3D Printing - is it time to jump in?
- Thread starter Alaska_Shooter
- Start date
Nylon is a PITA to deal with. Very stringy.
PETG is easy to work with, basically like PLA to work with. Haven't found much use for it where PLA isn't cheaper or stronger. PETG tends to get set really fast with load. Its very soft.
I find very little use for TPU. Tried to use it for diaphragms but for the size I need the layers are too thick which causes the flexibility to be very poor. I need it air tight too which is very difficult with FDM. I've spent a LOT of time making air tight FDM prints when designing vacuum pumps. Ended up resin printing them. Anyways, TPU is easy to print like PLA too.
Polycarbonate isn't something I've considered. I'll just buy a block and machine it. Its quite brittle and easily damaged with solvents.
I want to say good luck with Ultem and PEEK. that will be very very expensive and specialty to work with. I actually machined some PEEK today. 600 holes of 0.050" diameter. Thank God for CNC!
I tend to do a LOT with Polymax PLA. 80c working temp (unloaded) and quite strong. Has made me a lot of useful parts. If I need hotter I got to a high temp PLA that handles 150c and I can confirm it holds shape at 200c when the anneal oven had a thermal runaway. PLA tends to work very well with solvents.
Nylon tends to be too soft for most of the stuff I do. Its just not worth the effort to deal with it most of the time. Doesn't hold load well, not rigid
With a lot of the specialty stuff you will need a enclosure with a decent filter.
No longer a big deal most bigher end printers come sith them now and even if they don't they are easy to fabricate.
Also need a hard nozzle lots of talk about obsidian nozzles now.
They are another thing I don't know much about accept I use a small nozzle for fine detail prints but normally just run the standard 04 mm 90% of the time.
PLA has stood up fine to some 70+ MPH crashes on some of my Traxxas bashers like the full size E REVO and the mini E REVO.
In some cases better then OEM parts.
No longer a big deal most bigher end printers come sith them now and even if they don't they are easy to fabricate.
Also need a hard nozzle lots of talk about obsidian nozzles now.
They are another thing I don't know much about accept I use a small nozzle for fine detail prints but normally just run the standard 04 mm 90% of the time.
PLA has stood up fine to some 70+ MPH crashes on some of my Traxxas bashers like the full size E REVO and the mini E REVO.
In some cases better then OEM parts.
Gaujo
UZI Talk Supporter
Laser!? What is the laser for?
Alaska, regarding getting into it, I would advise you to decide what you're going to build first. Many fun parts are large, and you need a taller than average print space to make one piece versions, that don't have to be bolted or otherwise cobbled together.
The other thing to do is to use the right filament. Hoffman tactical has great information and reviews of filament on YouTube. This is the guy who invented the SS, so is frankly the biggest name in the scene IMHO. Any tutorials he puts out are well worth consuming.
Last edited:
Lazer for anything! I've used the laser for everything from cutting paper to etching ceramics. A 455nm laser can mark steels including colors in stainless, mark aluminum with a coating (spray moly lube works great but is very corrosive when hit with a laser), cut cardboard, felt, engrave and cut wood, engrave anodized or painted metals, you name it. I did all of the paper products with my little 5w laser for my wedding. Even engraved the stone coasters we put in the tables. More than paid for itself with that one job.
Anything clear is really difficult or impossible with a 455nm. I have done clear acrylic but it is quite difficult.
I'd love to have a 1064nm fiber laser.
Alaska_Shooter
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2004
- Messages
- 387
Thanks for the advice. I’d been backpacking for a few days and spent some time thinking about if I had enough projects to justify the expense.
If I do jump in it might be the H2 series. I just bought a new ATV though so I might wait a bit with how expensive that was.
I’ll be watching to see what Black Friday deals that bambu might offer
If I do jump in it might be the H2 series. I just bought a new ATV though so I might wait a bit with how expensive that was.
I’ll be watching to see what Black Friday deals that bambu might offer
Hey...
UZI Talk Life Member
3d is worth it.
back In 2015 the hotness was a lulzbot mini that self leveled before each print. The nozzle would touch each corner of the print bed and offset any leveling difference in the software. Cutting edge at the time instead of leveling issues with other printers. I sold a ww2 nazi Browning Hi Power pistol for $1500 to offset the cost of purchase plus supplies.
That printer is still available today, nice hardware… would I go back in time and do it again? Yes. It’s been worth it, still is today.
