using 3-D printing for, and with what printer technology? What playful purposes? It's OK if you just keep printing out those chess pieces and teapots, but I'm curious about less obvious reasons to have one around. (And I might just use the local Tech Shop's anyhow, but the question still applies.) If you've purchased a 3D printer, are you happy with the experience? If so, or if not, what kind did you get?
For what are you using 3D printing for?
At the moment, nothing. It has a use for some small, niche scenarios, but it doesn't do anything for most of us here, and I really wish we would stop seeing stories on it every other week.
Why isn't 2D printing ever talked about?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Some online, some traditional retail. Best 3-d prints there are, and I don't have to fuss with the machine. Sorry. The things are fine for prototyping, but suck for durable goods at this point. Most of us just want durable goods. That said, I understand not to fall in to the "usefulness envy" trap. IIRC, that's what they called it at the Homebrew Computer club. That's where we are right now. There's nothing wrong with that. It's cool to experiment with new things; but I'm still more interested in code than new physical objects. To each his own.
At this stage, I think it'd be interesting to see 3-d printers producing things that take advantage of the strengths they do have. You can use a 3-d printer to produce complex, fragile shapes, unique art objects etc. That could take us in some interesting directions. Making a gun that's more likely to take your fingers off than function as a normal weapon? Not so much.
They're quite useful if you know what you're doing. For example, you have some kind of toy, gadget, device and whatnot...that's missing the battery cover? Hard to find...even on eBay, so what do you do? Fire up your favourite 3D software and make one. Works like a charm.
If you're working in advertisement/merchandise production... you can make small prototype samples of what you want to have mass produced, this ensures that your oversea production don't get it wrong (and they always do, trust me!) Shipping a sample of what you want mass produced, is a dream come true, and fortunately for (me) most of my competitors have no clue that this can be done, so they still do it the old fashioned way (try to tell the production team with drawings and talk over the phone with a foreign team that hardly understands English).
Pictures say more than a 1000 words they say, well...a prototype object to hold in your hand says more than 1000 pictures.
3D printers are a godsend.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
It's nice to quickly be able do design and print replacements for stuff I happen to break without having to visit a store and adhere to opening hours. A selection of stuff I've printed that have actually been useful: Oscilloscope foot, fire alarm ceiling mount, a new and better 3d printer + a bunch of improvements to it, spacer for the kitchen sink, sprint sled, microphone mounts, electronics boxes, speaker stands, a block to keep the kitchen drain pipe at a good angle and parts for an old and broken curtain system that are no longer manifactured or available anywhere.
My 2 main projects I was planning to do with my 3d printer was make my own variant of the inMoov robotics project and also using PLA prints as a "lost wax" mold in aluminium casting (they would eventually fold into the one project after initial prototyping). However, I have an Ultimaker 1 and it is very unreliable so I haven't got very far. I am thinking about ditching it for a Flashforge Creator Pro but I'm waiting for the USD/AUD exchange rate to be more favourable to me.
I'm a trained CNC machinist with a 3D printer and I think your attitude is stereo-typically ignorant. Same type of argument usually made by people who drive pickups with a perfect paint job and refuse to buy tools from harbor freight.
Most of the idle crap people want from life can be accomplished with ABS plastic filament. This is true at least for anyone who doesn't work with their hands.
The home inventor personality is usually obsessed with achieving marginal improvements in efficiency which are typically too niche to already have products in existence solving the problem. Sword-chucks and triangle shovels are just a special type of arrogance from people who like to blame their deficiencies on the lack of their poorly thought through silver bullet solution.
If you have to sweat and bleed to get your pipe-dream produced in Aluminum or Steel, people will normally change their "only a carbon-fiber spork will do" attitude when differentiating themselves as having an "eye-for-quality"(aka ham fisted over-engineered for the situation's merits) becomes too costly.
Are any affordable 3D or 2D printers suitable for making circuit boards? I could really go for that. I am tired of doing the laser printer transfer method, and would seriously consider buying something better, if the price is right. Quantities are modest. Thanks.
A dingo ate my sig...
I call it 'dollar store value'; for something about the size of a VHS tape, chess piece (Dalek pieces!) or smaller (er, like 6" square sort of thing) its about break even or cheaper to print it out; if its at all large, its cheaper to just buy it at the dollar store or whatever. You want to make a little box to hold screws? Buy it at the dollar store. You want to make a custom designed thing for your pegboard, or a case for a model car, or whatever.. well, perfect. Of course, if its a self designed thing, the printer is invaluable; you can design somethign, print it out, refine it, print it again. Its amazing. --> I've made a tricopter (liek a quadcopter, but no extra rubbish motors :)
So if you are a creative type, who doesn't mind learning to CAD (open source stuff), its fantastic. If you don't have time to CAD, you're relying on existing models to print.. check out sitrs like Thingiverse to see whats out there.
If you want to mass produce stuff cheap, its currently the wrong game.
Good for makers, not so good for consumers.
They have had kits that do not require a 3d printer for that for a long time now. There are a few different companies offering it. Here are a couple that I know of.
http://www.willykit.com/
http://www.createamate.com/
And I there there is a clone a willy kit somewhere but cannot remember the URL for it. All of these options are much cheaper than a 3d printer and you can put vibrators in them as well as glow in the dark colors and even lights. Lots of fun- just don't make a bunch of them and hand them out in the secret Santa at work next year. Trust me, it's not as fun or funny as you might think.
Well, the things that I tend to do most often is make my own tools for fairly specific tasks. One of my greatest eureka moments was when I realised that I can 3D print my own tool to open a watch case. It took a few iterations (plastic after all is weak), but I finally hit on something that's reliable enough, and it won't scratch the watch case. This was all because I took it in some years ago for a battery change, and the person kind of made a mess of trying to open it, they bent a strap pin, put tears in the leather strap, and scratched the case back. Fortunately it was my cheap daily watch, but still, I got paranoid after that, and had no intention of going to that person again. Now, I save a few dollars by buying my own batteries, and they're good brand ones too, and use a plastic tool to open the watch. No chance of marking it.
The point isn't so much that 3D printing is awesome, but it's really great when you realise that with this tool (3D printer that is) I can do things which I previously would never do. I'd never consider making a tool before unless it could be made with sheet metal and a hammer and file, and in some ways, the tool I made is better than one I could buy.
If I had a 3d printer I'd custom design an Arduino case. I want to make one that looks like a tricorder, complete with slots for LEDs etc.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
They have had kits that do not require a 3d printer for that for a long time now. There are a few different companies offering it. Here are a couple that I know of.
http://www.willykit.com/
http://www.createamate.com/
And I there there is a clone a willy kit somewhere but cannot remember the URL for it. All of these options are much cheaper than a 3d printer and you can put vibrators in them as well as glow in the dark colors and even lights. Lots of fun- just don't make a bunch of them and hand them out in the secret Santa at work next year. Trust me, it's not as fun or funny as you might think.
