My dear wife has offered me a 3D printer for Christmas because she heard me talking to two of my cousins who have them. In fact I asked one of them to make me a part that had been downloaded on to that Thingi site. He had it done in short order and sent it to me.
My question is, if you have a part in hand and want a 3D copy made, what is the process? I believe CAD drawings are needed and then a "slicing" program has to be written. Same question if you have a drawing made up, what is the next step? If I need to have a CAD program on my desktop, will it work with Windows 7 Professional? Thanks for any advice.
Paul Emmerson is mostly correct: To get the MAXIMUM benefit out of a 3D printer you should know how to use 3D CAD.
However, if you do not need to push your 3D manufacturing to the MAXIMUM, or at least not immediately, there are options.
With a 3D printer you can print anything you have a file for, as long as the item is small enough or your printer is large enough. These files can be downloaded for free or nominal charge from hundreds of sources all over the Internet. I have a friend who has been painting miniature figures for decades. When 3D resin printers (higher resolution than the printers that shove plastic filament through a hot nozzle) became affordable he bought 2 of them. He then joined a pay-to-play Patreon group where he downloads thousands of print files for miniatures that he can print, like paying to be a member of PAMPA and getting access to all the back issues of the magazine. He printed a pirate ship that was so large he had to print it in 3 pieces and glue them together. He estimated that it cost him $5 to print it, but if he had purchased it retail it would have been $150+/-. For his purposes buying a 3D printer, or the second 3D printer, was a no-brainer.
If there is something you have a file for, but you want to customize it, or something you can’t find a file for, you can do it yourself in CAD, or optionally you can always make a public plea here or in a 3D Printing Forum (most likely in a Face Book group). There are lots of people ready and able to whip up a CAD file or modification for you.
There is (was?) a kid in our CL club who has a 3D printer and is a wiz at creating things. He put our club logo into CAD and created small plastic challenge coins with the logo and handed them out at a meeting. He offered to design and print items for members in trade for CL supplies or $.
And CL & FF flyer Norm Furutani’s son Brian is even more high-tech with his. He printed some rough ground airplane wheels out of two different materials. The hubs were solid but the tires and “sidewalls” (they looked like Mars Rover wheels) were a flexible material allowing the tires to flex and soak up the shock of landings.
So you don’t “have” to be proficient in CAD, but it does help. IMHO it also helps to have the printer while learning a CAD program.
PW
Topic: 3D Printing Question (Read 2203 times)