These sights were prototyped (CAD designed by me) along with the similar peep sights, physical copies made for testing on my printer, then an investment cast mold was made for production.
khybercustoms.com
So that product is due to my design, and printer. Various other projects and training with others have originated from the 1st step of selling that pistol.
back In 2015 the hotness was a lulzbot mini that self leveled before each print. The nozzle would touch each corner of the print bed and offset any leveling difference in the software. Cutting edge at the time instead of leveling issues with other printers. I sold a ww2 nazi Browning Hi Power pistol for $1500 to offset the cost of purchase plus supplies.
That printer is still available today, nice hardware… would I go back in time and do it again? Yes. It’s been worth it, still is today.
These sights were prototyped (CAD designed by me) along with the similar peep sights, physical copies made for testing on my printer, then an investment cast mold was made for production.
ZPAP M85/M92 V-Notch Peep Sight
Back in Stock!Our M85/M92 Drop-In Peep Sights were designed to improve the shooting experience of the Yugo M85/M92 pistols. They will have the exact same...
khybercustoms.com
So that product is due to my design, and printer. Various other projects and training with others have originated from the 1st step of selling that pistol.
Last edited:
Hey...
UZI Talk Life Member
My kid is learning Fusion 360 in school, you can build a spaceship with that. Animation, etc.
Simple tinkerkad and Moi are easier to learn, but dont have all the features. I’d advise to max what makes you comfortable that achieves the desired part. I made that prototype in MOi (moment of inspiration) but… the limits are that it exports in polygons but can’t import those… there can be a limitation when you find a file and want to import that, can’t. -Fusion360 & solidworks can.
Good and bad to everything. If you want part animation, major options/possibilities, go with 360 or solidworks but know you have a sharp learning curve. My buddy flew from Houston to here to attend a weekend class to dial in his knowledge of Fusion360. He paid for several class seats to make it worth while, otherwise the class wouldn’t happen. I hadn’t seen him in years since the rowdy days went to a posh steakhouse etc and had a great time.
MOi or tinker can get the job done (as I’ve shown) but there are limitations. Like showing up at a car meet with hot rodded mustang/corvette while others have more tech in their expensive lambo or ‘rarri.
ericthered
UZI Talk Supporter
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2020
- Messages
- 482
Have never tried tinkercad, as I dont like the online browser based stuff. Fusion 360 is the best free program. It does CAM as well which is nice if you get into that. There is a sharp learning curve, and sometimes basic things will be frustrating. But overall, I think it is worth it. You can save your projects locally or on "the cloud". You are limited to 10 projects accessible at once, but you can just close a project and open another to get by that. Overall 8/10.
Honestly, F360 is a giant POS. Online only just like tinkercad. You "install" it on your computer. What you are installing they call a browser. It lets you use their online based tools. They have been moving more and more from their server to your machine as everything does function much better when not restricted to your Internet browser and their servers. You have no control over managing or maintaining your files. Its theirs. Its on their server. You can download a copy of your files but you'll never have the original file.
I am forced to use F360 for work. I hate it. It is not logical, especially if you have any CAD experience. 2D drawings are like pulling teeth. 3D is OK but the experience is inconsistent. It doesn't handle assemblies made from multiple separate parts well. I describe how it does 2D drawings and how it handles traditional assembled as a shit show. It is difficult to go back and edit models and assemblies even with the "feature tree" enabled which is utterly useless. The way they highlight things in the history and feature trees is next to invisible making that difficult as well.
The CAM is nice. Unfortunately a few updates ago it broke so I now have about 30% usability for making CAM paths which means I can't actually do my job. The kernel seems broken meaning it will barley use 1 CPU core to make paths and generally just gives up around 40% generated but it does trash my system memory quite nicely with a maximum of 260GB of RAM used. Basically it went until the hard drive was full and nothing could do anything else then when it closed it never cleaned anything up and I had to spend hours trying to fix things and get rid of the garbage it left behind.
It is a jack of all trades and very much a master of none.
About every major update they remove or somehow restrict the use of a tool for free users and paid seems to have dramatic price changes. Was $550 last year. Its now $680/yr. looks like they currently have a sale for their over priced POS at under $500.
There is a reason I still use the old seat of Solidworks 2019 at work. It actually works. Unfortunately I don't have any CAM to go along with it or I would never touch Fusion again.
IMHO, if you want a decent free CAD suite try FreeCAD or Solid Edge Community Edition.
I am forced to use F360 for work. I hate it. It is not logical, especially if you have any CAD experience. 2D drawings are like pulling teeth. 3D is OK but the experience is inconsistent. It doesn't handle assemblies made from multiple separate parts well. I describe how it does 2D drawings and how it handles traditional assembled as a shit show. It is difficult to go back and edit models and assemblies even with the "feature tree" enabled which is utterly useless. The way they highlight things in the history and feature trees is next to invisible making that difficult as well.