It's....interesting how...well informed you are in the matter
Elok
I use mine for all sorts of things. Missing battery covers, custom enclosures (Working on making a custom instrument panel for my project car powered by some 328p's), missing knobs and dials.
I regularly make things for my dad's bosses (Yacht charter company. Lost knob or plastic doohicky and want to buy a replacement? Fuck you, give us $300 because BOATS!). Lots of lost/broken/etc. plastic bits that cost lots of money to replace, I make the parts they want for 25 to 50 percent of the cost to replace them with OEM parts.
Right now I'm printing out a display model of a mechanical torson limited slip differential. Why? Because LSDs are pretty neat.
I'm using a makerfarm I3v 8" model. Comes in a kit, frame is made of laser cut wood. Best customer support I've ever experienced, no problems with the printer that have not been user error. I just got auto bed leveling set up and it's extremely reliable.
I carry around a pipe caliper that I designed and 3D printed. A scissor-looking device that tells you the size of a pipe (up to 4") based on outside diameter. Useful on the job.
I designed and printed a custom flashlight holder for those cheap LED flashlights.
Custom replacement handle for a triangular file
Set of custom drawer knobs.
Custom hard drive mounting bracket.
Custom battery holder.
Custom shelf bracket.
~Three dozen clothespins.
3-axis tilt camera stand that mounts on top of a tripod. (replaces one that broke).
Custom 80:1 worm gear reduction for a machine I was working on, as well as a few spur gears and light-duty V-belt pulleys for same machine. Custom thrust bearing and ball bearing holders.
A full set of Meta-Chess pieces.
A custom tool for aligning V-belt pulleys using a 3V line laser module and magnetic base.
Currently in progress is a mostly 3D printed racing wheel controller for my PC, which uses the guts from a dual analog game controller. The controller is unusable because the silicone pads for the buttons cracked, but the electronics are still good and with 4x analog axes I can get steering and three pedals plus 16 digital buttons. My hangup is I can't get the "feel" of the buttons right...
If I ever get off my ass and finish building the electric furnace I've been working on, and manage to melt some aluminum with it, I fully intend to try lost-PLA casting some aluminum parts. That's be awesome...
=Smidge=
If you don't know what 3D printers are useful for, check out thingiverse.com. If your mind is not blown, then consider taking up knitting.
you're funny, with its 105 degree C transition temperature ABS can't even be safely used for a stove knob or a light fixture or under the hood of a car.
Makes great yoda heads though, or other toy models
I have no access to such toys but have thought it would be great if there were a public database where manufacturers provided or users contributed scanned parameters for things like knobs and battery covers for old radios, television sets, ham gear, test equipment etc. In the case of TV, that'd be mostly for 60's and earlier pre-transistor sets. [When I say tube set these days many now think that means c.r.t.]
I don't know how strong printed knobs would be, or if they'd have the problem with getting brittle with age or under U.V. as some plastics do. Some knobs used a metal insert to distribute stress and provide some spring action for a tight fit. Some have a slotted slide-on region with a flat cylindrical "C" clamp for more tightness and strength while still giving some. Some mechanical tv tuners took quite a bit of torque to turn.
Are you on the correct site?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I use shapeways stainless steel 3D printing to make parts for physics experiments. It's only useful when the parts are small and can have sloppy tolerances. But in these cases it saves a fortune. I recently had a dozen small parts made for $200 that would have cost $1000 made by conventional machining. You can make screw threads (1/4 - 20 and larger; 10-24 might work) by printing the thread and then chasing the printed thread with a die or tap before use.
I'm a musician. I'd love to test some designs for trombone mouthpieces on a 3D printer. Trombone mouthpieces have been round for a hundred years because that's easier to manufacture on a lathe. What if brass mouthpieces could be different shapes? oval, oblong, rounded triangle? A 3D printer would be great for that kind of experimentation. Likewise, I'm also interested in unusual capo and string mute designs for a guitar.
Most stuff people interact with don't get 105 degrees C though. If you needed to make an enclosure for something or fix a piece of existing ABS/PLA plastic that broke, that's what you use a 3D printer for. You can also make prototypes for objects that you then send to a commercial printer, laser cutting facility or CNC mill to get created in the appropriate material.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Why would you want to print anything else? Assault rifles and handguns.. Maybe a sports car down the track....
A 3D printer is great for people who know CAD. I love my little Afinia. Sure, I have printed out my fair share of toys and models. But where it comes in handy is when I need something very specific to solve a problem both at home and work.
For instance, I bought my grandma a weather station for her birthday. However, there was no place to mount some of the sensors. After about a half-hour of design work and about 45 minutes printing time, I had some quick plates that I could glue to the shed and screw to the fence posts to mount the temperature and wind sensors. Sure, I might have went to the hardware store and looked for a solution, but that would have taken much longer than the hour and 15 minutes it took me to design and print something.
Simply put, if you know CAD or are willing to learn, 3D printers are great. If you are only going to print what other people have made, don't bother. After the toys and other tat, you will lose interest and probably feel like you wasted your money.
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So, you see your truck as more of a "lifestyle" purchase than a utilitarian one? I'm genuinely curious, because I see a lot of people with big shiny pickups with cargo beds that have never been exposed to the elements, much less scratched by having something placed in them. Their towing hitches are perfectly chromed and have obviously never seen anything like a trailer.
I see some of them commuting into downtown Chicago for their jobs in the financial district and wonder what went into their decisions to purchase such vehicles.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm a tinkerer. In the past I would occasionally have parts milled overseas for my contraptions. It's a one off so there's a setup fee and then the work is kind of shoddy, and you wait two months before you have a prototype in your hand. That's why I laugh when people tell me how slow my printer. I have a prototype in a few hours now vs months.
I actually built my printer, it is a prusa i3. At some point I came to a stark realization. All technology creates a net economic decline but most of the time it's driven by a small group making large profits at the detriment of everyone else. Real quick example, smart phones have made billions in profits while at the same time destroying many industries (no more electronic metronomes, no more handheld electronic games ie tiger, no more egg timers, electronic tuners, handheld auto diagnostic devices, and so on. Soon universal remote controls will even be a thing of the past.
But a 3d printer is the first piece of technology that will directly empower a regular man at home at the detriment of corporations. There is really no way for it to benefit any corporation. All it can do is drive them to their knees. Look at the 3d printed prosthetics man! Do you know what this is going to do to that industry! Holy cow!
I have a design right now for a lantern that uses a translucent plastic jar as a shade (very common item). I can print out the lid that will house all of the electronics and the switch for pennies. It is water proof, shatter proof, shock proof, lights evenly and will illuminate an entire room, uses pulse width modulated dimming so that power is not lost to heat, and the whole shebang is driven off two chips. It runs on two AA batteries. Best part is it has a header on board so that you can reprogram it to do anything that you need, If you are a tinkerer such as myself. Set it up to stay on for a few hours while you go to sleep and then it turns itself off. Make it into a strobe light.
The whole project costs next to nothing. And it's made possible in part by 3d printing. You could build my lantern for $10. Or you could buy an inferior clumsy anachronistic florescent coleman from walmart that is designed as if you were pouring oil into the bottom. Load it up with 6 D cells and lug it around like Joe Jack headed to the barn for some late night milkin.
