Fixing things.
Broke one of the feet on my Logitech keyboard. My preference is that it must be inclined. Three or so hours later, the keyboard was fixed, and I didn’t even have to leave the house. 
The original is on the left…
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for me personally, you have it 100% correct. Those little things like that make it all the better, Fix instead of throwing out. I live for this stuff…
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Most of the things I print are for “real world” applications and not as a hobby in it’s self. I recently printed a coat hook and a gate hinge. Why buy when a bit of time designing and the printer does the work. I have also printed out several “patterns” for casting metal, a real time saver over the traditional methods.
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Wow, that’s really impressive. I have already printed figurines for myself, using the instructions just on the Internet! No need to study for months, just experiment) I think a 3D printer should be mandatory for children at school!
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I too fix things. I use a lot of analogue photo equipment and some parts are hard to come by so I have been designing and replacing bits here and there. It keeps the old gear running at a price tag that is not silly.
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we’ve got parts all over the house - the kitchen, hot tub, garage, back patio, heck we even have 3D printed parts holding up the drain pipe on the side of our house.
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My latest project is a plaque for the shop door.
CAD drawing
Printed pattern
Finish machined embossed casting, Bronze.
Mt friend does casting in his garage shop and is quite good at it. This is about 6" in diam. and 3/8" thick. Casting in small letters like this is a bit of a challenge but they all came out nice. Good definition all around.
3D printing isn’t just a hobby anymore. We now control, to some degree, what we need to purchase and what we can make ourselves, Cheaper and exactly what we want.
P.S. I have made several casting patterns now and the layer lines, top lines don’t show very much.
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@Loosenut That’s really cool! Not sure if I agree with the rule though. 
What material do you use to make your patterns/molds?
Beautiful!
Do you mean the “metric system not allowed” rule? I make no bones about despising the metric system. Not because it is different to what I grew up with (I had to learn both in school) or the fact that it was shoved down our throats against the will of many of us but because it uses the comma instead of the decimal in numbers. It’s called the decimal POINT not the decimal comma. If they can’t get that right how can we trust it!
The Metric system is the Tim Hortons or measurement. It’s everywhere, people use it but it really isn’t all that good and like better places to eat, there are better systems out there.
I use PLA or PLA + with 20% infill. It doesn’t really matter what is used except the soft filaments like TPU, it has to be stiff. Any old cheap crap will work as long as you get a decent finish.
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I respect your opinion. 
BTW, the comma is a European thing. Not sure where you are, but in North America, we apparently don’t follow the rules and use a decimal point.
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Well, another reason to hate Europeans! The metric system AND commas.
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@loosenut I know what you mean my father went through the education system just prior to sthe swap over and when I learned precision measurements from him. I learned thosanths of an inch then when i did a drafting course i had to relearn my tolerances as metric and i still think in inches and if needed will convert it to mm or cm (I deal with small items mostly)
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I agree on the metric sucks. I worked at a salt packaging plant during the conversion in Canada. We were told it was to improve exporting. Well our export was mostly US side and after the conversion everything that was shipped to the US had to be in lbs. lol Go figure.
What I remember was the oil companies lobbied hard for metrification. It was a lot easier for them to shove 5 cents a litre down our throats than close to 25 cents a gallon.
I hear where you guys are coming from, but I guess for myself, I disagree. For CAD work, the metric system is awesome. I absolutely hate working in thousandths of an inch, I suppose if you already know all the various numbers, then it could be OK. The metric system is so much simpler to learn, and just makes sense. The “standard” system of 3 feet in a yard, 12 inches in a foot, and then insisting on dividing inches by a number not divisible by 10; did they try to make the system as difficult to compute as possible, or what? Sure seems that way sometimes. As far as the comma in the metric system, I agree that could be super confusing, but I’m not European, and hadn’t even realized that was a thing. My $0.02. 
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I don’t see the need to force the world onto one measurement system when we are not unified on anything else.
Different calender’s
different money
different languages
different engineering and construction standards
different beliefs
Different laws
different voltages
different TV standards
and some countries drive on the wrong side of the roads.
and many other things, add to the list if you like.
It’s not like the metric system was actually originally based on science, it was arbitrarily made up on what was flawed premises by the French (Napoleon) so they and the countries they conquered would be different from Britain. And worst of all 3D printing is all metric (I put that in to show the administrators that we are still on topic). OK I may have been on a rant but I think you see what I think of the metric system.
The Imperial system was made by people for people and the metric system (specifically the SI) was made by bureaucrats for bureaucrats.
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In machining and CAD it is the inch divided by 10, 100, 1000 ,10000, 100000 and so on, except for architects for some reason. Maybe it is because the construction trades still use the imperial system…
Hey guys,
Sorry I have missed a couple of days, Had some personal issues to deal with out of the office.
I too however am in the “I learned both in school” generation. It’s funny but I Used to do a lot of work in the construction industry and everything is in Inches and Feet. Now in the Printer world, everything is mm. It’s my default now. but it does not make it any less frustrating when I get stuff in inches and try to print it in millimetres. It happens more often than you think…
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Dunno, not in our area, from the bit I have come in contact with the metal working industry(I have friends in that industry). They still seem to go by fractions not divisible by 10: 0.03125, 0.0625, 0.125, etc. Whereas in my metric world of printing(thank goodness printers are primarily metric based!) and CAD, I primary deal with centimeters(tenth of a meter), millimeters(tenth of a centimeter), and then smaller measurements down to the tenth or sometimes hundredth place of a millimeter. To each their own, you like the old system, that’s fine, it’s unlikely to completely go away any time soon, if ever, but I will continue to use the metric system where I can. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, and it’s unlikely either of our views on the subject are likely to change the course of history. 
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I did say in machining and by cad I meant in regards to machining, that does not mean that some don’t use metric but those that use the imperial system in those fields use it as a decimal system.
The construction trades (which I was in) still use the Imperial system in most areas and why not. It works perfectly well so why fix it. Having to measure something by sixteenths or even thirty seconds (very close to a MM) is good enough to cut lumber, pipe etc. and any number is divisible by any other number including .125 or .032. Generally though the construction math is done as fractions and not by converting it to decimals and back again. Using fractions in math is easy especially if you went to school in the time that students actually learned to do math with out a calculator, in there heads. The good old days when we had to stand in front of the 4th grade class and recite the times table from 1 x 1 up to 12 x 12 from memory or you flunked out.
It is painfully apparent that the metric pundits, those that generally didn’t learn or ever use the Imperial system are completely misinformed on what the Imperial system that is CURRENTLY used, are always quoting obsolete terms and making incorrect statements based on a lack of knowledge about it.
I don’t care what anyone else uses but you shouldn’t tell me or anyone else we have to change over just because that’s what other use. The fact that 3D printing is done in metric is just one of those unpleasant fact of life. Scaling everything by 25.4 fixes that.
Sorry if I went off on a huff but I/we get tired of the metric user’s sense of superiority over those that chose to use the Imperial system. When you can do fractional math in your head then you can free to feel superior to us.
Nuff said
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