3D printing seems to have gone quiet. Where are we all at?

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I've wondered about buying a 3D printer but haven't had much luck finding out what cad software to use with it.

Ideally it needs to be able to do gears or what ever. Sketchup is used by one person I am aware of but the license cost is more than I am likely to spend on a machine. I've also seen comments that it's free but needs a plugin in order to produce the correct files for the printer.

So what is available and what can it do? Any one any ideas. The web seems to be thin on the ground on this subject. Cheap machines and expensive software. Some artist type software about but not for what might be called engineering. There also seems to be some rather torturous routes using software that was really intended for other purposes.

Oh – I'd like to run it all on Linux but could manage windows if I must.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 31/01/2016 18:40:53

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Fusion 360 should do it for free or Cubify Design about £120 which is the current version of what I use will produce .STL files that your printers software can use.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Thanks Jason. Cubify looks promising – not too bad an expense for yet another toy. I might be able to run it on Linux too via wine as it will even run on Vista. Just might but it can be downloaded and tried first.

There is one called OpenSCAD. It's driven by words rather than by drawing on the screen.

I wonder what others there are.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 31/01/2016 20:22:16

[EnnechParticipant @ennech]

There is also Onshape which is cloud based and freee up to a fairly generous file size. I have no personal experience of it but it's worth a look.**LINK**

[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

Cubify design is a great program for the money. I started out using it but have changed to Fusion which is better (and cheaper) for my needs. There is another which was available through RS Components and was free but I can't remember what it was called. I haven't used any others so can't comment on them. I think it would be worth trying to compare features as you will probably spend quite a lot of time learning any package and it would be annoying to find that you had opted for something which turned out to be inadequate. That said I found the change from cubify to fusion fairly easy.

Good luck with whatever you go for and please let us know what you choose and why.

Regards.

David.

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Check out this thread about Fusion 360. I've used Solidworks, Solid Edge, Onshape, Inventor, Alibre/Geomagic/Cubify and others but I have to say for our kind of work, Fusion 360 is a pretty good package and costs nothing. It generates G code directly and now supports routers and plasma cutters as well as full professional 3D milling CAM which alone would normally cost you thousands. I don't know if it has a slicer built in but otherwise can generate .STL files etc.

Onshape is also pretty good but has a limit on file size and the add-ons are paid-for.

The Designspark software from RS is a cut down version of Spaceclaim but seemed a bit limited when I looked at it. Great for making up control cabinets etc with RS parts!

Try a few – and watch some Youtube videos. They give you pretty good idea how the products work.

Murray

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Fusion seems to be licensed on a by the month or for a month when needed basis. Perpetual licenses available for a short period that I think ends today.

Maybe I have missed something. It seems Sketchup can be free.

John

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[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I've managed to get Sketchup running on Linux. This link helped

**LINK**

One problem so far. Window going black when the draw a box style selection is used. With plugins it's surprising what this package can do – not looked at adding those yet but some useful ones are free. The app may have web links built in to get them and those may not work. Google like to know what people are doing and that is where this app came from.

Initially it looked like it was possible to start in 2D with the usual projections, ideal for some things but it didn't work. Might be down to me or it wont actually do it. Dimensioning parts as they are made isn't obvious and it starts up at a massive scale. At screen dpi something 200mm long comes out at thousands and thousands of them. There doesn't seem to be a way of setting initial scale.

I also looked at what Cubify Invent ( circa £30) could do via tutorials. A lot actually but one important aspect wasn't mentioned and seem to be skipped – some fillets etc can only be run via a 3d view after parts have been joined. I'd guess it isn't available. The video's were based on an early version. Sketchup does seem to do that. Only problem is that pro is downloaded and remains active for 30 days and then becomes Make. That happens when Make is downloaded as well – stupid advertising really. As if people who down load Make will spend £300 plus. Having to wait for 30 days to see what's left is irritating but I have seen what people have done with it. Some one called Gina on stargazersloungs posts all sorts. Gears, ratchets and many other bits and pieces.

John

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[ZebethyalParticipant @zebethyal]

I built my first 3D printer over several years, abandoning my original set of cast parts for a Prusa Mendel and eventually building a Prusa i3, I am currently building a modified version of a Kossel Mini using 20mm extrusion and delrin sliders (I decided all of the current carriage movements were too expensive so designed my own – now posted on Thingiverse).

I estimate that the first printer cost me around £150.00 including all my mistakes and the second will cost me less than £100.00 (including all electronics and steppers).

I design all of my parts in the free version of Sketchup and use an STL plugin to export files that I can directly import to Repetier/Skeinforge and then generate the Gcode to put on an SD card to print from, it takes a few minutes from saving the STL file to having the Gcode file on the SD card and start printing from it (once the printer has warmed up).