What do I use 3d printing for? Improving the world. I don't need coleman to buy into me. I don't need the financial support of some mega corporation to make my designs a reality.
And when I'm done I will upload the whole project to thingiverse and anyone can do what they want with it. Maybe a guy in West Africa will find a way to improve my circuit. Maybe he'll find a chip that is equivalent and uses a few milliamps less power. He'll upload his improvements and the community will get an extra 15 minutes battery life.
I'm also working on a low cost wind turbine. It doesn't produce much juice, but if you can throw up 100 of them in a village without power...
You can just give the prototyping shop a file, don't need to make a plastic model.
As for making enclosure for abs plastic thing that broke, that's largely nonsense. The cost comparison for just ordering normal molded replacement vs. the time to CMM out and print a thing is enormous. Try making even a "skin" for your cell phone and get back to me.
where we get parts from engineers, so they cost something, most our parts (ymmv) are cnc out of acrylic with a Tomach machine
occaisionally it is cheaper to make things from the 3D printer
however, most of our parts require some smooth surfaces, and the CNC works better for us
I was thinking of making some louvers for my car, which mysteriously had all four missing when I got it. Buy one, scan it, and make the other three with the printer. Should be the perfect application, and would save me about $75, assuming the plastic costs nearly nothing.
"don't get 105 degrees C"
Yes, but unfortunately most materials don't go straight from solid to liquid. Think chocolate, at 75F it usually is perfectly solid, at 85F you might get a little on your hand but not bad and at 95F it may hold its shape but will practically fall apart in your hand. ABS plastic is probably similar. Sure it may turn to liquid a 220F and be pretty solid at 90F, it may be seem pretty decent at 110F-130F sitting on a shelf but it could be wearing pretty quickly if being stressed because it is semi malleable.
Custom Model Rockets
Movie Props (Make your own light saber)
Prototypes
Inventions
Robot Parts (FIRST Robotics)
Phone Cases (with gears)
Thingiverse
Custom connectors for Legos
The biggest questions you have to answer are 1) what material do you want to use, and 2) what the max size of your part? Personally, I like ABS. It is flexible and more forgiving and assembles easily with acetone. My favorite lowend 3D printer is the Makerbot 2X, however you won't get an iron man costume out if it with the 6x9x12 build volume. However, with a few mods you can print, ABS, Ninjaflex, and even PLA.
The Ultimaker 2 is a great printer for PLA, nice resolution, however it uses 3mm filament which is not as common as at the 1.7mm that most of the other printers use.
My lease favorite low end 3D printer is the Makerbot Z18.
It's all good fun, go for it!
I 3d printed replacement connectors for my Mazda's tail light systems, so I could T-in a trailer wiring system without actually modifying the wiring harness. I ordered such a thing from the internet, but the connectors were all mirrored from what I needed. So I modeled them up, printed out the replacements, and now I'm good to go.
While I find the technology interesting, I've never thought of a single thing I'd want to use one to manufacture or build. I am completely bereft of ideas for things I need (other than a new computer.)
Life is ever so much less stressful when you don't have a long list of "needs". :D
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rmrdtech/a-small-wind-turbine-for-a-big-difference/description
Made possible by 3D printing. Kickstarter only has 10 hours to go.
I got my 3d printer not to make something that's going to last a very long time, but more for novelty items & a few custom builds. For example, I bought some Red, White & Blue PLA so I could make some July 4th decorations & stuff. I think I'll print some custom cookie cutters for my sis-in-law. Oh, and my dad wants some letters so he can see how to place them on a wind chime he's making. I've also printed some things for my Cubscouts. The other things I've printed have mainly been to show it off or play with it. I'd put owning a 3d printer along the same lines as owning a regular printer these days, unnecessary but can be fun or useful.
lol. Quite to the contrary.
True - ABS has limited heat cycles, and lowish glass transition temperature, but it's not immediately liquid @ 105C.
I've been using velocity stacks made from ABS on a race car for almost a year now - no issues what-so-ever, even tho it's the cheapest kind of ABS and isn't chemical resistant. They work brilliantly.
Nylon parts i've been using as well, harder to print due to the prep tho, but from Nylon which has even lower glass transition temperature car manufacturers make intake manifolds these days - even for turbocharged. Glass transition of 85C.
http://www.matbase.com/materia...
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
and they are researching into making 3d printing CHEAPER than injection molding, and they are already getting pretty darn close!
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Etching a PCB (well, actually, letting somebody like expresspcb do it) instead of testing a circuit on a breadboard first is something I do all the time.
If you're ready to accept a breadboard, that means you're willing to accept one or two for a start, and they don't have to be pretty, which means that if they were PCBs, you wouldn't mind a few blue-wires.
If you're in that position, and your circuit has more than a few handfuls of nets on it, and your time is valuable and you have other stuff to do before your circuit comes back, and you're halfway proficient at electronics and at double-checking your work...
If all those things are true, you'll have a much nicer working PCB in much less time than it would take to get your crappy, flaky breadboard working.
As the saying goes, YMMV, but that's been my experience over decades of doing this.
Anyone who deems any kind of material unsuitable, not useful, or junk without knowing the intended application is quite frankly extremely ignorant. Plastic has it's uses, just like various woods, or metals.
Also what plastic things are you making out of wood? Are you suggesting molding? You do realise that each manufacturer technique has it's benefits and drawback too right, or are you ignorant about that too?
true not immediately liquid, it doesn't have a true melting point but goes more and more to jelly.
well we can talk about nylon intake manifolds, Ford made them for quite a few years but customers found they'd crack. So Ford replaced them with one that had aluminum in a few strategic places. cost reduced crap, that's what our civilization is all about.
The things that I print range pretty widely:
- 3D printed prosthetics for people. See http://www.enablingthefuture.o... . Yes, home printers can make prosthetics that hold up to real world use, and for a lot of people (particularly kids and uninsured) the difference between $50 and $5,000 is insurmountable. Of course you should work with a professional if you can, for obvious reasons, but they're getting into 3d printed prosthetics.
- Parts that you can't buy. For example, a clip in my dishwasher broke, and the manufacturer only wanted to sell the whole drawer assembly for $400. So I printed my own, which have lasted for years. (Nylon)
- And parts that you can buy, but it's more fun (or cheaper) to make your own. Like a replacement watch band for the Pebble.
- Scans. I have a portable scanner (structure.io) and I scan people at Maker Faires and F&SF Conventions. Fun to share and print.
- Art. I like designing things and printing them because they look cool. And there's tons of great art to download.
- Personalized/unique stuff. I've published tons of designs using Thingiverse Customizer, that let you personalize or randomly generate a unique pen, your wallet, minions, snowflakes, etc.
That being said, I don't think 3d printing is quite at the level to be ready for people with no technical or artistic interest, because there's little for those people to do with a 3d printer. They can download and print other people's designs, but I'd think they'd get bored of that after a while. Designing your own stuff is a lot more fun!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
- A new indexing pin for the adjustment of a 15 year old discontinued coffee grinder. Part no longer available.
