Andrew ha sbeen showing what he has been printing, just not on this forum. I hope to see the bits in the flesh in a couple of weeks

David;

1) A bit of stuff @work, but I'm the recipient, not the CAD expert.

2) Picked up a Printrbot Simple that I'll be putting together next weekend with some friends. It'll be on my blog – **LINK**.

3) There is a 4-8-8-4 locomotive on thingiverse.com, the UP "Big Boy" – go there and search "big boy".

On my blog, there's a link to someone using LinuxCNC for running his 3D printer; interesting comments in the youtube video, in my opinion.

There you go – a bit of stuff…. John.

I noticed an advert on TV the other day for the first part of a magazine about building a 3D printer . Since the first part only cost £2, I had a look in a few newsagents but there was no sign of it and I gave up looking. Looking at the small print on the advert I noticed there are 90 issues of the magazine ( 89 of them costing £6-99 each! ) so the total cost of building the printer would be very high, and I wonder if there is enough demand for this venture to be viable.

What then happens if the magazine bites the dust after a number of issues? I also see that the version sold by Maplins has just had a £200 reduction in price, which suggests that they are not selling well.

Doug

After all the media hype has died away there will be some cheap units offered second hand as the buyers discover that unless you want to print something someone else has drawn then they just have an expensive toy.

This is one of those toys you definitely have to have a need for and way of getting the idea from idea stage to 3D model.

That is the stumbling block in this chain.

With so much open source software about nowadays and 3D CAD becoming cheaper (and taught in schools and colleges), I’m not so worried about the missing step between the idea and the CAD model. There’s a whole generation coming through now that simply accepts this as the way things are done. The current 3D printers are like the dot matrix printers of 25-30 years ago (in more ways than one!) and I’m sure they will become more robust and commoditized pretty rapidly. And with milling, routing and laser cutting heads already being added, you can see that we aren’t far off having some pretty interesting equipment at our disposal. These are basically miniature CNC machines and even use the same g-codes for the tool path. Give it time…

Our printer at work (Ultimaker 2) has now got about 100 hours or so on the clock and we’ve used it for making samples of connectors, cable clamps and small junction boxes for customer and certification use, while non-work examples have included a chain protector and jockey wheels (for a mountain bike) and a proper sized mug holder (for my car), which would be almost impossible to make any other way. I also made up some parts for the screw cutting clutch I’m working on, to get a better feel for what it would look like in the flesh (I posted pictures earlier – they are in my "stuff" album). You can go from CAD model to test sample in as little as 30 minutes for a simple part, or let it run overnight if it’s a larger part. The default density is 20%, which means that it generates a honeycomb structure inside the part to save material. However, you can change that all the way up to 100% if you need a solid part. And this plastic is actually pretty tough.

I’ve been working away at my 3D CAD skills recently and the mug holder was a nice test of my capability, combining thin walls, draft angles, swept sections etc. Nice to be able to print out what you have to verify you’re on the right tracks. As I said, there’s no realistic way to make one of these using any other process. If you are sensible where you buy the filament, the cost should be a few pence per gram, so the mug holder for instance probably cost less than 2 quid. The final part will be in black, with a better surface finish but at this stage I'm able to check it fits the vehicle and finesse the dimensions. Not a very good photo, sorry.

Murray

The future possibilities are quite mind boggling once they sort the material strength/properties out

Print out a loco boiler in 24 hours and an entire Tich loco in a month !

The time saved with production will be put to better use, like new ideas methods and developments for models like steam powered units

The downside is that EVERYONE who "makes stuff" will want the base materials for a 3d printer, especially large corporations who make components

So the good printing materials could become incredibly expensive

…or maybe economies of scale and competition. I can see that one being very popular as a result of the very clear instructions supplied.

Russell.

That's the plan, among other bits 'n' pieces.

I've been printing models of the hollow cast iron pistons I am designing for my traction engines, just to see what they look like. I've also been doing a FE analysis of the piston halves to fine tune the radial stiffeners and fillets to minimise stress variations.

I am also using the 3D printer to make press tooling for sheet brass parts for the traction engine lamps I am designing, based on the recent series in ME. The press tooling works fine; it's just my lack of design knowledge on pressings that is sometimes at fault.

Regards,

Andrew

I noticed that out Makerbot Replicator X2 and associated scanner/digitiser is now sitting in the corner gathering dust at work.

Bit of a flash in the pan methinks.

G'day.

I heard about this **LINK** on the news here in Oz today.

What interested me was the fact that they 3D printed titanium. Now that would be a handy piece of kit for the workshop.

* Danny M *

That came out last November, here's a link to the process which was published in 2011   **LINK**

Edited By Lofty76 on 12/03/2014 18:33:10