When hobbies converge

3D Printing Gallery
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I dabble in a lot of things - wood, plastic, metal, stone, leather etc. Years ago, my spouse bought me a Skil X Shop (long since discontinued, but still going strong). It has gone through fits and starts of activity, and makes an amazing amount of sawdust. >cough< >cough<

The one thing I struggled with was the miter slots. Skil chose not create this wee beastie of a saw with what is the more common 3/4" miter slots. Nope. let’s have 5/8th T-slots. I attempted to try and make some using high density plastics using the router table portion. Those did not work and I lost the investment in the plastic. I even tried to find metal to fit my needs, but wasn’t as versed in all things shop and the internet hadn’t really figured out how to be an e-commerce engine as yet.

A few weeks ago, I was looking for something entirely different, and my brain, which clearly never gave up, audibly clicked, and with 5 min. of vernier caliper work, and about 45 min. of FreeCad work, I had a prototype STL saved, pulled into Prusa Slicer, and sent off to the printer.

tslotbars
tslotbars1868×2177 682 KB

The first draft was printed at 5% density, so too weak for use, but just to test the fit. It was dang near perfect. So, two runs later, at 50% density, these were printed, not only did they not curl like the prototype, they feel as they will be very durable.

Improvements to come - create dovetail parts to allow printing any number of differing lengths to create miter gauge locked jigs of different sizes, create threads in the holes, and/or create hex shaped pockets so that’ll give better clamping force.

I’m actually not sure what I enjoyed more - drafting this in FreeCad (does that say something about my mind? :laughing:), and making it or finally solving an irritating design choice by a manufacturer.

I’ll probably put the resulting STL’s up on Printables or Thingiverse - to be determined.

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Not sure that Freecad would be my first choice for most things personally, although that comes down to my layout preferences. Its capabilities do come in handy for me once in a while though. I hear you on designing a new creation though. Creating a solution to a problem is satisfying, but just the process of actually designing it is too.

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Good job!

I love seeing people create solutions to problems that they have in their life, I think that is hands down my favorite part of 3D Printing… that and benchies…

Matt

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I had Fusion 360, but they changed the rules, and my license as an individual no longer works. So, I figured, dive into Freecad - it’s not likely to change, and it generates STL and 3MF files so… it is however a deep pool to dive into. I’m still very much a newb in it. For the less precise stuff, I futz around with the Microsoft 3D Builder - it too works. I do like that with Freecad, you can build your own parts library… that’s kinda handy.

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…

Benchies??

Really?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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What did they change about the rules?

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I’ve done some amount of calibration towers and such like, but in my five years of 3d printing, I’ve printed exactly one benchy.

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I built boats (kayaks) for many years. I studied evolutionary design, a kayak that work well historically provided more food lower child mortality, more coping of that design. Bad designs fewer children fewer copy’s.

One of the most interesting things of 3D printing for me is there is a similar process. A design is shared, altered, shared again and altered. On and on. The best designs float to the top the poor ones get lost.

I so love coming up with a thing to solve a problem and posting it! Good job

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Maybe… Maybe not…

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I had a free license - good to use as long as I didn’t make more than US$100K/yr. Wasn’t going to ever happen as I was using it to teach myself how to use the tool, and to help a neighbour who’d bought a CNC router table that came with a cracked license for some tool or another. (yah, it was from a less than reputable seller - product was good, but the software wasn’t.) I was helping him see how to use Fusion to create what he wanted. He’s since moved, and the CNC machine followed him (darn).

I kept using F360 and then they turned around and stated I needed to fork over over a grand to keep using it, and the free licensing model was revoked unless you’re a student - which is long in my past, so OpenSource Freecad it is.

That was mmm. 5 or 6 yrs. ago? I’ve not bothered with it since. I’ve accidentally started Fusion 360 once or twice since and it just barfs when it gets to the verification of my email address for licensing.

I think I finally just removed it from my laptop.

Don’t get me wrong - if I had a legitimate use case for Fusion 360 on more than a 1 or 2 month cycle, I’d buy into the subscription model everyone’s using these days, but at the price point, there’s no value to me who does this as a hobby, with no intent of making a career out of it. (I’ve already got one of those (Fake Monty Python French accent))

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No, you don’t need to be a student to use fusion 360. They make it pretty hard to find on their website, but there is a free version for hobbyist use (no commercial use). It is not the full version of course, but everything needed for 3d printing is there. Not sure about machining.

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Just took a looksee - from how I read it, you get 3 yrs which is about right for mine. There’s nothing saying you can renew after 3 years that I’ve seen in the T’s & C’s as yet. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m way too familiar with how licensing models work, from a past life.

Until I need them as a tool, I’m happy learning Freecad. F360’s interface is lovely, and I wish Freecad’s was as nice, but UX/UI work costs, and requires great skill so it is what it is, and it’s not terrible, just not as intuitive as F360’s, and I can still turn out the widgets I need/want.

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I have renewed mine many time, I have never paid for F360! They limit you to 10 editable documents at once with their free plan but you can just toggle the editable mode off of one of them when you start a new project and then switch it all around as you need to edit them.

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Yup, same story here. The 10 active projects part is a bit annoying, but I can live with it.

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I love makin solutions to problems, its the best.
Should I mention the lowly Tinkercad, it is simple for all my needs using very basic shapes.