- Custom cases for my electronics projects.
- A focusing mask for my telescope.
- A Dremel routing accessory on a Sunday when all the shops were closed and when I didn't feel like forking out $60 for 1 part needed for 1 job.
- A new mounting bracket to allow me to mount a gimbal upside down.
- A hose adapter allowing me to attach a different vacuum hose to a vacuum cleaner.
I guess he's been told to go fuck himself too many times.
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These things have a serious "novelties over, now what" effect. Go to your local hacker-space and use one there, very soon you will know if its worthwhile getting one of your own. You will also learn the type of features you need.
I 3D print from time to time but I use one of the mail order services. They provide far more material and printer options, and have the in-house expertise to keep them operating smoothly. If they make a bad print it's their problem, and they'll make another. For me it's been far more cost effective and simpler than buying my own, which is guaranteed to become obsolete in short order.
Or you could also combine 3D printing and knitting.
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What do you mean, "once the resolution gets better"?
Do you still think that all 3D printers use FDM?
Search "photopolymer 3d printer", there's already a lot of models.
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Your stove knobs get to 105C? You should have that looked at.
For drone parts of course!
They're for your kids. I'm shocked at the number of Slashdotters that are talking about 3D printers like this.
Our local library bought one through Grand money and there are kids in there every week trying to learn to use it. MakerBot and Thing Verse work really well together.
It's how I learned how to Program. First I copied someone's program. Then I modified someone's program. Then I wrote my own programs. Kids are printing things out. Some get bored with it, some spend a lot of time with it. Guys are making desk top figures or monster trucks. Girls are 3D printing jewelery. The librarian has asked me to help out with teaching them some 'theory' behind stuff and I just gave them my parametric modeling book from freshmen year in college.
There are 10 year olds out there that can model better than your average college senior could 15 years ago. FIRST robotics is going to get a lot more interesting when you have people that can actually model. People that may be contracting your CNC shop to make a part. Kids that have grown up doing parametric modeling and actually know how to design for machining. (Because if they screwed it up on a cheap piece of ABS plastic and not your CNC machine.) There are going to be girls that will be asking their parents for a Revo 540CX CNC machine so they can make their own rings.
Where I grew up, it was the same but the dick contest was with off road vehicles. The biggest, shiniest off road vehicle they could afford with the largest tires. They never went off road, but that wasn't the point.
SOME guys went off road - but their trucks looked like they had rolled over (and they had).
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Who cares? I want my plastic to melt at 105C. I want it to melt at just above room temperature.
I can make molds. Anything I can think up to print I can turn into a mold for metal. With a furnace and some wax I can cast iron.
9L+ diesel engines are still cast. If your bed as large enough you could 3D print yourself a small 2 stroke engine, check for fitup and then build yourself an entire engine from scratch.
"Die Cast" used to be a marker of quality. With a 3D printer at home you can make anything the average machine shop could have made during the industrial revolution.
And because you can do it in 3D with cheap plastic first you can reduce costs. You think a bad 3D print job is expensive? Imagine screwing up a mold design for a 12L engine.
You're screwing up Fahrenheit and Celsius here. 105 Celsius is before the plastic becomes slightly malleable and that is a little over the boiling point of water. So if you regularly handle steam without serious burning, let me know. Actually melting the stuff as it happens in the printer happens at ~200-250C.
Sure, you wouldn't be using it for friction pieces or things that are exposed to extremities, but for most of the objects in our environment we interact with, it's perfectly fine.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Where I grew up, we had our dick contests using our dicks. And let me tell you, that river's not only cold, but it's deep, too.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Fine if you're a commercial site and your client knows your job will take 2-3 weeks and cost a few thousand. If you're just looking for a quick fix, there is no 1-day PCB turnaround under $100. If all you need is 1 print and you're a hobbyist or need something one-off, that is unacceptable.
Even for most commercial one-off jobs this is unacceptable and a big reason we all get our parts from China and waste massive amounts of energy on building COTS systems instead of having everything precision-customized locally.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I have a solidoodle and mostly print in ABS. 90% of what I print would be custom brackets, but occasionally I make something more significant.
- Replacement car ash tray with 4 port USB charger
- Rotors and bearing mounts for magnetic clutch for my home brewing HERMS system.
- Keg feet and valve brackets for home brewing system
- Open frame power supply terminal cover
- Custom junction box cover
- Tablet stands.
- Custom Odroid mounting brackets
- Bicycle GPS mounting bracket
- Various RPi cases
Next project is a custom diffuser for an air duct vent because I cant buy anything even remotely similar from the hardware shop.
I see some of them commuting into downtown Chicago for their jobs in the financial district and wonder what went into their decisions to purchase such vehicles.
Conspicuous consumption mostly, with a hint of posering. They see that ranchers and cowboys are seen as manly, and want to be seen as manly too. So they buy a truck, which is what cowboys and ranchers drive. And of course only the latest and most bad ass will do, so it gets the full treatment: Lift kit, over-sized tires, brushguard, fog lamps, the whole works. Of course they will never use even a quarter of the features they bought, but that doesn't matter cause it is all about appearances.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
if you have a self cleaning oven, it gets really freaking hot. I don't doubt that the internal metal parts (like the metal shaft that touches the plastic knob) can get up to 105 C.
All hat and no cattle...
A lot of stuff under the hood of any car from the last 3 decades is made from ABS.
All hat and no cattle...
Yup, pretty much.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Heaven forbid they couldn't just like the look of the vehicle, no they must be compensating for something.
Eh, did just that and could "fix" small errors in prototypes the olde fashoined way, cutting and patching and grinding etc.
SOME guys went off road - but their trucks looked like they had rolled over (and they had).
Ironically, most of the off-road enthusiasts I know preferred older vehicles because of that reason. A new vehicle getting rolled is a tragedy, while some old truck/jeep rolling is no big deal. And roll overs are a way of life in off-roading (hence why they have roll bars). So it doesn't make much sense to buy a brand new shiny jeep if it might get rolled on it's first outing, it is a better idea to buy an old beat up jeep and build from there.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
that's not the reason to buy an old Land Rover over a new one. The reason is the build.
The new LR (the "Sport") has racing rims and tyres thinner than your thumb. Try taking that offroad, you'll tear the tyres to shit in about three seconds.
The new LR has dropped suspension and skirts that make it grip flat road. Try taking that offroad and you'll break the shocks and tear the skirts off before you get ten feet.
The new LR has a high mounted tank and a similarly mounted engine, which brings the centre of gravity high. High enough that it can't sit sideways on an urban hill before it rolls, it doesn't even have to be moving!
The new LR is higher than its width which complicates the matter of balance. Think of a free standing-on-its-end Jenga block in a 7-point earthquake.
