3D Printing in the Shop
TomD
I don't know how many threads there have been on this to date:
1) There are a lot of videos on this on YT. This is the one that got me going:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3d+printing+for+woodworking
Not because anything he did is likely to make it to my shop, but because he seemed relatively sensible, and to have solved problems that were meaningful to him. And he makes all those files available. So in this hobby they don't just give you their opinions, they give you products to go with it.
2) How good are the machines and which one to buy. I bought an Enders 3 (under 200 in the US), and I am very happy with it. I don't get paid, or have any gig of any sort in life. It seems to be just as good as any machine out there. When I watched the above video, apparently he has an expensive machine, I worried would my machine be good enough. The answer is it prints just as well, and just as fast, long term durability should not be a problem as there are lots of parts and none of them are expensive or proprietary.
I thought I would dip my toe in the water, and if I really got into it, I had picked out a machine I really liked the look of and it's kit was under 2K. That no longer sounds like a sensible idea, this machine is enough. The bigger machine is only 2.5 times faster, and you can't always print faster. Also the cost of large prints rises exponentially, so even 2x faster is not going to make printing a lunch box fast or economical.
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Initially I was looking at the Monoprice, it seemed well supported, but I came to the Ender when making later searches. I looked at Amazon reviews, that even if bogus, you will not get 2000 bogus reviews for something nobody will touch. Then I went to YT to see what the action was there. The Enders 3 was well supported on YT, with lots of things you could print to make it work better. You could tell which printer was better by the number of people with huge channels doing content for it. However, I found all the suggested add-ons I tried were bogus, the machine worked fine as is. That is kinda a paradox, one chooses a machine that is the best, because it has the most patches on YT. And then it turns out that all those flaws were not real. That is just how YT content providers play the game. But it worked for me as a way to narrow my choice.
2) Minor assembly required. Most of the major parts were pre-assembled. The instructions where well drawn, and easy to follow. There was one misleading part, but I forget what it was. There are a lot of good videos on assembly, I used one by something like 3D printers Canada, that helped.
The machine worked perfectly, and to scale from first time I plugged it in.
3) The mega app.
So there used to be this idea of various applications that were so seductive that they would turn non-users into users overnight. Stuff like Lotus 123 in it's day, or facebook. For me it was 3D boat CAD.
So what is it for 3D printing for woodworkers. Eehh... Let me divide this into 2 areas:
a) If you make your own designs. I have not done this despite 30 years of 3D design, because so far I can't load the software on my computer. But there certainly are some things, actually relatively simple parts, that would be game changers for me in both the woodworking, and art/painting areas. What I have done is re-scale and re-purpose parts to other uses. So for instance I needed a means of attaching a laser optical mirror to a boom. And I had the design in mind. What I did was use an Acrra camera mount instead, a commercial one would have been heavier than I need, 10 dollars, and a week to get, it took about 20 minutes to print.
b) There are thousands of pre-designed items that you can print, and I have printed a few of these, and some of them overlapped things I had on order from china, that had I not ordered would have saved me 50 bucks. The key is to avoid filling the house with crap that should have been left in cracker jack boxes.
3 things I have printed, out of many, that I am happy with are:
i) A half size speed square. I think it is really handy, I just use it as a square, no mini rafters. It is not as cold as a metal square, won't rust, and was perfectly square as printed, but could be trimmed to perfection if one needed to adjust it. I see the plastic squares are becoming more popular in the hardware stores;
ii) A jig about half the size of a playing card that lays out 4 different corner radii. Normally I grab a bottle cap. I like this better, and printed it full, and 90% to get a wide range of radii. I could easily live without this, but I do like these kinds of things, and have looked at a bunch of expensive options over the years, never bit though.
iii) A cool bracket to hang one's dial calipers on, with security but access. I built this kind of functionality into the board I have that holds my layout tools on the wall. That was a slot system, but it has filled up with gauges of one sort or another. So I will install a few of these in an area of open space. I will also place one on the wall directly above my bench to keep a caliper even closer to my work.
4) Is it easy to use: Yes, you turn it on, and navigate a menu to choose "print from disc". Then choose the file. That is it. You also need to know how to change the plastic filament, but that is simply a mater of choosing the "heat the PLA" command, then pull out the old, and push in the new till the new colour runs clean. There are other features and setting you get used to over time.
5) Is the software difficult to use. Mine came with a "Slicer", so called because it directs the machine what to print in each layer, or slice. A design is a design, the slicer directs the machine on how to make the design. If you download a file from Thingiverse, you then just drag that file over to the slicer, and it will open up looking like a 3D object. Most stuff woodworkers would print is pretty simple. The products that many like to make like Star Wars figurines, are a lot more complex. The more your thing look like a tree, the less well supported the object parts will be when it is printing. But if it looks like my square, or a block, it will be easy.
Once you have the object open in the slicer, you can simply leave the basic settings and download the file and drag it to you disc, and feed that to the printer. But here are a few simple things you might want to alter:
Fill, which is the percent of the solid you print. Most prints will be hard plastic on the outside, and a honeycomb on the inside. That can be 10% to 100% solid, so just insert what you want in the box. 30% is pretty good, but if you downloaded the file, there is probably a recommendation for fill. In some cases the low density fill takes just as long to print, and a solid might be better.
Brim, this is a puddle of material around the base to stop it from toppling over. If you were printing the cap for a pen, vertically, a brim would be good. They snap off easily. If you were printing a detailed stencil, a brim might make it solid. If you want one you just select that option.
Supports, this one can be complicated, it supports things like outstretched arms on a figure by building scaffolding. Look up instructions, but for a lot of our stuff, not necessary.
6) Cost of prints. 1 KG of plastic is about 20 dollars, so the plastic will cost 2 cents a gram. The Slicer tells you how much you will use. As an example, the cornering jig I recently printed cost 32 grams, or 64 cents. It turned out to be 6 inches across where the commercial ones are 4, so had I adjusted it to the smaller size, which would also be stronger, it would have been 2.25 less material, so about 28 cents. You also pay for the electricity. I looked this up and the only thing I came up with was about 1 KW for all of 8 hours. That does not sound right. Another guy who lives in a high cost for electrical power area in Germany said he doubled the cost of the filament. On that basis my cornering jig cost 56 cents compared to 15 dollars to the sky for the original version. There is the cost of the machine, and against that, some people enjoy this as a hobby, so is it entertainment or a capital cost?
7) Satisfaction. The parts one makes are not the equal of the parts one could make by hand, or purchase, but in many cases they are good enough, inexpensive, immediately deliverable, and can be easily customized, or even designed from scratch. While one has little to do with the product unless one designed it, I still have that tolerance for the parts that comes with having made it oneself. There are cuts of wood I have made planes out of that I would be offended to have had foisted on me by a manufacturer. But I accept them because it was my decision, I could fix it if I had to, and it has given perfect service to the point where it is a story itself. The parts the printer has made for me, I am so far content with, and part of it comes from the sense of ownership one gets, even though many of the decisions where made by someone else.
Anyone have some prints they would like to share?
