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A Year of 3D Printing

brookehatton.com

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Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#71

Post by n00shie »

randusername wrote: post #69
bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

3D printing has been humbling for me. I can express myself well spatially in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD where you have to figure out what combination of buttons and parameters will do what I want. I can manage dependencies well in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD. I continually struggle to design parts with geometry that is dependent on the spatial relationships and constraints of how multiple par…

Have you ever tried https://openscad.org/?

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#72

Post by knowitnone3 »

lm28469 wrote: post #24
VladVladikoff wrote: post #14

I still have mixed emotions about 3D printing. I do love the idea of being able to print a part when I need it for something. But I do hate myself at the same time for creating more plastic junk. PLA is not really getting recycled, when it fails someone throws it in the trash and it goes to a landfill. Maybe some really diehard enthusiasts are ensuring all their failed prints and broken parts get properly chemically…

And that's the best case scenario, I think most people print useless junk to begin with, just look at the top downloads on printables.com, less than 30% are functional prints, most of them are short lived junk, and a lot are AI generated.

which is why I tell the shop techs to not print the benchy boat and print something useful instead.

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#73

Post by AngryData »

lm28469 wrote: post #24
VladVladikoff wrote: post #14

I still have mixed emotions about 3D printing. I do love the idea of being able to print a part when I need it for something. But I do hate myself at the same time for creating more plastic junk. PLA is not really getting recycled, when it fails someone throws it in the trash and it goes to a landfill. Maybe some really diehard enthusiasts are ensuring all their failed prints and broken parts get properly chemically…

And that's the best case scenario, I think most people print useless junk to begin with, just look at the top downloads on printables.com, less than 30% are functional prints, most of them are short lived junk, and a lot are AI generated.

While they certainly correlate, downloads don't match print rates. Unless you got a ton of printers you are mostly doing one print at a time and each requires setup and cleanup, or possibly multiple attempts if there are difficult to print features.

It can be multiple hours between prints because good prints take time. But you can spend 30 minutes browsing random peoples designs online and say "cool" and press download on 20 different designs that you only print 1 or 2 of ultimately.

Also some designs look cool but the second you load your model up in a slicer you can see it is too finnicky or too long or expensive to print to be worth the effort.

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#74

Post by qazxcvbnmlp »

randusername wrote: post #69
bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

3D printing has been humbling for me. I can express myself well spatially in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD where you have to figure out what combination of buttons and parameters will do what I want. I can manage dependencies well in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD. I continually struggle to design parts with geometry that is dependent on the spatial relationships and constraints of how multiple par…

Cad in general isn’t good at modeling spacial relationships between parts as a graph.

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#75

Post by micw »

bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

Since I'm a developer with no experience in 3D design, I just automated my process with freecad and vibe-code my models with GitHub copilot. That gives me instant visual feedback plus 3d model code I can check in into git: https://github.com/micw/freecad-automation

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#76

Post by jijijijij »

bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

You can get pretty quickly at it with Blender instead of proper CAD. Just do the "donut tutorial", set the correct workspace dimensions and go for it. You can learn basic modelling in a day.

Blender is overwhelming at first glance, but it becomes incredibly intuitive once the UI clicks. Of course modelling for printing in Blender has drawbacks and limitations. It's more fiddly, but unless you are super stupid, you can get pretty far, pretty quickly. And you can do sculpting and organic shapes, which are hard/impossible in CAD. Learning Blender basics is worth it anyway, incredibly useful for thinking and sketching in 3D. Oh, and it's FOSS, runs entirely locally, doesn't spy on you, or appropriates your creations like the "free" Fusion360 and their forced cloud crap.

Once you got annoyed by Blender's limitations for 3D printing, you can learn CAD. But Blender is the best way to get into it IMO. Trust me, you won't regret learning Blender basics, in any case. It's expanding your creative horizon and is fantastic, very pleasant software.

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#77

Post by neal_jones »

malfist wrote: post #25
bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

I echo this sentiment. So many random annoyances around the house that I've fixed with self designed prints. Its a steep learning curve but you can start simple. First thing I designed was a spacer to go behind silverware organizers to keep them from sliding around. Still in use almost 8 years later. Horrible print quality and all. Last year I printed a peg leg for a nonstandard luggage wheel that broke off my suitca…

Also did a luggage wheel/stump. I modified another model someone had made. It was amateur on about every level and rushed with maybe 18 hours before departure but, to my great satisfaction, it did work.

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#78

Post by protocolture »

bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

I print a lot of stuff I design, but I am not very good at it.

But a heck of a lot of what I print doesn't exist, or only exists in disparate parts. So I am forced to RAD a lot of stuff together.

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#79

Post by WillAdams »

randusername wrote: post #69
bborud wrote: post #21

I would encourage people who have never designed physical objects before to try to only print things they have designed themselves as an exercise. For perhaps a year or so. If you have never designed physical objects before it is really challenging at first. The learning curve is pretty steep and, at least in my case, I discovered that I didn't have a mental language for thinking about functional 3D and mechanical de…

3D printing has been humbling for me. I can express myself well spatially in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD where you have to figure out what combination of buttons and parameters will do what I want. I can manage dependencies well in code, but that doesn't help much in CAD. I continually struggle to design parts with geometry that is dependent on the spatial relationships and constraints of how multiple par…

FWIW, I crashed and burned with pretty much every 3D CAD tool I tried (though I did make it through the tutorial for Dune 3D which was a first), but OpenSCAD has been quite workable, and the development of a Python-enabled version:

https://pythonscad.org/

has allowed me to extend it to do things which would be quite difficult in other tools:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

Re: A Year of 3D Printing

#80

Post by Ccecil »

IgorPartola wrote: post #13
dangus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you’re replying to, but I can see the appeal of PLA. It has more color options and prints way easier. I personally run all PETG because it is ultimately better material post-print, and once you understand how to print with it, it’s not really much harder to deal with. The day I discovered that I should just run my dryer with the PETG inside while printing was revolutionary. Of course, that requires you…

I wish I knew how to dial in PETG fully. It prints fine for me but I still get globbing and stringing so the surface finish just isn’t that amazing.

In my case PETG had issues until I realized that on my machine it needs to go slower.

I can print PLA at 100mm/s with .25mm layers...but PETG I don't go much over 65mm/s give the same line width/layer height.

Since getting things dialed in I switched to primarily printing PETG. Although, I have no issue printing PLA, PETG or ABS when needed.

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