The old LR has:
* big balloon stubbly tyres that hairgrip mud over a fifty degree incline and help to drag the vehicle up that hill
* massive travel on the suspension that can withstand the vehicle being dropped out the back of a C5 Galaxy at takeoff speed
* instead of skirts, running boards. That you can actually stand on
* low mounted tank and engine that keep the centre of mass below the top of the tyres
* wide enough that it will slide before it rolls. In fact, it wouldn't roll if you pushed it over a cliff. That's saying something considering the grippiness of the stock rubber.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
(if you want to see what an old LR can do that a Sport can't, check out what Richard Hammond did with an old one - used its winch to stop it sliding and used the engine power and tyre grip to haul up the VERTICAL face of a dam! The winch can't do that on its own, anyone who uses a vehicle winch'll tell you that something rated for half a ton can't lift one and three quarter tons, winching a vehicle still very much depends on the drive axle finding a grip. The Sport went up unmanned and basically... well, failed to even get up over the kerb at the bottom).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
A lot of the stuff I've used it for are things I didn't plan on using it for, i.e. it's not until it's an option that you start to find some uses for it. Anyway, I'm not a very good 3d modeler but I've used my printer for:
- a custom laptop stand
- replacement knobs for washer, dryer, etc. (not sure why so many broke off, but kinda cool to print replacements)
- mods for my kids' toys (e.g. an equipment connector for Nerf guns)
- wall mount for a quadcopter so I could get it off my desk
- computer speaker mounts
- odds and ends for organization of household items - containers, dividers, custom holders of random stuff around the house
- a couple of small camp gadgets - simple hooks for flashlight, hanger attachments for stuff on a rope
- custom/replacement Lego parts (results are mixed so far)
- similar to knobs for washer & dryer, replacement parts for other things around the house like a part that broke in my window blinds
Exactly my point: real off-roaders build for practicality, posers build for looks.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
These parts are then assembled, and then the new 3D printer prints other parts of a 3D printer, and so on...
And some pedestrian-pounder bars at the front.
Post in the same thread that you moderated but without being anonymous and it removes the moderation.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Try as I might I can not get interested in actually making anything. I would go out and buy the most expensive equipment, learn all about it - spend weeks learning before even making a purchase, get it home, set it up, and make nothing... I know this to be true - I have done similar with so many things. I do have a woodshop that I use a few times a week. It is full of Delta equipment, even the dust collection is top-tier but not Delta, and I have turned the lathe on less than a dozen times. I use the other stuff, most of it, but I have equipment that is still in boxes. I just can not see me actually doing anything with 3D printing.
I like the hobby but it is as an outsider. I watch people talk about it. I learn what they are doing. I pay attention to the tech. I could name a dozen companies and a dozen varieties of software that are the most popular and tell you why people like them. I can tell you what sort of projects people are working on (and sometimes recount who was doing what as I meander off to another thread on the subject). It is sort of like how I enjoy watching someone play a video game (not competitively) but I have no interest in playing. I am very interested. I am just not interested in doing it. I appreciate learning about it. It is not my hobby but I appreciate hobbies and I appreciate tech hobbies.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Roomba accessories? WTF are you doing with your vacuum cleaner?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
He's one of the few who really took it to heart.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
This is true. This is very true. I sent out an '82 245 and had it fully restored and upgraded (not factory restored - better than factory) in Portland, Oregon. If you own an old Volvo you know the company. I will avoid linking them here but they start with IPD in the name and they have great service/support. I am already considering buying another and having them do the same but dropping in a 5L. Anyhow, the coffee cup idea is a good one. I also could have rebuilt the shift lever's internal wiring housing and probably made the NSS work better instead of dropping almost $400 on a new one and soldering the bastard on myself. That was before I sent it out. Also, do not even bother trying to fix the blower motor. You might just as well set that bastard on fire and get all the heat at once. What year is your Volvo? I love my old brick... I really do. I spent more on its restoration than almost every other car I have restored. Worth it. Some upgrades, of course, but still worth it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
we have 3 3d printers at our hackerspace. So far 1) Children love them. We had one little girl design her own toy, and since then kids have been in a rush to learn how to design 3d. I can only imagine what they'll do once they start encountering real needs. 2) Inventors and their prototypes, typically custom boxes. Best I've seen is some casing for sonar equipment for making cell walls perforate enough to let medicine in. 3) We've got one guy who's building a replica of the enigma machine, and has learned how to design gears and simple plastic machine parts. The question isn't "what are you using 3d printing for" anymore. Once you've used one for a couple of months you start looking at everything around you in a completely different way. I no longer, for example, would be content to merely buy a new bicycle helmet. I'd want the STL file for it, and the materials in a way that could be printed/assembled locally.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
You might want to re-watch that episode. They fitted a more powerful winch that could lift the landy under it's own power, and a second engine on a pivoting mount because the one connected to the wheels wouldn't work while going up that steeply
I'm a trained CNC machinist with a 3D printer and I think your attitude is stereo-typically ignorant.
Funny all the trained CNC machinists with 3D printers are all anonymous. The non-anonymous ones readily admit that if a thing you want is all of cheap, fragile and made of cheap plastic then a home 3D printer would suit you just fine, otherwise get a cheapie mill or lathe, or pay 10-20 times that amount for a decent 3D printer.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Have you ever had a LEGO brick turn squishy on you? Because that's what they're made of, ABS plastic.
It's a plenty tough enough material that I used it to manufacture parts for a geodesic dome for outdoor use as a greenhouse, and it held up fine. I also manufactured gears for a friends high end RC car after the manufacturer had gone out of business. Those gears see a lot of stress, and they held up fine.
ABS is a great material, and so is PLA.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Bad news - look under the hood of your car sometimes. Quite a few components have the ABS recycling number on them.
=Smidge=
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Actual machinist doing some destruction testing on a 3D printed part. $2200 printer is not "10-20 times" the cost of a cheap mill either.
=Smidge=
Decades ago I paid 12.000$ for a Postscript Laserprinter and a bit later almost 1500$ for the first color Deskjet HP500C, because I _needed_ them.
According to your question, you don't _need_ a 3d printer, you just _want_ one and you have money and time to burn.
I know this disease, although doing it with older historical equipment is more excusable and can be cheaper. Does it have a name?
cases (avr-dragon, beaglebone)
replacement parts (e.g. knobs for scope, handle for a valve, dust cover for a bicycle pedal ...)
coil spools
holder type things (e.g. PSU holder, HDD holder, CPU water cooler holder, ...)
toys for kids (e.g. a planetary gear assembly to teach them how it works)
improvement parts for the 3d printer itself
prototyping stuff (e.g. usable ergonomic contoured keyboard case)
Roomba accessories? WTF are you doing with your vacuum cleaner?
Roombas break in certain, specific ways. For example, the (outer case of the) gear box often develops cracks. I'd like to be able to print out a new cover, because that's the only thing broken right now. Getting it replaced involves buying a complete swiper assembly, $100-150 or so.
