this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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This is me right now.
My brother purchased a 3D printer and honestly, it's pretty neat. The problem is, I have never done any serious 3D design work (I barely did any 2D stuff in auto CAD when I was in school)...
So I'm limited to pre-made STL prints and honestly, most of what's out there, I'm not keen on. Not saying any of the available 3D printable files are bad by any stretch, they're just.... not exactly what I want. You know? I'd like to tweak or touch up some aspects of the model before I print it... not because I'm vain or I want to have my stuff be unique, but usually because there's a good reason why I want it that way.
There's also stuff I'd like to have that is a bit niche, and nobody has made it, but it should be relatively trivial for someone with 3D design experience to make, like covers for things that are not a typical geometry.... an example I have is that I have a battery pack for a handheld radio. It isn't dissimilar to the kind of battery packs that early cellphones used (think Nokia 5100 series of phones). All I want is a hard cover for the business side of the battery pack, so if my spare battery is tossed in with metal things, nothing bad happens. Sure, I could solve this with a bag of sorts, but I'd still have to get one that's just the right size for the pack, and that's not a trivial task. I also plan on having (or already have) several of these batteries, and they have a belt clip attached to the battery, so it would be nice to be able to clip them on my belt without worrying that a light rainfall might short out the exposed contacts on them. But the radio is kind of niche (happens to be a alinco DJ-MD5 variant), and #1 not many people have this radio, and B: those that do, aren't really the 3D printing crowd.
So now I'm on a quest to figure out 3D design so I can make a model of the battery connector on the radio, so I can make effectively a "dummy" radio side interface and keep it secure whether I put it in my bag or on my belt. Both for safety and convenience.
We have a 3D printer, filament, all the necessary stuff to do it, and as soon as I have the STL file, I can make as many as I want/need. If one breaks, no problem, a few dollars of filament and a few hours later, I have a fresh one.
I'm a complete noob with 3D printing and 3D design. So I have the ambitious and lofty goal of learning to do it, so I can make this part. I'm not sure it will work, or that I'll get it done, but it's something that I want and I don't think anyone else is going to do the design for me..... so I have to figure it out, as if 3D design is some trivial weekend task, and not a highly specialized industry of professional engineers....
I'm sure it will be fine. (Insert "this is fine" meme here)
I started reading your comment and gave up reading halfway though because of the lenght lol. But yeah, I relate.
I tend to ramble quite a bit. No harm, no foul.
Have a good day.
I'll second getting digital calipers to make things easy. I should really just buy a pair myself already, I've just been making do with a ruler.
FreeCad is another free option I don't see mentioend yet. It works but is frustrating to use because it's buggy and fights with you.
Generally, I think of 3D design like legos or scultping. You need to build pieces and "glue" them together. It's okay to have 2 objects taking up the same space too. If you can imagine 3D objects and how they fit together you'll find it a bit easier.
My brother happened to have some and I spent some time this morning doing my first attempt. After a few failed prints, I finally have a finished piece.
It doesn't fit, even kind of, but it exists. Something I entirely designed myself and brought into existence.
Good to hear! Next step is to look at why it didn't fit. Where do dimensions need tweaked? Is the printer calibrated correctly and printing at 1:1 scale? I'm not sure how to recalibrate if the printer is the problem, but you could scale the whole print up/down when you generate the print file.
To test the printer, make a simple cube that's something like 1" on each side. I'd use 25mm for metric. Then, check how large the final print is. You'll want to check each direction since there are different stepper motors controlling each axis of movement, so each one could be slightly different
I think my brother did this when we first got the printer, but simply put, I believe the mistake is mine. I eyeballed a few numbers and didn't account for some specific things.
I missed a few rounded corners and in one place I clearly measured from the wrong spot, I'm more than a couple millimeters out.
It's pretty close, and honestly, really good for a first try, if I do say so myself.
I kinda knew it wasn't going to work right before I hit print, but I couldn't, or rather, wouldn't, guess, not check everything just to find out what I bodged.
I'll get on it tomorrow, hopefully. Even when I get out to fit, I'm going to need to make adjustments to make it work in my application. For now, I just want one that fits over the battery.
Get some digital calipers and open up tinkercad. You can start designing things pretty easily.
I'm using onshape. I looked through a few options and I felt like tinkercad would be too simplistic for what I wanted to learn. I found some tutorials online for it, and I managed to complete my first print today. The measurements are off..... I had digital calipers and everything.
Oh well. Time to edit, I guess.
Tip: I find OpenSCAD to be more approachable than mouse-based 3D mechanical CAD because you only have to figure out how to mathematically describe the object (e.g. understanding what platonic solids you need to compose in order to build up the complex shape you want), rather than doing that and having to learn how to navigate around in 3D space and figure out all the tool interfaces.
My brain doesn't like geometric math at all. I used to be fine at it, but I work in IT/networking, and binary math has taken over most of my brain. Working with math stuff in a complex plane is not what I would say, is a fun time for my brain.
I'm currently learning onshape. It's going okay.