Does anyone here also like 3D printers?
Yep, i do have a filament printer (Bowden, so no TPU for me, yet), and i mostly do functional parts of any kind.
This thing has saved me a ton of money already and made me even learn 3D modeling using 3D Builder (the easy route) and FreeCAD (mainly for threaded stuff and parts based on advanced geometry). Some of you might know FreeCAD, it's a bit of a pain in the ass to use, but delivers perfect results if you do it the "FreeCAD way" from start to finish.
I haven't got into 3D printing, but I've been using CAD since the mid 90s. I love FreeCAD, it's an amazingly powerful tool, and you can't beat the price. I've been using to build all the parts for the M14 rifle, just toying with it for fun when I have time. I have almost all the receiver parts ready but just need to get back into it and build barrel and gas system assembly and the stock assembly.
Here's the bolt assembly in FreeCAD, all parts drawn from blank sketches:
One advice I always give to those with 3D printers: don't just print ready-made parts you download from the net. Instead, try to make your own 3D models in tools such as Autodesk Inventor, or even Tinkercad. Unleash your creativity and make your own unique parts. The possibilities are almost endless, limited only my the material used and the capabilities of the printer, which nowadays are pretty impressive for the price.
3D Builder is a good starting point for beginning modeling. It's basically combining/substracting simple parts to/from each other, and also included from Windows 10 and higher.
I've seen TinkerCAD and meant to play around with it. Many of those on-line free packages are so limited, though I always thought it would be a waste of time.
I've used so many CAD packages over years, Inventor, Unigraphics, and many that I don't even remember anymore. Lately Solidworks seems to be the most common in the industry just because of it's price point. That's what I've been using at work for the last decade.
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