Useful things I've 3D printed(nathanfriend.com) |
Useful things I've 3D printed(nathanfriend.com) |
Ive been using my 3d printers to build things for my home and shop for quite a while. There is nothing quite like just being able to draw exactly what you need and having it appear magically a little while later.
Some of my favorites have been tie-wrap mounting bases for a variety of equipment, spacers and standoffs for conduit, a bunch of archery related stuff, motorcycle parts and accessories, cabinet hardware and latches, baby-proofing stuff household and bathroom fixtures and gadgets..... I'm realizing that this list goes on basically for ever. Its come a log way since the only options were ABS and PLA lol.
For people interested in printing useful things that print easily and don't break, you might find the following books useful:
The Zombie Apocalypse Guide to 3D printing: Designing and printing practical objects : ISBN 978-1530542772
And
Functional Design For 3D printing : ISBN 978-0692883211
I'm curious about your setup - which 3D printer are you using? Looking at your pictures, it seems you might be printing in an apartment space. I'm particularly interested in how you manage ventilation and fumes, as that's something many apartment-based makers struggle with. Have you implemented any specific solutions for handling the emissions?
I've lately been dabbling with feature script and making model configurations (eg a model size or appearance variant) for some CNC work. Here's a CNC laser module I modelled with onshape: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/2d5e7a41d9b0da06350348dc/w...
Recently I transitioned to freecad. There was a bit of a learning curve since it is more constraint based than fusion requires. Once freecad 1.0 came out for prerelease use I started using that instead...it is much improved over the old method. A lot more similar in use to other CAD packages.
I suggest finding a few good tutorials and working through them...it took me a lot less time to learn freecad (for me) than it did to learn fusion...and it removed one more closed step in my mostly opensource toolchain.