The CAM is nice. Unfortunately a few updates ago it broke so I now have about 30% usability for making CAM paths which means I can't actually do my job. The kernel seems broken meaning it will barley use 1 CPU core to make paths and generally just gives up around 40% generated but it does trash my system memory quite nicely with a maximum of 260GB of RAM used. Basically it went until the hard drive was full and nothing could do anything else then when it closed it never cleaned anything up and I had to spend hours trying to fix things and get rid of the garbage it left behind.
It is a jack of all trades and very much a master of none.
About every major update they remove or somehow restrict the use of a tool for free users and paid seems to have dramatic price changes. Was $550 last year. Its now $680/yr. looks like they currently have a sale for their over priced POS at under $500.
There is a reason I still use the old seat of Solidworks 2019 at work. It actually works. Unfortunately I don't have any CAM to go along with it or I would never touch Fusion again.
IMHO, if you want a decent free CAD suite try FreeCAD or Solid Edge Community Edition.
My first CAD exposure in school was Creo 2.0. It was considered the hard to use pants on head wild CAD package of the day. Next was Autodesk Inventor which I liked and ran for years. Then Solidworks. Then F360, then Solid Edge.
I think I still like Inventor the best for 3D design. Solidworks for assemblies and 2D drawings.
I ran solid edge at home for a while for my personal designs. It works and the price is right for my hobby stuff. Its basically a dated UI compared to SW. SW is built on the SE kernel.
Been running SW for almost a decade professionally. F360 for over a year professionally. One is MUCH more effective at its job than the other.
ericthered
UZI Talk Supporter
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2020
- Messages
- 482
I have no experience with solidworks due to the price, and no free/trial version. The price is ludicrous, especially for hobbies. I like the f360 layout for sketching. I came from blender, so for technical things it was a breath of fresh air. Freecad is a extremely cluttered UI that I dont find intuitive at all. Maybe you just need to know what your doing better then me. My thing is I want to just get my designs out, as opposed to being cluttered with fighting the UI. Which I do fight f360 a lot lol.
The price is beyond insane and their business model is pants on head retarded. We looked into updating SW2019 to 2025. Dassalt wanted us to pay for "service" for the time we didn't pay them and just used the software without needing support or anything from them, 2020 thru 2024 and pay for service for the 2025 and pay for the software. Screw that.
I believe there is a hobbiest version of SW now but they no longer sell the software, it's a subscription now. Subscription software is not worth using, IMHO.
What version FreeCAD have you tried? It recently got a massive update. I have not used it since the update. Yes, the learning curve can be steep. FreeCAD supports CAM and all now. it's a pretty massive and impressive update.
ericthered
UZI Talk Supporter
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2020
- Messages
- 482
That is nuts to "have" to pay for the software when you did not get anything extra from it. All of the subscription models have really ruined everything. Many of the old standby industry standard programs have gone to that model. It allows them to extract more "value" out of their customers for the shareholders.
I know there used to be a sw hobby version, but I do not think there is a free version any longer. I expect at some point f360 will take the same route and dump the non payers. Which is a shame, if it was a buy and own program, I would be fairly willing to dish out some money to own it. I have used demos for years and then bought the program before.
I have FreeCad 1.0, which is after the update. It is pretty clunky in my opinion, but worlds better then it used to be. It was pretty unusable in my opinion. A lot of ai voiced tutorials out there though, and I cant stand listening to those. I plan on keep plugging away at the program, as I dont think there will end up being any more good programs
AI anything is also a plague. Especially since AI is just a buzz word. Subscription for anything more than reading materials is also a plague. I also see "cloud" based software as a plague. I have better management and security over my information than they ever will. If I need the file somewhere else I'll toss it on an flash drive and take it with me.
1.0 was a huge jump. The learning curve is still steep but a HUGE jump forward in every way. It has CAM, 2D prints and everything a professional suite has.
Eventually someone will get pissed at existing junk or not be able to afford it or whatever and make something awesome. I'd pay a pretty penny for a professional CAD suite that runs on Linux natively. I'd love to fully be able to ditch windows. I'll probably see how CAD runs in a VM next. most CAD suites don't work well with WINE or similar.
1.0 was a huge jump. The learning curve is still steep but a HUGE jump forward in every way. It has CAM, 2D prints and everything a professional suite has.
Eventually someone will get pissed at existing junk or not be able to afford it or whatever and make something awesome. I'd pay a pretty penny for a professional CAD suite that runs on Linux natively. I'd love to fully be able to ditch windows. I'll probably see how CAD runs in a VM next. most CAD suites don't work well with WINE or similar.
Please Visit our Sister Sites Below
Please consider becoming an UZI Talk Supporter