Great thing about the Roomba is that these problems are well-known. I've been keeping mine running 7-8 years, replacing infrared LEDs, ball bearings and probably the outer gear box this year.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I've had a printer for about 2 years now, an Ultimaker 2, and for me it's been worth every cent. But if you're not the sort of person who is often frustrated by not being able to make some complicated one-off, hand-sized widget that is outside the range of things that can be made without a machine shop, then probably a printer is not a good investment.
To get value out of a printer you need to be willing to learn how to turn an idea in your head into a printable STL, which means learning some CAD package. I use blender most often because that's what I know best, but there are about a dozen good choices now and it really doesn't matter which you pick. Interoperability has been a non-issue for me - blender will import STLs fine, which everything else can generate.
In the last week I've designed and printed a bump guard to friction-fit onto my Dad's computer desk to protect it from the arm of his electric wheelchair, and printed a holder for my electric toothbrush from youmagine.com. In the past I've designed and printed things like a bracket to mount the numberplate on my KLR650 at an angle to take it out of reach of the aggressive knobblies I fitted; a bracket to mount the line sensor board I designed to the robot chassis we were using in a nodebots workshop; a case for a usb power adapter I hacked up one Sunday afternoon.
If you often find yourself wanting to do these sort of things and find joy in dreaming up something and then making it, then a 3D printer will change your life. But if you're just intrigued by the hype, then you're likely to be disappointed.
The Ultimaker 2 is a fantastic printer, with a low hassle-factor for doing everyday work (but, as with all printers, is a tool that you will need to put in time to become skilled with). I'm currently looking at building a second printer to expand the range of things I can build - the range of filaments available now is amazing but not every printer can use each of them: polycarbonate requires very high temperatures, carbon fibre is too abrasive for brass nozzles, flexible filaments aren't a good match for a boden setup, some do best with very large or very small nozzles. So my second printer will be built with this in mind - to maximize hackability.
If you're the maker type, I recommend building a printer from a kit - you will gain a useful understanding of the machine, which is essential to tuning it effectively (which is required to get acceptable quality prints in less cooperative materials like nylon). It will also make you fearless to modify it later, which means that you can keep up with new developments.
and they are researching into making 3d printing CHEAPER than injection molding, and they are already getting pretty darn close!
That will never happen for any kind of quantity because of the time required to melt and freeze (or UV activate or whatever other technology) the printed part. It's easy to get an injection molder to produce 1000 parts/hour. This is the point: 3D printing is great if you need a small run of a unique shape, or if you can't adopt a commodity shape. Or if the shape you want is no longer being manufactured. That mostly means toys, art, and legacy repairs. If you're doing anything "real," meaning 1,000 or 100,000 pieces, you'll use a manufacturing process with higher start-up time and lower piece time.
Spot on, but also in the US trucks are cheaper than the equivalent SUV. Different tax on purchase for 'utilitarian' vehicles.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Err, I think that buying a truck because you like how it looks and not because you need a truck is one of the clearest cases of conspicuous consumption I've ever seen. It's a free country and all of that, but do you really think this sort of thing should pass uncommented on? It's a goddamn truck. It has shit mileage, shit road handling, and shit passenger space. If you buy a truck but you don't need any of its cargo/towing/offroad capabilities then I think people are entitled to shake their heads a little. And you're entitled to console yourself by... I don't know, doing whatever it is in your new truck that makes you smile. Everybody wins.
My wife and I started a rapid prototyping business 2 years ago, based in Sheffield UK. We've had all kinds to print in that time, from high resolution miniatures for war-gaming to engineering part prototypes and all the way back again for jewellery. Combined with some of the better scanners, there are loads of possibilities.
What we've found so far:
- Loads of people sneer at FDM filament based printers. Mostly because the media has oversold them. But they are great in their application, as long as you just treat them as a tool rather than a replicator. They aren't going to print your final part and they have limited geometries - but they are a nice alternative to CNC for a lot of models.
- SLA resin based machines are really nice. Wider range of geometries, better finishes, and they polish up nicely for finished models too. Their drawback is that for the most part the materials are brittle and get worse over time (crosslinking reaction continues with UV exposure), although new materials are being released that try to address that.
- There is no substitute for holding something in your hands to check it. You have to be very experienced with CAD before you don't need that step, and we've found lots of our customers go through several part revisions with us before taking the next production step.
- As a poster above mentioned, combining printing with investment casting allows you to cheaply make very nice metal parts that would be a pain to make using other methods. With investment casting you just need to be able to get ceramic around the part and away again - slush dipping with ultrasound and job done for anything we've had so far.
- This has allowed us to make finished engineering parts for small batches in aluminium to date, but there is no reason why we couldn't do it in ferrous metals or titanium too.
- We've also done a lot of jewellery castings for people. Very easy to make bespoke gold items, and gem settings from there aren't that hard
-SLS powder sintering is expensive, scary (explosive!) and messy. Also the parts in polymers tend to be hydroscopic so need some coatings as quickly as possible after printing to maintain proper geometry. Avoid if possible!!
I think the real point is that there are a lot of possibilities this tech opens up, especially when you combine it with other methods. Printing is a tool and isn't going to mean you don't need that hammer anymore, but will compliment its presence nicely.
The strangest print we've had to date is probably some body jewellery. The most difficult some LED models (very fine features >0.3mm). The most satisfying would be combined with our scanning, of a flute dug up not so long ago estimated to be 40,000 years old according to the PhD student who brought it in. She plays the flute and wanted a version in silver to find out what it would have sounded like without risking damage. The biggest would probably be some of the parts we've been prototyping for a company in the rail industry. My personal favourite though would be going from hand painted Chinese calligraphy to solid gold pendant.
I use it to support my other activities- right now I'm working on a large volume chocolate printer (3.5 l) that contains parts that I made on my 3D printer. I have also started trying to print prosthetic hands for E-nable. I have designed and printed adapters to mount a web cam and cell phone on two microscopes and a telescope. You can see some of my designs here: https://www.youmagine.com/user... and here: http://www.thingiverse.com/the...
If you're into electronics, a 3D printer is great for printing custom enclosures.
You can see my printer here: http://www.instructables.com/i...
I'm no fan of the $300 printer kits that have become so common. They are junk and will cause you to give up on 3D printing. Don't buy one of those. Like everything else in life, as the price goes down, the quality goes down with it. And no, it doesn't make sense as a "starter" printer. Junk is junk.
Most of the stuff I have made would fall in the Art/Toy categories. Model Train parts for my grandson, Lighted pumpkins for all my grandchildren. Ornaments for the christmas tree. More practical/useful things Humming bird feeders. Cup holders for a friends boat dock. Gun stock. Knobs for tools in my workshop. Brackets for a friends outdoor lighting. Battery case for LED work lights. Wine Rack. Olive Oil stopper for oil bottle by the stove. I have the tools to make things out of wood, metal and plastic however I find that I can design and print things and get a better quality and more complex part than fabbing it from raw materials. If its something that will take a lot of heat or mechanical abuse or needs real high strength I will make it from metal by cutting and welding, however, there are many things that just don't need that. The real advantage of 3D printing is complexity is nearly free. Making a part with complex shape and lots of holes is easy with 3D printing. Doing that on a manual milling machine and drill press takes lots of time. One wrong setup and you start over. Your 3D print is the wrong size you change the design (minutes) and start a new print. Go watch a movie, eat dinner surf the internet and get your new part. If you are a creative person you need a 3D printer to unlock your potential. If not just stick to buying your stuff from the store.
