3D printing

Buy a decent mill and a lathe instead. Make them the traditional way. In the US it's not illegal to build your own guns, you just can't sell or distribute them without proper licensing.

>You can get a decent handgun for the price of a cheap plastic printer.
Not if you live in a Communist country where your government treats you like a child, for example pretty much everywhere outside the United States.

They're useful and cool but unless you need to print a lot of stuff (or dodgy stuff like guns) you don't need to own one. Just send your stl files to whoever and get them to mail you the result. Same reason owning a regular printer isn't economical

>outside the US
Then you have no need for a printer as whatever you try to print will end up censored.

It's useful as a fun hobby tool. Which is more or less what I bought it for. Though I do enjoy working in autoCAD, blender, Maya. But I lack the real knowledge to get myself a job in the field. So figured I'd at least go far enough that I can still have a good time.

Anyone here use Simplify3D? I'm using Cura right now, but debating on taking the plunge.

what do you even use 3d printers for unless you are mass producing mechanical components

>mass producing
No one mass produces anything with a 3D printer unless they have a farm going.

And prototyping small production parts. Since you can print ASA/ABS or even Carbonfiber filiment on most printers now, the part can be plenty strong for just about any normal use that doesn't require extreme heat or pressure resistance.

One of my previous jobs was production ramp-up for a consumer device. We 3D printed a lot of prototype production parts and that worked great, then we needed to build 100 units to verify work instructions etc and the cost-saving fuckers at the top made us use the printers again instead of getting proper tooling made. Killed two makerbots, and ultimaker and a formlabs.

>killed
Off 100 prints? That seems strange. Or was their a lot of failures?

Plus I do get that its cheap, especially PLA, for the 5-6 gram parts I'm making they are like 8 to 10 cents a piece.

>It's useful as a fun hobby tool. Which is more or less what I bought it for.

Ah. So you're using it to print butt plugs and dildos then

Car parts and weapon components. But I guess I could print a butt plug. Was going to make a large black Dildo as a friend for a good joke present for Xmas.

Built an i3 rework with a wooden frame.
Pretty cool. Fixed my refrigerator door with a part modeled with openScad, made brackets to keep the cats from pushing my planter out of the window, many parts for the printer. Modeled parametric threads and nuts with python/blender and openScad.
Downloaded and printed 8mm linear bearings, pillow blocks, cable chains.
Only printed one thing bigger than 2"x3"(on a piece of 1/4" aluminum for a bed) so far, I need to install the heatbed and do the manual mesh leveling because of the size of the thing.
Filiment goes further than I expected, though I've only printed small parts. Haven't made it through my first spool yet.

If you can into modeling, would recommend. Otherwise it'd probably just be a novelty.

each print had the bed completely filled with small parts. After a while the extruders totally shat the bed and they stopped feeding material. We got a few of them fixed by the manufacturer but it really was false economy.

Don't know about those brands, but for an open source one, a whole extruder setup can be got for about $25 on ebay, or you can just replace the problem part like worn feeder gear clogged nozzle, ect. You do need a bit of mechanical skills to keep one running.

A part of me wants to model and print mini military vehicles. That seems like it would be fun.

I got a 101 Hero a little under a year ago and I use it here and there. I still need to print new mounts and upgrade the motors.

>You do need a bit of mechanical skills to keep one running
Big time. Particularly if you actually need them to work to meet deadlines elsewhere. We actually ended up hiring an intern to babysit them and keep them running smoothly, which, horrifically, was still cheaper than doing proper tooling.

>still cheaper
Of course, CNC alloy and getting Casts or espeically injection molds. Is fucking expensive as fuck.

It's like 10-20k for a single small injection mold.

yep. We eventually did a limited run, and, once again got fucked over by corporate who insisted on doing soft tooling because
>it's cheaper
which still cost about 50k for the parts we needed, and was ruined after a couple of hundred units. Whoever let non-technical people run tech businesses should be dragged into the street and shot.

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>tfw fucking maya broke and won't get fixed
that shit is tied to hardware, hope you don't buy it or else
>Same reason owning a regular printer isn't economical
i get free ink refills, FUCK paying 60+ bones for a fucking ounce of fluid.

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It'd be pretty cool if we can get consumer grade Metal filament or glass polymer fibre 3d printers.

Sadly that's not what you are paid for, which also drove me nuts when I worked as an electrical wiring guy for a company building UPSs, and they would design shit that was just silly.

May I ask though, what exactly would you recommend to do to get into a position like yours? I've found far more interest in designing Autocad parts and modeling. And is kind of why I'm interested in it. Though, my skills are quite simple right now. It's also why I'm debating on maybe getting Simplify3D to learn more software besides just Cura.