I printed all of the parts for my Buildlog laser cutter, including all of the gears for the rotational axis, as this would cost me a fraction of what the raw material alone would cost me to then mill it on my X2 mill (all parts STL and Sketchup shared on GitHub).

I recently drew and printed some of the stepper covers similar to those that John S showed a few posts back (my steppers have a different screw pattern for attaching them so I could not use any of the existing designs on Thingiverse) and I included the Axis and mill name into my design to personalise them.

All of my trials and tribulations for my various projects can be found on my blogs, all of which can be accessed here: http://zebethyal.blogspot.co.uk.

I agree there is a lot of hype around 3D printing and once most people have finished printing their fill of phone stands, keyfobs, ornaments or parts for other 3D printers, they run out of ideas for what they actually want one for and it then sits and gathers dust.

Edited By Timothy Moores on 02/02/2016 15:50:05

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by Ajohnw on 31/01/2016 21:05:26:

Fusion seems to be licensed on a by the month or for a month when needed basis. Perpetual licenses available for a short period that I think ends today.

Maybe I have missed something. It seems Sketchup can be free.

John

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The Fusion 360 site says "A free 1-year startup license is also available for hobbyists, enthusiasts, makers, and emerging businesses that make less than US$100,000 in revenue per year. At the end of 1 year, you can reselect the startup entitlement or transition to a commercial entitlement".

I'm pretty certain this was promised to be an ongoing arrangement year after year for the foreseeable future but I've asked for clarification. I'd be well pigged off if that is about to change.

There doesn't seem to be any suggestion I can see that anything is about to stop today. Any idea where you saw that?

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I didn't come across the free license aspect but eventually came across the prices – pretty sure that involved going to the USA site. I've just managed to find the less than $100K part and renew as required.

John

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[simondavies3Participant @simondavies3]

I strongly recommend OnShape – if you are careful with your admin and don't worry about whether your drawings are made public, it is very very powerful – and free.

Drawings and 2D generation of 3D faces are now possible – although I have not looked too closely into that area. It is also possible to import certain types of .dxf files as a starter for sketches (think gear wheels, etc from 3rd party sources)

For 3D printing you can export a part or the entire selection of parts as a .stl file rady to be printed. On several occasions I have adjusted and remodelled parts then downloaded them to the 3D printer whilst the bed is still warming up (~15 mins or so)

Simon

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

As Thimothy wrote,

I agree there is a lot of hype around 3D printing and once most people have finished printing their fill of phone stands, keyfobs, ornaments or parts for other 3D printers, they run out of ideas for what they actually want one for and it then sits and gathers dust.

It is the case in 9 of 10, with all these printers, gathering dust indeed.

There should be more amateurs like us searching for possibilities and the ironie is there are tons of possibilities…! To few people have good ideas or can design/draw, and that is the problem imo.

For most people a 3D-printer itself is a end-product, pitty…

I'm busy upgrading my (2) printers to install larger nozzles. Doing this I'm capable of printing larger parts. Right now I'm printing parts to make me a panel-saw(wood). That's not a item for this forum, I know. I just want to point out, there's more to a 3D-printer than building it indeed.

But on the other hand there are a few companies and clever people designing/printing very nice things, like limbs, cars, food, all kinds of mechanical and medical tools and even houses…

Chris

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

A number of people seem to spend a lot of time improving their printers, Some are for ever printing things with them. Some often print spare parts for their printer – using what seems to be a biodegradable plastic.

I have a number of things that aren't used that often – they are things for specifics not daily use. A 3D printer would just be another one. I suspect I will buy a kit that from reading comments on the web about some models looks like it has a rigid frame.

Can't be used without software though and that aspect has proved interesting. I had no idea what went on with them other than a 3D cad package was needed but a free ebook I found cleared that up.

At the cad end I have tried SketchUp. Mixed feelings and probably buggy but some of that might be down to running it on Linux. It has it's oddities – pointers for doing things often shouldn't be put at the point where they are needed, more waved around in the general area and it will latch onto cardinal points of nearby objects. The eraser is particularly interesting. In some cases it needs rubbing around something for many seconds until it finds it.

As a test I've been playing with this

The L was made with typed in line lengths and extruded – no means of typing a length in for the extruder unless I missed it so it has to be carefully adjusted with the mouse. The initial scale was more like a kilometer across the screen so I drew a 100mm line and then found it. I added the fillet and ran into grief with the projection looking odd so move the axis and did it again. Ok this time. This seems to be down to not holding a key down while it was drawn to force assumed axis. You'd think it should be the other way round – press a key to free the axis. Initially I drew slots on the face and extruded them through it. One came out slanted, need to hold a key again. The other refused to select to allow it to be extruded for no apparent reason. All were drawn on the face. When it worked this did create a slot. I then though try the union operators. as per the photo. This time it wont recognise the actual plate as a solid so I suppose I need to group the lot or make it into a component. In one case it does assume a solid and in another doesn't.

