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Author Topic: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path  (Read 3234 times)

Plastic - RIP

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Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« on: September 22, 2019, 05:11:33 pm »

 Hi – I’m thinking of buying a 3D printer to manufacture all the bits I need to build my next boat – the SMS Emden.     The last time I played with CAD was an old DOS-based system at work about 25 years ago.
I’m somewhat out of touch with all the latest techniques so I’ve started with looking at Google Sketchup so I’m going through the Youtube lessons.
I have a number of questions before I go totally down the wrong path.
1 – do I model at 1:1 scale and then shrink the model down to the correct scale? (saves doing maths calculations for every dimension).

2 - Is it sensible to model the items in separate parts so unsupported items can be printed flat? (to avoid wasting extra plastic on a complex support structure.
3 - Is there somewhere on line where I can download free ready-made models to print? (I can’t be the first person doing this exact thing and warship parts are often common to lots of boats).
4 - Do I have to buy the printer yet or can I create everything ready to go beforehand? (will any drivers screw it up if I don’t select the right thing first?)
5 - Can the parts be glued & painted or do I need to select the right printer / filament material?
 
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warspite

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2019, 06:23:19 pm »

If it was me, though not the best route, is create the parts in the scale the reference drawings come in i.e. 1:1 then scale to the finished size, why - simple, the complexity and the sheer time needed to do this will be the main reason to determine whether to continue on before laying out the cost on a 3D machine (it also allows you to buy a tried and tested machine later when both the availability and cost are better in the future).


When 'nesting' the parts to be printed you have to work out how odd shaped items are printed in a once run order e.g., say for instance you are to print an item say an elevated gun, as you print up the support you get to the part where the breech is off to one side and is quite bulky, as more is printed the item is getting heavy and say sinks in say a powder printer the two parts wont meet where they are supposed to as the breech had sunk below the original level, if a filament - same issue the two separate parts may not meet in the right place, in most cases the working out is so there is continuity of parts being held to each other (I stand correct if necessary), most cases the items are printed in separate parts and then glued together later. So for an elevated gun the stand, shield, barrel are usually all separate parts.


Shapeways is a good supplier.


usually the parts are painted after a good wash and clean up.


During the breaks at work - i have been contemplating the same thing, though in my mind I am considering the parts printed like an Airfix kit so as to nest and have a single print doing many parts, just like Carls ferry parts
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Plastic - RIP

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2019, 06:41:06 pm »

Like you, I was considering laying it all out like an Airfix model - a sort of enhanced 2D - of simple parts to glue together to build the assemblies.   I'll probably be getting a plastic filament printer - as you say, a tried & tested one.
I've looked at Shapeways - they do exactly what I want but I'd end up spending more than a 3D printer for all the parts I need.  ;)
 
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me3

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2019, 08:38:35 pm »

Hi,

Hope this helps...

1 - I don't model at 1:1, I do it to scale, google sketchup can't work to very very small measurements, so a lot of detail can be lost when scaling down, but is possible.

2 - I always print in sections, it is better to break things down to avoid using supports, the finish over a section of supports isn't as good as you may think - personally I don't worry too much about wasting plastic as its pretty cheap. I find it easier to print one item at a time, I don't nest. Think of a 5 hour print, you check it in the first hour and all is good, so you come back at hour 4 and a part has gone wrong, the extruder has slipped and isn't pulling plastic etc. you potentially have wasted 4 hours and maybe all the parts that were okay in hour 1! Also easier to design without nesting. *this is just my opinion, some people do it very successfully but I'm not a fan myself!*

3 - Shapeways springs to mind but thingiverse is worth a look

4 - I'd buy the printer, make some basic things, ie. a test octopus and a benchy - this tests the set up of the printer, it will be a learning curve with the printer and I wouldn't expect to start making parts ready for a boat straight away, it takes time to get it set up and be able to design the parts so it is printable and repeatable,

5 - I use ca glue ad p38 body filler and it works fine on PLA, All my parts are designed with 3mm tubes in them where a joint is necessary and I used 3mm PLA filament as pins to hold it all in alignment.

Hopefully that helps, it isn't as bad as you think it is, but there is a lot of learning to do!
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me3

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2019, 08:50:12 pm »

Here is an example of a big project, this went from a 2d drawing that I converted into a 3d drawing then split into this many parts that were all printed separately..
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Plastic - RIP

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2019, 09:02:46 pm »

Wow - that's awesome.    I understand what you're saying about aborted prints and wasting hours to get nothing out.   Probably sensible.     