Honestly, I find that far less annoying than people who refer to their SUV as a "truck"...
Log in or piss off.
I think for some (and I'm not saying mschuyler fits this, as I don't know the person at all) it's the status thing. Example.. this is an actual conversation I had with the CEO of the company I worked for:
Him: "Hey.. I got a new truck this weekend!"
Me: "Really? Cool - what did you get?"
Him: "Oldsmobile Bravada"
For him, it was status/look/etc. The thing never left pavement, ever. The most he hauled was groceries in the back seat. Same guy used to park his sports car under the sidewalk awning when it rained...
For some though, having the perfect paint job on their truck just means they take better care of it than most, and that's not a bad thing either. Or maybe they only use it for it's truck functionality occasionally, which is fine too. Mine never looked perfect when I had it, but I hauled stuff, towed stuff, etc all the time.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
fishing lures, custom peg board tool holders, stands/mounts/cases for electronic projects, and a lot of miniature D&D models. When I was able to get a printer for sub $200 it became a hobby and I am not really concerned with the practical use any more even though I have found some use. It is more of an entertainment item than anything else.
replacement bracket for my reel lawn mower: http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/...
drag knife for my CNC machine: http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/...
other odds and ends...
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Could be that they like to do projects at home and want to haul lots of wood or plants from Lowes.
Maybe they are into buying old furniture and refinishing them.
My wife wants a perfect 1971 F100 pickup because her father that passed away when she was 10 owned one. He was a lineman for the power company.
You can never tell but as a whole pickups are really useful vehicles and not all the uses involve messing up the paint.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The problem is (as Makerbot has discovered) that it's really a solution in search of a market. The average person has no use for this technology beyond perhaps a part or toy or whatever a couple of times a year at best, and even then the piece is relatively high due to the cost of materials. That's what's killing the industry (along with all the IP wrangling) and that's why Makerbot is laying off workers and has closed their retail stores. http://www.greenwichtime.com/b... http://www.dezeen.com/2015/06/...
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
I've been testing out a da Vinci 1.0 AiO. The results haven't been very impressive. Over half the time the PLA filament doesn't stick to the bed, resulting in a blob of plastic just sticking to the extruder. The 3D scanner is just about useless. I haven't had a scan work even close to accurate yet. Anything with black scans as negative space. Pretty much the only things you can scan with any degree of success are small, white geometric objects with a matte finish.
Today I'm testing out a Cube Pro 3D printer, and expecting much better results. We'll be using our printers for student projects in arts & sciences.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Heaven forbid they couldn't just like the look of the vehicle, no they must be compensating for something.
They can like the look of the vehicle, but a truck is a shitty car so if you buy one over a car for doing car things then you're making poor decisions and just justifying them. That's OK, welcome to 'merica, but it's a shame that everyone else should have to suck down their smog. Remember, pickups have different emissions restrictions than cars. That's why we now are expecting automakers to find ways to sell more fuel-efficient vehicles. They like to wring their hands and claim that the people just chose trucks, but the industry lobbied to keep truck emissions high, they advertised trucks as being the manly choice, they created the situation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, you see your truck as more of a "lifestyle" purchase than a utilitarian one?
My grandfather was a small farmer and a rancher. He was a really sweet guy, but also the toughest human being I have ever met or will meet. If you open your dictionary to Ornery, you'll probably see his picture.
He owned 4 pickups, and one car. One of the pickups was actually an ancient Ford "Power wagon" with a wood bed. Some guy tried to buy it off him for a museum, but grandpa refused because he was still using it.
However, whenever he needed to go into town for something, he'd take the car, not one of the pickups.
So people who drive pristine pickups in the city? Yes, they are 100% just making a statement. They probably think that statement is "I'm a tough country guy". However, the statement they are actually making is "I'm a total poser". I've seen a tough country guy, and they ain't it. A real pickup has dents and rust. A real country guy leaves his pickup at home unless he needs it for something. If you are driving a pickup around to try to impress people, then by definition you aren't country.
Of course this is a cultural thing. People born after 1980 perhaps never saw this, and don't think twice about such things. I guess now I'm learning why old folks have a reputation for being cranky...
I've used ours as part of an internal innovation challenge to prototype a specialty purpose raspberry pi case we could securely mount inside a classroom that could house a touchscreen and a magstripe card swipe, but was tough enough it could be smacked with a backpack without significant damage and expose only the barest of essential external ports of the raspberry pi.
I don't think his heart is where he ended up taking it.
These are pics from when I was using a Huawei Mediapad:
http://www.mp3car.com/show-off...
I think it's good for making things that don't exist. Saves me from having to walk up and down Home Depot looking for just the right thing to butcher. Also, abs plastic is pretty tough stuff. It's good for a fair number of applications which require some strength.
Mold for lost-PLA investment casting of complex intake manifold. Rat trap. (It was a very bright rat and wouldn't go near commercial traps.) Sewer system cutout plug. LCD bezel for the tachometer on my lathe. Same for the milling machine. Adapter for the PCB milling machine, to hook the metric vacuum output to my shopvac. Mounting bracket to hook a stepper motor to the back of the speedometer in my Little English Sportscar, that has never in its life until now had an accurate speedometer. Pogo pin test fixture for PCB testing. Bearing holders for a shaft hobbing mechanism for the lathe. LED diffusers for some task lighting in the shop. Outlet cover for an outlet combo that doesn't exist (sideways switches plus GFCI outlets in one box.) Power amplifier enclosure for automated test equipment. Fan shroud/grille. Adapter to mount LED lighting system on a microscope. Adapter to mount LED lighting system on the PCB milling machine. Replacement doohickey for a 6" digital calipers that had the little wheel that opens/closes the calipers break off. Adapter to mount 24" digital calipers to the back of the small lathe as part of a digital read out display. Adapter to mount Garmin 305 to an odd-size, odd-cross-section aero handlebar on my time trial bike. I could go on but that's probably enough for now.
I did most of the modeling in FreeCAD or HeeksCAD, by the way, with a little bit in OpenSCAD.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Part of my job is to design objects that will be used in a high-magnetic field environment, namely MRI scanners. Metal is not an option for me. Prototyping with traditional methods (e.g., CNC machining) is extremely cost-prohibitive. So I use 3D-printing. Some I do in-house with an FDM machine, in ABS. A lot I outsource to a better printer that can use other materials, say polycarb, or other methods, like laser sintering. At the end of the day, I get functional prototypes that I can check for utility, than design molds for injection-molded parts based on feedback from those prototypes. 3D printing enables me to do this part of my job. Without it, there would be no prototyping, due to cost, and thus no objects in the magnetic field. Truly a gamechanger.