When I created the fillet, all with on face lines entering a measurement on some wasn't a problem. The one across the base came up with a ~ in front of them indicating approx. Later the measurement was entered 1mm more than I wanted no problem adding the dimension. Strange.

I could have added some edge rads before extruding but wanted to leave them for later for a tougher test. Trying to select the edges they should follow has proved to be impossible so far. Surfaces no problem but adding a rad round one of those left a discontinuity. Maybe grouping or making into a component might help. There isn't a truly optimal command for creating rads for this purpose which makes things awkward anyway.

At start up there is an option that starts with a plan and by the look of it 4 views. Perhaps it's unfinished from google code days. I think it's just for floor plans.

Many moons ago when people dialled up to bulletin boards, no web, I was offered a cheap copy of 3D studio from Autodesk and spent a lot of time with it. SketchUp to me seems to be still hung up some what in that sort of area rather than precise sizes and mostly just has weaker but similar facilities. One neat facility that it's easy to miss is that the centre mouse button allows the view to be swung round while another command is active. The up and left right mouse button lock to the axis. There will be others tucked away – a problem that sort of info should be grouped in one place that's easy to find. I had to use the web. A help screen pops up when each command is used but it indicates that there may be more options.

John

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[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Incidentally, I just received a reply from Autodesk to my enquiry about renewal of Fusion 360.

"Hi,

I can confirm that you can keep renewing the "Startup or Hobbiest/Enthusiast" entitlement for as long as you need it. You just have to agree to the terms every year to verify that you still meet the criteria for the entitlement.

Thanks,

Bankim

Product Manager – Fusion 360"

Good to clear that up. The reply is posted on the forum so publicly stated.

[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

Thanks for clearing that up Muzzer. I managed to open my account with no difficulty but everyone I have spoken to about fusion reports back with the "its not free" line. I keep saying that it is but was beggining to think they had changed it.

On a related front I have downloaded the beta of Autodesk Memento but haven't had a go with it yet. I'll report back when I have.

Regards.

David.

[ZebethyalParticipant @zebethyal]

@AJohnw

Sketchup is not the most intuitive product in the world, but like any drawing package, once you become accustomed to its quirks, you can draw things much faster.

Until you have some form of solid plane within your Sketchup drawing, rotating the viewpoint can throw you in all sorts of weird directions and then take you a while to relocate your drawing!

Personally I start all of my drawings by generating a bunch of guides with the tape measure, starting with the 3 axes at zero offset from the axis (grab the axis with the tape, pull away slightly then back to 0 offset), I then use the tape measure from each of these to generate all of my measurements for a given shape (just as I would if drawing on a sheet of paper with a pencil and T-square/ruler). grab an axis, pull tape in required direction, type in a number and hit enter, new measure is now that distance from where you started in your required direction.

Next I often create a rectangle of some random size against a plane that I am interested in using for a large number of dimensions and then rotate my field of view and zoom in on this (undo to remove it once you are happy with your viewpoint).

Once all of my marking out has been done, drawing lines or shapes is easy, as they all snap to the guides left by the tape measure.

You also know if your line is actually on a given surface if it snaps to the relevant guides – it is very easy to think that your line or surface is part of another surface, when in fact there is a tiny gap.

Extruding is simply a case of grabbing a surface, pulling or pushing in the required direction and again typing a number for distance and hit enter.

Once you have finished your part, you can delete all the guides using the entry from the edit menu, Guides can also be part of a group, which can often be useful if you are attempting to centre a round object against some other item (edit group, create some guides, close group, grab intersection of guides to move group relative to that intersection).

Any movements (pull, push, translate, guide creation, etc) can all be constrained to a chosen axis by holding down the appropriate arrow key at the same time as dragging the cursor (be aware that this is relative to the axes at the time a given group or component was created, if editing that group or component inside a bigger set of groups or components).

A through hole is easily created by drawing your cut-out on the required surface, extruding and then typing the thickness of the material.

if you want to intersect two items, you will need to position them how you require them, then select a suitable surface (outside of a cylinder that is being used to generate a hole in an angled shape)  and then right click and select intersect surface with model to generate the new intersections, next remove the unwanted parts of the cylinder and any new surfaces you do not require.

Hope this helps

Edited By Timothy Moores on 04/02/2016 12:13:10

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

Posted by David Colwill on 04/02/2016 11:34:20:

Thanks for clearing that up Muzzer. I managed to open my account with no difficulty but everyone I have spoken to about fusion reports back with the "its not free" line. I keep saying that it is but was beggining to think they had changed it.

