I bought a 3D Printer. Much fun.

[04Stefan07 (Stefan)]

Very nice! Eventually in the future when the price of these come down I will most likely love to grab one myself. Imagine printing out all the spare parts and extra parts for scale model building!

[iceman (Mike)]

Can you make a Polarie alignment thingo?

[sheeny (Al)]

Originally Posted by alistairsam

what are you going to print next?

"is the man!" of course.

Probably already done it just too modest to show us. ...oh, sorry no, the clear PET "hasn't arrived" yet... so probably just waiting on the LEDs.

Al.

[TrevorW]

Nice Fred I hope you have fun with it but IMO

I suggest people really do their research before buying a 3d printer-

here is an article you may like to read -

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/05/wh...-for-a-living/

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Originally Posted by TrevorW

Nice Fred I hope you have fun with it but IMO

I suggest people really do their research before buying a 3d printer-

here is an article you may like to read -

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/05/wh...-for-a-living/

Thats a good article, but I dont think anyone remotely technical and had done some homework would expect what he talks about. I had realistic expectations before I started. In fact, the result is better in some ways than I thought it would be.

After fishing around, often the biggest complaints are not the machines themselves, but weeks or months of stuffing around setting up trying to get a reasonable result up due to poor or no documentation,no support and bad clunky operating software. Startups by engineers with no commercial experience make really clever stuff, but you need a degree to make them work properly. UP have made this stuff for years. The software provided for instance, checks if your drawing is suitable and attempts to fix it or show you where problems are. Also UP support structure has a very fine fuzzy layer just before it touches the object, it just falls away cleanly with little effort. Not many printers have this. The manual is also very good.

But yes, cheap home 3D printing is a bit of a gimick, specially sub $800 as he mentions. It has very many limitations.

By far the hardest part is learning the 3d drawing software. Its clever and intuative, but anything remotely fancy takes some serious skills that take a long time to learn, as he mentioned.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Can you make a Polarie alignment thingo?

No, not really. I could make the body, but this kind of thing shows 3d printing limitations, youd still have to fit a clear cover, dial scale and magnetic pointer.

Drawing the thing alone would a fair while, but im hoping to get better at that over time.

All doable, come to think of it, but it would be far easier and probably cheaper just to by the real thing

One thing its really good at, is making models. My son has warhammer models. I recon we could make them, perhaps not quite to the resolution they do though. ALL the effort there of course is in the model creation in software.

[TrevorW]

No demeaning your buy Fred, I've been keen on one myself for model making purposes but just hard justifying the cost in the short term.

Actually I'm waiting for when they are high speed and can print in metal but that may be some time off yet for the general public.

Have fun

[sil (Steve)]

I've been toying with the idea of getting one myself for a while now. Over 20yr experience in 3D computer modelling I've got a ton of models that I'd love to have sitting on my shelf.

Then I'd have to get a 3D laser scanner to complement it...

I'm still waiting for the affordable 3D printers to be capable of high quality fabrication of high load parts (such as replacing damaged gears in a high torque RC monster truck). Knobs and dials don't tend to wear out much be being able to replace things that break with a replicated version that is as strong (or stronger) than the original part will be awesome. I don't think we're too far off though and for now I'm jealous of your new (toy) tool!

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Yes, a scanner, been looking at that .

Heres a macro to try and show untouched finish, feels smooth..

[Osirisra (Ken)]

Welcome to he 3D printing club Fred

I have had my Makerbot 2 for about 6 months now and never get tired of designing and printing all sorts of weird and wonderful things. I have been tinkering with a home made scanner using a projector and webcam and with more tinkering it will produce quite good printable scans.