The US is the only place in the world where pickup trucks are driven by anyone other than actual builders and farmers.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
No, this is for small in-house things. For things going out, we do a much better job, with real schematic capture and real layout tools.
Sure there is (if you allow a day for shipping). I can get 3 pieces of a miniboard from expresspcb.com for $51 + shipping. IIRC, one-day shipping is a bit over $20, so for $75 I can send off a design before 1:00, and have the boards before 1:00 two days later.
As I said in my initial email, that depends on whether your time is valuable. In my experience, it takes a lot less total time to get a working prototype with a PCB than without, unless your circuit is very small. So if you can wait a couple of days for your circuit, and you have other things to do in the meantime (e.g. your time is valuable) and you'd like to spend less total time on the board (e.g. your time is valuable), then not laying out a board is unacceptable.
Of course, you can do whatever you want. I've seen people dead-bug 176 pin QFNs and make them work. If you find detailed work like that therapeutic, fine. But if you have other stuff to do, it can quickly become cost-ineffective.
What printer to get depends on what you want to do. If you believe you are going to do high quality figurines, jewelry models for investment casting and other art pieces then a printer like the Form1+ would be good. If you plan on doing mostly mechanical and less resolution demanding work an FDM printer would be a good choice. I have a form1+ as well as a Robo3D and a Delta Maker delta style printer. The Robo3D is a good value. It has a big work envelope reasonable resolution and a heated bed. The Delta Maker looks good however I have found the Bowden Tube feed system to not perform that well (strings). The auto bed leveling sounds good but does not do what it should (I have to shim the build plate after auto leveling) The Form1 can and has done amazing prints and they are adding to the resin types so there are some new ones that give better mechanical properties. It is much more messy and expensive to operate than either of the FDM printers. Print failures are also higher.
I am a product of the 80s - got my first pair of "Fakeleys" (fake oakleys) in high school for skee ball tickets - and have loved them ever since - except that in the past couple of decades I've actually paid for the real things - and it irritates me to no end to break a really expensive pair of sunglasses! If I had a printer and a 3D scanner (and would have had the foresight to scan individual pieces of sunglasses prior to breaking them) I would be in pretty good shape right now - but alas I have none of the aforementioned! so that is something I would use that equipment for in the future should I A. get the equipment, and B. plan ahead enough to disassemble them and scan them before they ever leave the house! (anyone in AZ have all this equipment and want to see if it's possible, contact me - if that's even possible with this post) I'd love to see what we could come up with!
I 3D printed my Trilby, fixed gear bike, wayfarers, turn-up raw denim jeans, vintage bowling shirt, and I also 3D print my sriracha, bacon, and fair trade coffee from ethiopia. I used to 3d print my apps, but apps are so 2012.
I have had one for about five years now. It gets used and has not broken or anything - that I have noticed at least. However, I have a lady that I pay to come make sure I am not dead, cook, clean, and generally make sure that I remember to take care of basic things. She still vacuums. She says the Roomba does a crappy job and she likes my Kirby. There is a total of one person living in my house, most of the time, so it does not get dirty and I have often wondered if she just likes the additional hours. I'd pay her even if she was too sick to come to "work." I know, I do. So I guess it is fine if she is just trying to keep things going.
I think I have been paying her the same amount for like five years anyhow. Maybe I should give her a raise. Thanks for making me think about that. At the same time, I think I am just going to skip the middle man and give her my Roomba. I still can not think of anything I would 3D print. I can think of lots of things I would say I would do. I'd do exactly none of them.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
My fellow medieval enthusiasts who fight in recreational armour with groups such as the SCA.org print plated armour such as laminar plates for under the tunic protection.
Shapes for wax molds of kids broken crayons.
Cartooney 3d charecters
Weird stuff mostly molds for other making
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
I think they call it "a hobby" but it probably has a Latin name and I do not know it. I think it falls under the same psychosis as addiction. I went through a serious bout with this addiction and eBay. Like all addictions we will use self-talk and poor logic to justify our continued use of the stimuli. I, too, feel your pain. I have computer equipment that goes back to the 70s and, worse, it still works which means I can never free myself from this dungeon of pain. I have video games that go back to that same era and handheld games that came up through the ages. I have two stand-up video game consoles that I intend to turn into MIME machines - and my good intentions remain but they have not been touched in a few years so they sit idle, dark, like a homeless person's toothy grin. I have dozens of laptops, even more desktops, enough cell phones to start my own business selling them, tablets from the early Motion days on XP and tablets with Android, clothing enough to make the Salvation Army blush, a shop full of woodcraft tools, a shop full of automotive tools that let me weld and cut if I ever want to although I never do, a room dedicated entirely to electronics with more than one Fluke sitting idle in its original packaging, books on every subject, a shed full of lawn-care tools, and a variety of vehicles that span the ages but get brought out to a variety of shows and, still, do nothing most of the time.
I do not have a solution but I have a theory. I sold my business and retired. I had this property and it had a house already on it but I wanted one of my own design. So, I had that built. It is quite large and I have noticed that the larger the house the more stuff I will attempt to fit into it. Also, avoid letting it even start to clutter - that is a bad road to head down. Anyhow, it seems that there is a mathematical equation for this. I have not crunched the numbers but it appears to be an attempt to fit 1.5x the amount into the designed space. Nothing good can come of this - no matter what we think. Well, it is amusing and that is good - and our goal, right?
I know of no way to cure this addiction. If I did then my sick brain would tell me that it will not work. You can try throwing it all away (ha!) and moving to a single room efficiency apartment. You will only end up filling up that space in short order. You can try getting a storage unit (or ten) but that does not do anything except MAYBE hide some of it. A spouse does not help. So, you are stuck with it. All you can do is avoid becoming a real hoarder (and you, if you are like me, are a bit too close to that line) by ensuring it is neat, topical, and something you are genuinely interested in and not kept simply because of a need that may arise if you throw it away. You have to, absolutely must, be willing to throw stuff away AND act on that. You are not going to fix that old 5.25" floppy drive and there are no parts inside that are going to help you out. No, nobody else wants it either. Throw it away.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
On my small scale I imagine professions like software development (or business creation) attracts-creates this behavior. Much time can be spent looking and understanding practice, assembling and making tools, leaving precise instructions for daemons and users alike without ever doing the real job.
We have a HD2x from airwolf3d. Phone cases and a phone holder that fits in my car cd slot were the initial tryout projects. Im gonna try drone parts next. I made some custom filament spool holders as we found 4 types and sizes of spools are all different. But its primary purpose is churning out art centerpieces for these. Hope the gf efforts can pay it off :) https://www.etsy.com/shop/Samj...
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
As manager of engineering group that did rapid prototyping as part of our design process I had such working for me.
yes and as I mentioned some of that stuff had problems cracking with age and so manufacturers had to redesign putting metal in certain areas of those parts, e.g. Fords infamous ABS manifold problem of late 90s to about 2004
Bad news, manufacturers found some of those parts got too hot and cracked in the late 90s to mid 00s, so had to redesign some of those parts to have metal areas in them at higher cost