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Thread: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

  1. Back To Top    #31
    Owner BigAl205's Avatar
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    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    Wow, looks great! But you're doing this whole thing in Tinkercad?

  2. Back To Top    #32

    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    ok here's my mouse pad bracket drawing. Sometimes it's better for me to use a mouse when trying to hit small buttons on a tablet/screen and for some purposes that just can't be done using the touchscreen or stylus/pen (app limitation). The armchair is an IKEA Poang. The mouse pad is a 5x7" item from Amazon. The stylus/pen is for my new Microsoft Surface Go 2 tablet PC. The big phone is a Samsung. The phone holder and mouse pad brackets are 2 pieces here because if combined it's large and can't fit in the printer lol. The bottom bracket is just to clamp everything to the arm rest without having to use duct tape or drive screws into the nice chair. I'm getting ready to re-print the large piece tomorrow evening. I'm using 100% density, small brim, fine mode and without support (flip it over lol). Even the phone bracket was printed without any support (use certain angles only).
    Click image for larger version. 

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  3. Back To Top    #33
    Owner BigAl205's Avatar
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    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    Nice!

  4. Back To Top    #34

    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    Quote Originally Posted by BigAl205 View Post
    Wow, looks great! But you're doing this whole thing in Tinkercad?
    I am, and being an IT/data guy with an electrical engineering background, to me it's like taking all my comfort away. I'd actually be more comfortable if I could make these shapes and adjust and measure them after the fact, but really the only time you can enter explicit dimensions is when you create the shapes (or the "empty" shapes that you can use to delete from existing content by "grouping" a positive shape with a negative shape).
    Even centering one object relative to another is not something you can do explicitly.

    But on the flip side, I'm absolutely blown away by how easy it is to create shapes and move them around in a 3D workspace (other than the fact that I can't figure out how to pan the workspace, I have to zoom out, click another object, then re-focus on that). I'm learning some tricks to do what I want - like centering with precision - using the corner and center indicators from each shape, that "focus" button, and the zoom - you can manually center things, it just takes longer than if you could say "center this to that" and bam. Even working to properly hollow out the shape, you can actually zoom in to see inside that tiny hollow space. It's so small in my case that it's not easy, but it's doable.

    I'm also really growing concerned about creating support structures - I believe those are added using each printer's slicer software, in preparation for an actual printer-specific print - but I'm such a noob that I really don't know.

    I am only using Tinkercad on the recommendation of some very non-technical friends of mine from a big national skateboard collector group that I'm a member of... What are you using? Have you tried Tinkercad?
    Any better suggestions? I'm down to try them. Tinkercad doesn't even have an explicit "save" option, and it's totally cloud-based - which has given me a couple scary moments.
    I'm definitely on the path to buying a printer, I just keep going back and forth between "Do I get a $300 good-enough starter printer?" or "Do I get a printer that won't limit the things that I ultimately know I want to do?", which costs at least double.

  5. Back To Top    #35
    Owner BigAl205's Avatar
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    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    Most of the stuff I've designed for myself has been Tinkercad, so I know exactly what you're going thru. The level of detail you've achieved with it would have had me banging my head on the desk. I've recently started playing with its big brother, Fusion 360. The interface is similar to Tinkercad, but simple things such as making an empty box is SO much easier with Fusion. Now, I haven't designed and exported anything with it to print yet, but as I said, it's like Tinkercad on steroids. In fact, Fusion 360 is to Tinkercad what an iPad is to an Etch-A-Sketch.


    Take a few minutes to watch these videos




  6. Back To Top    #36

    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    I'll definitely check that out, thanks.

    In the meantime I made a top-exit version of the connector. The top-exit would maybe be easier to print, no support structure needed:
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Anyone have any opinion, preference, hate or love either version?
    I'm kind of liking the idea of a speaker wire that exits and runs parallel to a box, rather than coming straight out of a box, but as usual I'm probably over-engineering.

  7. Back To Top    #37
    Owner BigAl205's Avatar
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    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    I think the wires coming out the side would be preferable...especially if it's up against a wheel well or seat back. So what part makes the electrical contact? Is the magnet itself acting as the conductor?

  8. Back To Top    #38

    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    Quote Originally Posted by BigAl205 View Post
    I think the wires coming out the side would be preferable...especially if it's up against a wheel well or seat back. So what part makes the electrical contact? Is the magnet itself acting as the conductor?
    Yes, but two notes there:
    1) Neodymium is conductive, interestingly enough... not as conductive as steel, but not significantly resistive either.
    2) They only seem to polarize the neodymium magnets one way, so the countersink wouldn't be right (and they would probably be damn near impossible to separate if not) to do four magnets.

    So the idea was - two 0.76" x 0.2" #10 neodymium magnets on the connector side.
    And on the cup side - two stainless steel recessed washers, and there's options there:
    a) These would be killer, and absolutely perfect, but expensive ($14 for two of them): aircraft washers
    b) These are probably perfectly fine, $1.18 for six of them - but I can't find the thickness spec, and that's critical: finishing washers

    On the connector side, I was thinking the plain 'ol yellow ring terminals. Crimp the end, orient the ring terminal so the top surface is against the plastic, bottom surface is against the magnet, and crimp connection and wire are going inside the terminal - thinking a little bend will probably be necessary. The #10 bolt and nut goes through everything and pulls them together so they make electrical contact - the recess in the connector is just a hair shallower than a crimp terminal thickness, hoping to keep things oriented and supported.

    On the cup side, same thing, but would be assembled with just the aircraft or finish washer on the cup side, with the bolt going through to secure a standard #10 washer, then another yellow ring terminal, then maybe a small lock washer and I'd still use a lock nut (or loctite if not).

    So when connected, the magnets on the connector click to the stainless washers, and the plastic walls should be just a hair away from actually touching the inside surface of the cup.

    Any guesstimates on what filament cost would be to print a cup and connector this size? Even +/- 100% would give me a better clue than what I have now

  9. Back To Top    #39

    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    Geolomon, first I love overkill and coming up with cool shit, which this is. However, damn if this isn’t making a fairly simple connection really complicated for not much gain that I see. But people say that about new stuff all the time so you do you!

  10. Back To Top    #40
    Owner BigAl205's Avatar
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    Re: Jumping on the 3D printer bandwagon

    You could use something like this for the electrical connection and neo magnets to hold it all together. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/kcw-10629?rrec=true

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