I'm thinking of printing the support stand for any guns, the breech, the wider part of the barrel and then having a brass tube inserted for the main barrel & muzzle end to stop any sagging.
For doing deck houses, would you print them as 5 flat sides and then glue them together or print a box and put a lid on it?
I'm going to be making parts at 1/96 so there's a limit to the amount of detail that will be visible - it's mainly to make things better than my traditional plastic model fabrication - and more repeatability for producing many of the same thing like ammo boxes and bollards.

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Plastic - RIP

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2019, 09:04:11 pm »

How do you take 2D pictures and make them 3D?    I can produce accurate drawings in Powerpoint very easily - it would be handy to be able to import them somehow.
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me3

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2019, 09:34:45 pm »

Thanks,
I converted the 2d drawings to 3d in Google SketchUp. Unfortunately no program can do that! Yes your on the right track, you could print the barrel on its end ie. Stood up. For a deck house. Without seeing the design it's hard to say although if fairly flat sides of print it upside down. So the roof was on the bed, with walls going up, you just need a good sense of imagination for the most of it!




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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2019, 10:22:01 pm »

The Emden is fairly basic - mostly matchbox-sized houses that are square on all sides - there's lots of davits and small deck furniture.   

When you look at this boat, it's all lifeboats, railings, funnels, davits & masts with a sprinkling of guns.   The rest is very basic.
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grendel

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2019, 05:01:58 am »

Thanks,
I converted the 2d drawings to 3d in Google SketchUp. Unfortunately no program can do that! Yes your on the right track, you could print the barrel on its end ie. Stood up. For a deck house. Without seeing the design it's hard to say although if fairly flat sides of print it upside down. So the roof was on the bed, with walls going up, you just need a good sense of imagination for the most of it!






A fully functional CAD package should be able to do this, i used to run Bentley Microstation at a previous work, and that could convert a 2d file to 3d, the its just a matter of extruding the parts to their finished shape. as a full cad user i find all of the simpler programs frustrating when they wont do what i know i can do in full cad.
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warspite

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2019, 02:37:14 pm »

I use to use 3D solids in CAD, essetially a series of shapes connected together to make a part or used to remove parts, the first part ever made using a drawing of mine was for a cormorant I did for a steam boat on this forum, it apparently came out alright.
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me3

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2019, 07:11:01 pm »

I stand corrected, I failed to put free in front of the program! I was half asleep mind.  :D
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warspite

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2019, 06:18:41 pm »

This is the cormorant
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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2019, 09:48:14 pm »

Speaking for myself, I would learn the CAD first, as that is the hardest thing. I'm very much a beginner at this, and am learning Fusion 360, which I found was the best package for me having had a stab with Sketch-up, Tinkercad and Rhino. Tinkercad was too limiting, and the others I found counter-intuitive, but everyone has their own preferences.

I have an Ender 2 printer, if I was buying today, I'd probably get the Ender 3, which came out after the Ender 2, but is only a little bit more expensive. I'm very happy with my Ender 2, but do bear in mind that these Chinese machines are far from perfect and tend to need a bit of tinkering to get them printing reliably. The plus side is you do learn what makes the machine tick. Filament printers work well for me, but if you want small parts with a lot of detail, resin based printers are unbeatable. However they have other disadvantages like a small build area, and higher running costs.
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Pete C

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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #14 on: November 07, 2019, 12:31:10 pm »

Fusion 360 seems the way to go, I use it for both my 3D printing desgins and also for producing files ready for my CNC router.
Once you start to watch a few turorials on youtube and jump in most of the drawing is pretty easy to translate from your pencil sketches.. and good caliper.
I find I print in a very low res to try fit some parts when i'm a little unsure.
As for CNC routing parts I use to use ventric aspire but now Ive found the option for my cnc in fusion I will move over to that for all work, I think I still have to run my MACH3 for the work though which runs form a seperate dated PC with a parallel port fro the gcode.

I run a Creality CR10 mini (which is not mini or small by any way) and I have a 3040 CNC router which I find large enough for most of the things I make.
I used to use Isiplot for creating plans from drawings (free plans) I can rescale and print tiled to A3 paper. for the manual cutting of parts



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Re: Newby Considering The 3D Printing Path
« Reply #15 on: April 10, 2020, 06:33:17 am »

The Emden is fairly basic - mostly matchbox-sized houses that are square on all sides - there's lots of davits and small deck furniture.   

When you look at this boat, it's all lifeboats, railings, funnels, davits & masts with a sprinkling of guns.   The rest is very basic.



Have you ever tried drawing on Illustrator? Being a vector graphic design software, it allows drawing things and then export it as EPS, DXF files (or other CAD formats). You might then import the file on a CAD software and try to extrude it there.


I'm not sure it works, but you might have a try. (You can download a trial version of Adobe Illustrator for free on the official website).


If you will ever try, let me know if it works.
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