3d Printing for Morons?

It seems this could go in "Electronics and Software" (since it's mostly an electronics and software question) or "Techniques" (which is where I've seen all the other 3d Printing topics), so, Mods, feel free to move if necessary.

I'll soon be getting my first 3d printer, and, among other things, hope to use it for small nose cones.

Although I took a number of drafting and technical drawing classes in high school, that was a long time ago, and long predated CAD. So, of course, I've found a number of "how to" articles, and am starting to play with OpenSCAD.

I know there are other members that have experience with 3d printing rocket parts; I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on "3d printing rocket parts for the complete beginner" ...

3d printing rocket parts is pretty much the same as 3d printing anything else. You have to think about the process. You can get a lot of very intricate shapes when 3d printing, but depending on your set up, you will break your part when trying to get support off your build material. It is mainly just a lot of experimentation and learning how to use your 3d printer.

Don't let this scare you, 3d printing is great for rocketry. I have actually 3d printed a mid-high powered rocket. Just make sure you level your build plate EVERY TIME YOU PRINT!!! This will save on the wasted material and failed prints. Good luck!

I've been telling everyone new to 3D modelling to learn Fusion 360. It is generally more user friendly than openscad, it's professional quality, and its free.

I bought a printer about a month ago, started out with FreeCAD, but the programmer in me has fallen in love with OpenSCAD, the ability to write things like code and easily parameterize things, etc. really appeals to me. I haven't given Fusion or 123D a try, at this point I'm only opening FreeCAD when I want to turn a STL back into a shape to get accurate dimensions, etc.

I'm working on a library of my basic electronics bits (the LiPos I use, Featherweight Magnetic Switch, Eggfinder, TRS, EasyMini, SLCF) and other building-blocks like screws & all-thread, and I've built a few AV bay sleds / Tra-cones (like an alti-cone except for GPS) for my rockets so far, quite liking it. But with the setup I'm working on I can basically specify the sled thickness, position the rods and electronics blocks, specify the screw size/length I'm using, and have the sled designed in a few minutes. Of course so far it's been identifying weaknesses in my building block code and going back and tweaking things constantly, but it gets easier with each sled I design.

At the moment I'm printing some trays to position a 4" Madcow Nike Smoke's fins on the appropriate angle to sand them into the modified diamond fin shape. Again it's all parameterized, I started with dimensions I found on the web for the real fin, Madcow's fins were fairly accurate on the outline but not the thickness, so I had to adjust the angles from the original spec, but it was just tweaking a few of the parameters and it recomputed all of the angles to tilt the fin appropriately such that each surface would be level at the top of the tray for using my drill press with a sanding disc.

On my printer's community forum I saw someone say that once you own a 3D printer you start to look at all of the world's problems as something you can solve with an appropriate bracket, and I can totally relate to that!

That (Fusion 360) sounds like a great idea.... And I like that there is a viewer/markup app for iOS (and Android) so I can theoretically at least think about designs while using my iPad Pro as I am right now. Cool. Thanks!

+1 to Fusion 360

woferry said:

I bought a printer about a month ago, started out with FreeCAD, but the programmer in me has fallen in love with OpenSCAD, the ability to write things like code and easily parameterize things, etc. really appeals to me. I haven't given Fusion or 123D a try, at this point I'm only opening FreeCAD when I want to turn a STL back into a shape to get accurate dimensions, etc.

Click to expand...

Same here about OpenSCAD. For people with any experience at all with programming it has a very low entry learning curve and makes it super easy to create objects with precise dimensions and can create 3D solids simply by entering a formula, especially useful for things like nose and tail cones. The next thing I'll be using it for is the generation of a custom electronics enclosure simply through the specification of dimensions in text. I've found 123D to be buggy, but I don't need it due to OpenSCAD.

Just a few of the many on-line references for OpenSCAD:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenS...nguage#The_OpenSCAD_Language_Reference_Manual

https://www.openscad.org/cheatsheet/

WhAt printer do you own?

I bought the Robo3D R1+Plus (yeah, plus two different ways.. =P). Stumbled across a display for it at Fry's and was impressed with the price for the build area (10x9x8 advertised, in reality it's a bit less than that and the heated bed area is a good bit smaller which can be a problem for large prints in certain materials) since I knew with rocketry I'd want to print some larger parts than the more typical ~5x5x5 areas the lower-cost printers have. Turns out Fry's was discontinuing it, there was one store in the area that their system still showed having one in stock (which seemed a bit fishy), so I decided I'd make the trek and if they had it it was meant to be. Well, what they had was a returned unit, so I left without it but continued to stew over it all evening and wound up ordering from their site the same day. The decision to go with that printer was aided by some good videos on YouTube talking about the printer, it's pros/cons and tips/tricks (though a lot of those videos are for older revisions of the unit, seems Robo3D has constantly been taking user input and making tweaks to improve the design). They also have a very helpful community forum on their website.

I've been really happy with it. They're certainly not without their quirks, and a pile of my first prints were either calibration tests to tweak software/firmware settings, or parts to improve the printer itself. But I've been printing enclosures for things and sleds for my avbays and 'tracones' (like alticones but for GPS trackers) and each attempt is better than the ones that came before it. I'm definitely a trial & error sort of person, I'll get to a point in a design where I have to see how things are going and do a print even though I know it's not done, but I learn from that and keep refining, as well as constantly tweaking my OpenSCAD models and methods for creating my designs. It has also led to a noticeable spike in my monthly power bill (this printer averages about 180W printing with the heated bed, so a several hour job can easily rack up a kWh and I used to average 13/day so a few hours printing several times a week is a decent jump, pushed me into the next tier last month which increases the incremental power cost). Still, the printer itself was not unreasonable IMO, and the filament is pretty cheap for the amount of prints you can make from it, so the cost-per-print may actually be dominated by the power bill not the material cost. I'm not planning to make a business out of it, I just decided to take the plunge and it's been lots of fun taking some ideas I've been noodling in my head for a long time and actually being able to hold them, as well as coming up with designs I never considered making before. I have printed or modeled & printed a few things for friends already, and even designed a few things to help me out at my lab bench at work.