Ruffy40

I took a break for a number of years for several different reasons from modelling and got back into electronics & micro-computers. One of the frustrating things when building your own projects was cases to put them in. All the ones you can buy were too big, too small, too expensive etc etc. So I purchased one of the cheap chinese 3D printers with the thought of making my own cases. After numerous failures due to inaccuracy, mechanical & electrical problems and a lot of hair pulling and the nashing of teeth I bit the bullet and purchased an original Prusa i3 Mk3s printer. About $900 landed in Australia when I purchased mine. I purchased the kit version and had a ball putting it together. It also gave me a great understanding of how the printer works, which greatly enhances my ability to fix anything that may go wrong. https://www.prusa3d.com/original-prusa-i3-mk3/ This machine is brilliant, it is very accurate, mechanically sound and does almost everything I need. I have gone way beyond building cases with it. I have printed parts for cars, holders for various items in my workshop and numerous other things. There is a large element of understanding the materials you are printing with. This machine can print, PETG, PLA ABS, NYLON and so forth. These all require different settings, like extruded temperature, speed of travel, blah, blah, blah. ‘Learning to use the design software was also a bit of a learning curve, Some of the newer filaments for 3D printing are “wood filled’, “metal filled, “carbon fibre’ and many others. Quality of the filament is another issue, with quite a number of manufacturers having very poor tolerances this is a particular problem with some of the aforementioned specialty filaments. I started out with some basic 3D design packages, but now use Sketchup & Fusion 360 for 99% of what I do. They are both great packages but Sketchup is not cheap, whilst Fusion 360 is free for the hobbyist/student package but that does have some limitations compared to the paid version. Having said that I have found, to date, that it is more than adequate for my needs. They both have a sharp learning curve but it has proven to be worth the effort There are numerous web sites out there that people post there designs ready to print for free. One of the biggest is called ‘Thingiverse’. It has 1,000’s of items available to download. For example I typed in ship’s wheel and this was one of the models that came up. https://www.thingiverse.com This year I started back into building ships again building the Model Shipways Chaperon. I have noticed by reading many of the wonderful build logs from others who have built this model, that there are a number of items I could print to enhance this model. An important point to note is that most of the printers are designed to print 1 off’s and are not really suited to mass production. The level of details can easily be increased or decreased by adjusting the layer thickness. Normal layer thickness is 0.2mm which gives reasonable detail for most printed objects. As others in previous posts have stated, there is a time element involved with designing your own parts and in many cases the amount of time that it takes to design & the print the part, whilst it may be satisfying, is not really worth it when the same part can be purchased for only a few $’s.. One of the things owning this printer is enabling me too do is to build my own CNC machine. The machine is called the MPCNC which stands for Mostly Printed CNC. Excluding the cost of the router the total cost for my 600mm x 600mm machine is less that $500 which met the chief financial officer’s approval. https://www.v1engineering.com/specifications/ Well that’s my 2 cents worth. cheers Russell