3D printing

[recumbent]

My stepson bought a 3D printer and it is really neat. He printed 2 mag floor plates for my Taurus, they are longer and give me a nice finger rest.
He is printing an extended mag release for a Ruger RPR 22LR right now.

I was surprised how inexpensive they are now.

Anyone else do 3D printing?
Bob

 

[Kevin]

I used to teach computers at a k-8 school and I ended up getting two 3D printers for my school. Kind of strange, but some of the other teachers absolutely hated the idea of “modern technology” in a K-8 school. We did limit the use of the printers to the 5-8 grades...

Anyway, I love, love, love 3D printers. At the school we used Luzbot printers and Tinkercad.

What is your stepson using? What brand of printer?

My wife and I just bought another Luzbot printer for our home. We feel really strongly that this is part of the future and want my daughter to learn this technology.

The Luzbot printers are made in Colorado. They have a lab with 100 printers working literally nonstop, print after print. Sort of a test to see how much abuse their printer will stand. And they have great customer service also. When I taught, over the summer, I returned one of the schools printers, and they gave it a factory overhaul free of charge. I was more than impressed.


Anyway, yes, now that I have a printer at home, I can use it for printing objects that take more time than just a few hours. I don’t have any pictures, but I’ll take some tomorrow.

 

[contender]

I find the technology interesting & see a lot of good for it's use.

Sadly,, I'll never be smart enough to be able to operate such things. Miss Penny says I'm dangerous with just a smart phone & can screw up a steel anvil with a rubber mallet.

 

[vito]

My motorcycle mechanic has one, and has made hard to find parts of his customers. I saw the printer busily working and asked about it. He said one of his customers was restoring an old Pontiac LeMans and needed a door hinge that he could not find anywhere, including local junk yards as well as online shops. So my mechanic said he got the specs for the part and programmed his printer to make one. He said it would take several hours to complete. I was very impressed. I wouldn't have a clue as to how to operate the device.

 

[Kevin]

A couple years ago, NASA had a contest for high school students to design a 3D model of a multi tool for use in the Space Station. They can email the design and print it in the Space Station, vs paying for shipping.

Here are two different objects we recently printed here at home.
The pyramid in a cube was a thought of mine, like the old ball in a box everyone carved back in shop class of junior high.

I guess they don't do that anymore, so this is the modern equivalent. This took about 8 hours to print. The pyramid isn't conntected to the open box. The printer prints a thin support structure which you later just remove with a sharp knife or pull it out with some pliers. Here you can see the white lines on the top bar. That is where the support structure was attached. It "supported" the bar above it while it was being printed.

Here is a Mother's Day card my daughter made for sweetie. This took about 12 hours to print. The printer isn't very loud, just a fan basically.

 

[recumbent]

Anyway, I love, love, love 3D printers. At the school we used Luzbot printers and Tinkercad.

What is your stepson using? What brand of printer?

Has a Creality Ender 5 Plus (350 x 350 x400mm: 13.75 x 13.75 x 15.75" build space). Using Tinkercad and the Creality slicer. Has been looking at a different slicer, but hasn't found the correct profile files to utilize Cuda slicer.

 

[Don Lovel]

My almost 15yr old grandson Indigo has discussed us investing in a quality 3d prnter and enough decent computer to run it.
I had said to him I thought his little brothers would love toys and I would like to make some fishing lures or maybe some cool knobs for my guitar. He shakes his head and says "Grandpa, if we are going to spend a bunch of money on one and get a good quality one, wouldn't it be cool if it could tig weld. I said I don't know if those are affordable, but I recently saw a motorcycle part made from a sand casting patterned with a 3D plastic model and if you had a vac mold and a rig to melt your metals and pour the casting. There ya go. I am guessing if they don't have 3D metal welders yet, they will be available soon. I could see a Submarine or Aircraft carrier being able to make their own parts

 

[recumbent]

My room addition is 15 years old so the plastic clips that hold the screens in to the windows have deteriorated and broken from UV and exposure and new clips are no longer available, we measured them with calipers and printed 1, tweaked it and now I have new clips on the room's windows.

 

[Kevin]

Recumbent: that is pretty cool you’ve made those plastic clips for the windows. The printers are amazingly accurate in printing the exact size you want.

Don, you do need a reasonably fast computer to run the slicing software used to send the code to the 3D printer. I use Cura. But, nothing special is needed really. Most computers off the shelf would do. Just nothing like a cheap Chrome Book or a bargain basement laptop.

It’s called slicing, because think of the printer like an automated hot glue gun. The hot tip is 200 C or about 400 F. It builds up the model in layers, putting down a thin strip of plastic for each layer. The software tells the computer what to do one layer at a time. So before starting it slices the model into the individual layers.

And the filament choices for the printers are numerous, and really not very expensive. I have some flexible filament my daughter has made wrist bracelets with. But you can also buy wood filament and yes, I believe metal also. But those printers get to be more expensive.

I want to experiment with some food grade plastic and make some drinking cups.

 

[Kevin]

And Don, check out http://www.tinkercad.com. It is free. And there are no ads. Auto Desk does it for educational purposes.

You don’t have to download anything, it’s all online, and pretty user friendly.

This is the software most high schools use if they have a 3D printer.

 

[Fred From France]

Hi, yes been 3D printing since Solidoodle started up 2009 about. I've drawn up and printed revolver range stands, ammo speed loading boxes for .38, empty casing key hangers, and Single action xr3-red grips.

For free key hanger file: Mouse Click right here and save !

Enjoy, Fred

 

[gnappi]

I had a friend (now passed on) who was a nut for 3D printers. He was a brilliant electrical engineer and he started to use 3D printers to make 3D printers. Now THAT is a bit overboard!