Show off your 3D printed parts

Seconded.

 

@rednext
Everything you see below was designed in fusion, and either 3d printed, or Plasma cut at my local shop.

front Diff seal driver
digital angle finder holder for pipe
some gutter support thingy
2nd Gen Skid plate
Tube bender Die ( Fail )
the cut sheet for the plasma guy



you can get pretty good results with not too much time invested.

 

The 3 I see most frequently used are Solidworks, Mastercam, and Fusion. I'd recommend staying with one of those as they can lead to good paying job opportunities if/when you need them. Of the 3 Fusion is the most consumer friendly, by leaps and bounds. Fusion has a free personal use version. Solidworks and Mastercam both have educational versions, but you have to jump through hoops to get them, and eventually they will cost you $5-30,000/year per seat... But a lot of shops still use them.

 

I use Blender mostly, but I come from a 3D model design background more than part designs. Fusion is definitely the way to go if you want to make parts, software like Maya and Blender is better if you want to get into more artistic design like characters and such. Blender is free and since 2.8 they have gotten a much better interface but still depend highly on keyboard shortcuts.

I have nightmares about fixing tinkercad polys LOL.

 

I'd like to get some opinions on something.

After wanting a 3D printer for a while, I picked up a "cheap" Flashforge Adventurer 3 Lite to do some small projects. My first project was for work. We use 1 liter bottles to hold buffer solution in our freezers and I have been making fixtures out of Schedule 40 PVC fittings to keep the temperature sensors centered in the bottle. Some of the fittings have been hard to come by recently, so I decided to try printing up some fixtures. I went with ABS instead of PLA because of the temperature and PLA being biodegradable (probably not ideal for solutions diluted with water).

Here's my issue. After my prototype took almost 9 hours to print, one of them shattered when I was removing it from the build plate. The other came off fine, but I can feel that it is fragile. It is essentially a 5" cylinder with a 1" OD and 3/4" ID that has 1/8" x 1.5" slots to allow for fluid transfer. I did realize when it was printing that there were some weak spots and I have revised the design to compensate, but I have concerns about the material. I definitely didn't expect ABS to be that brittle. Is there possibly another material better suited to my intended use that might have characteristics similar to PVC? If so, would that material even be compatible with my printer?

I am running the revised design now that has a 1" OD and 1/2" ID, so I'm hoping those are a little more robust and less prone to shatter...

 

And a quick follow up. I found that FlashForge has nylon filament and by the specifications provided it appears it should work with my printer (1.75mm diameter, print temp 220-260C, bed temp 80-110C). Is that all there is to it?

 

What temp are you printing at?

For fluid you are gonna want to learn how to vapor smooth the abs after printing with acetone. Then it will be better at being water tight maybe, I’ve used certain wood glues to some success on making planters better at holding water too. FDM printing isn’t good at being water tight by itself.

 

3d printing has a grain and is more fragile along that grain. Tall skinny objects printed standing will be fragile. You can get stronger results by printing them laying down. Petg has better layer bonding and is fairly chemical resistant.

 

The label on the filament says 220-240 for print temp and 100 for bed temp. I'm printing at 240.

These don't need to be water tight. It is an insert that hangs down into an HDPE bottle.
Untitled by Lee, on Flickr

My first attempt (1" OD, 3/4" ID):
Untitled by Lee, on Flickr

Current version (1" OD, 1/2" ID):
Untitled by Lee, on Flickr

 

Thanks! I'll look at PETG. The more I read about nylon/PA the less I think it will work with my current setup. Is it bad that I've had this thing since Monday and I'm already looking at other models?

 

You'd get more strength if you went to a different infill pattern, I bet. Whatever gyroid or cubic or similar pattern you're using now is leaving some layers without infill, it looks like, giving it a weak point.

 

I’d lower your temp to 230 along with the infill pattern change and see if that makes it less brittle. Vapor smoothing would make it even more solid since it doesn’t look like you need to retain detail.

 

Thanks! I'm using the default (hexagon) from the slicer program. Because of the shipping time, I had the printer sent to the jobsite (Lancaster, PA), so I'm trying to keep the print times under 10 hours. After I'm done here I'm shipping it home, which is where I will print them going forward. If these work, I may leave it pretty much as is or mess with the infill a little more. If I find enough uses for it, I might even be able to expense the printer and filament. Could be a hard sell though. lol

 

Not really bad, kinda common. A lot of people jump into the 300 dollar machines and expect them to do everything, when reality is it's amazing they can do what they are doing. There are not very many production quality machines out there, especially when you get out of pla and into the more engineering grade filaments. But with capability comes cost.

 

Absolutely. I think the one I have now will be fine for smaller projects like the one I am currently working on, but after seeing your setup I took a look at some of the kits that can be upgraded/scaled up over time. The Ender 3 Pro caught my eye because it uses 8020 extrusions and rollers instead of bands and screws. Of course the one I bought will fit fine on a printer stand. If/when I upgrade it will have a dedicated workbench in the garage.

 

F360 is pretty good for free software. It will do everything you need. I've used NX, Creo, solidworks, Catia, tinker cad, blender, ......
They all are top tier packages ( maybe not creo) and I'll say f360 can hang with all of them on basic parametric modeling. I design parts for a living so I've been fortunate to have worked with them all.

 

I think the one you have now is better and more capable than an ender 3. Bigger extrusion is always better, but I will never use rollers again.

 

Anyone know a way to get a similar style smoothed look that Jimmyrigged had on his emblems without the gloss of acetone smoothing. Want to get a finish like that on some stuff I am printing. Thinking about trying out some smoothing with acetone and either using an air eraser or rock tumbler to try and matte out the color.

Edit: It's called Ironing, apparently it just got added to Prusa slicer 2.3, but has been in Cura for awhile. I haven't run into it on Simplify3D which is my usual go to slicer. I tested it out in Superslicer fork of Prusa slicer and it gave me a very close surface to what I want, just need to dial in the settings. May try the Prusa slicer 2.3 some and see what it gets me.

 

Pretty cool. I wish I could find a replacement for my cupholders on my 3rd gen. I just want a plain rectangular bin, no cupholders. Let me know if you know of any such thing.

 

Would anyone be willing to make some of these for me? I want to adapt my t15 socket to a 7440/7443 bulb and it looks like MESO isn't making them anymore.

I'd like to have a total of 6 of the SMALL ones made if possible. I will pay whomever makes them as long as its not like $10ea. lol

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2941466/files
adapter-sml-v3.stl