On a related front I have downloaded the beta of Autodesk Memento but haven't had a go with it yet. I'll report back when I have.

Regards.

David.

Me, too. Was wondering if I'd been sold a pup and would find all my work and product knowledge would come to naught after a year. He was asking how I got the impression of ambiguity so he could clear it up. Nowhere specific – but that's the point. It's not very clearly state amongst all the related publicity. And the last thing you want to do is look at the terms and conditions, where some slopey-shouldered corporate lawyers have gone native on them.

Good to see they are planning to continue active development for some considerable time with a sizeable team. The product roadmap and features list are looking pretty interesting athough this means that some features like sheet metal and 4th axis CAM may take a while to surface. This will soon be a very capable application.

Merry

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

I haven't found it that bad Timothy. I have used other 3D packages but a long time ago and all in some respects all are similar. I mentioned the things I should have known about in my other post, mainly key presses. Some of the problems I have may well be down to running it on an emulator under Linux. One odd one though – not recognising the basic angle plate as a solid. It did recognise the parts I drew up to use solid operators to make slots. I wonder if this is down to adding the fillet. Also making slots the other way – I could select and extrude one I drew. The other wouldn't select I can run it on windows and probably will but I don't think it will do all I want it to be able to do.

There appears to be another way of getting sketchup to form 3D from work in 2D and back and forth between the 2 – camera buttons that allows normal views and iso. My finding problem was purely down to the initial scale across the screen which was in 1000's of metres not mm. A 100mm line needed an amazing amount of zoom to show. They could have at least part automated that.

I had a good look at Onshape too. That will do most of what I want but when I saw how a correctly formed sprocket had to be constructed my immediate thoughts was no way. Gear teeth could be produces in a similar way also timing pulileys but my feeling is that this sort of thing should be built into the package. Thread forms too. All of these can be printed.

Sketchup has similar problems. Add ons are needed. It has a enormous number of them available. Finding may be difficult. It also involves agreeing with this and that web wise. I do have a google account so can get at some directly. Sketchup can't connect to the internet the way I am running it – a msg pops up – works a lot better if it can. I'd hope that just relates to loading extensions but I do know that when google were handling it there was regular web chat.

Onshape looks very cnc to me not 3d printer. Over time I'd guess that will be fixed but it may well involve buying plugins and extensions.

I haven't tried to run Fusion on Linux, very unlikely to run but did try to get Cubify Design to run – it wont. In some ways FreeCAD looks to be most suitable but until I update my Linux I can't run it.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 04/02/2016 23:13:53

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Check this out from DMG Mori. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8sT8ESfjrg

The new way of the future for manufacturing high tech things.

Neil

[ZebethyalParticipant @zebethyal]

Personally I run Sketchup on a Mac, I actually find the Windows version slightly annoying by comparison.

To be honest, drawing to exact size is not always the best idea in Sketchup, as this can lead to holes in your model if you try and create intersections between say a cylinder and a curved surface, drawing at 10x or 100x scale and then reducing the model at the end means you have many more virtual pixels to play with and the model remains intact no matter what you do to it.

likewise adding a radius on intersecting edges can lead to holes on the corner if you are doing this at 1mm resolution not the case at 1 metre resolution, attempting a radius on 3 intersecting edges, now that is often quite a challenge 😀

Threads, can be drawn, but are not easy, there are plugins for this as well, and to be honest they just end up making the file size huge, for minimal benefit in the drawing – just drawing a cylinder of the appropriate size and apply a thread like surface texture if you want it to look like a thread is usually more than enough (I just tap the threads in any printed parts after printing anyway).

There is a good involute gear plugin, but for most types of gear, I use OpenScad and a very good gear tooth generator from Thingiverse and then simply import the STL file from that into my drawing.

Here is a 60 tooth GT2 pulley, I drew and printed a pair of these using the above method for the rotational axis of my laser cutter (the lower grooves are for a pair of rubber O rings, to grip/turn the item you are engraving):

and a 48 tooth GT2 pulley for the Z axis reduction gearing printed directly from the OpenScad STL file:

Edited By Timothy Moores on 05/02/2016 08:24:29

Edited By Timothy Moores on 05/02/2016 08:50:50

[Paul LousickParticipant @paullousick59116]

For anyone interested. Aldi stores in Australia are selling a 3D printer for $499 tomorrow.

Not sure if they are any good. (link to printer details) http://www.cocooncreate.com.au

Paul.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

See this thread for more on the Aldi printer:

http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=114807&p=1

Neil

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

I saw something the other week, saying that Dremel has come out with a 3D printer.

Ian S C

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

Latest output.
Four simultaneous prints total of 22hrs.
Parts approx 100 on aside.

Edited By jason udall on 24/02/2016 11:58:23

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