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if you want to get into 3D CAD specifically then the fastest route would probably be to shell out the 1 or 2 grand that it costs (painful I know) to become Solidworks-certified, and then start looking around your local companies. There's actually reasonable demand for people that can use Solidworks properly, much the same way as decent software devs are generally in demand. Maybe CATIA if it's some weird shit, but Solidworks is by far the most widely used.
Also have a look at start-ups that actually build tangible shit rather than just software. There's a big shortage of people who can actually take an idea and turn it into something real hardware-wise, even if it's just bolting shit together off the shelf from Farnell/RS/Digikey/wherever.
Actually interesting point about the job market in general - everyone is a software guy these days because for the last 7-8 years people have been saying
>learn2code
>walk straight into job after uni
>be CEO 10k/day after the first month
which basically means there's a shitload of competent software guys but far fewer hardware/manufacturing guys, and if you can do them all (i.e. Systems Engineering/Systems Integration) you suddenly become gold dust.

furthermore, if you've already got a background in electrical manufacturing and can do some basic 3D stuff already then you can always try selling yourself as a general engineer, or at worst a very overqualified lab tech, and start chucking CVs at companies as you are.

I need to build a few parts for my money pit pc out of acrylic sheets but I think 3d printing them might be an easier option in the whole scheme of things.

How strong are the parts really? I bought a 120mm fan mount for my antminer and remember it deforming from the hot air.

>electrical
I have experience in it, but I'm no engineer. I understand how it works down to the semiconductor level, but only understand it. I can't develop a circuit board. I've taken a class in digital fundamentals, but did not enjoy it. I felt it was a bit too tedious for me to really enjoy.

At best I'd say I'd only ever be a technician in that field.

>You can get a decent handgun for the price of a cheap plastic printer.
No I can't. I'm mentally disabled and I live in Massachusetts.

You not being able to purchase one isn't the same as discussing the price of a handgun.

Layer adhesion is the weakest part. X&Y are pretty strong
I've had a part in the car to see if it held up. Didn't catch the hottest part of summer but no warpage with closed windows and 90+ temps. PLA fairly soft @150c melts @180c. ABS temps higher.

Does this seem like
>We need more censorship because information is dangerous
to any one else?

Best printer under 200?

You can also make it stronger by using the newer internal design gyroid. Though it subtracts one strength to raise the other. It has a much faster print time than Honeycomb.

Also you can use ASA, which is nearly as strong as ABS but doesn't have the smell I believe.

Creality Ender 3, get one with auto bed leveling if you don't want to adjust it with paper every few prints

>autoleveling
I really wish my A5S had that, something I learned about after the fact though. Didn't think setting my own levels would be annoying. But I'm used to it now at least.

How much does it cost to print a dildo?

Depends oh the weight. I'd say 3 inch wide and like 8 inches tall would probably use about 30-40 grams. So like 40 cents on the low end.

Wow

How easy is it to turn it into a laser cutter?

Technician isn't a bad place to start. I had a technician working for me for about 10 months before he was promoted to engineer based on what he already knew and what he'd learnt on the job. 2bh his technical skills were way ahead of most of the uni grads, and that's a fairly common occurrence.
If you can understand how circuits work down to semicon level then you're already doing pretty well. I once had to explain to my manager (who was the CTO no less) how a fucking voltage divider worked.
If you can do that then I'll assume that you can also read and understand a schematic, use and update a BOM, and assemble/rework a board. All of those skills would make you a desirable candidate for a company that builds things.
It's a fun industry to be in most of the time, but it does come with the usual tech bullshit that we all have to deal with. Sounds like you know about that though so it won't come as a surprise.

How technical are your skills? It's basically swapping the hot end and programming parameters of the laser.

But the discussion was regarding whether a 3D printer that works with metal would be a worthy investment if I wanted to make a gun. Since I can't legally purchase one, the price doesn't matter. That was what my original argument was - not that it's more expensive, but that it wouldn't be feasibly in the first place. You're just shifting the goal posts.

Why do people want to print guns, i want to print figures or custom cases to experiment with.

Because they are edgy fucks.

What's the best cheap beginner 3D printer for preferably less than $200 USD and won't try to burn me alive?

I'm open to putting together a kit, but not open to buying a whole lotta other "upgrades" at the beginning just to have a barely functional printer.

no 3D printer is going to be able to print a barrel/chamber/whatever capable of containing a bullet regardless of the printing material. AFAIK the existing designs use some other off-the-shelf component as a makeshift barrel so you're basically making a glock-style polymer 'receiver', or body, and then adding a barrel so the material choice is a bit moot.
Having said that, I also recall hearing that the PLA printed ones only fire a limited number of times before they essentially fall apart, so you might get an improvement there, but not much. 3D printed metal ain't the same as normal metal.

The PLA ones fall apart because they can't handle those forces and also have such a low melting point they melt from the contact with any metal components.

cnc routers > 3d shitprinters

Its comfy. I make game controllers to mount to my vive so I can have head mounted controls in elite dangerous

I also made some extensions for the car dock arm for my phone, various sized bushings and brackets for projects and prop weapons for cosplay

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you can make a gun with a plastic printer. some guy got banned from some site for posting a gun file and then he went to cnn to have an interview about how its free speech to post gun 3d print files or something like that

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Did you make the STL for your controllers or just find em online? I find the most fun part is making the models.

The actual reason I bought the 3d printer was my gaming setup didn't have enough buttons for elite dangerous. I've been prototyping for over a year now.

Here's the stuff from when I was first learning how to design it

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And here's the current gen and alpha prototype for next gen iterations.

I use cherry mx greens and the teensy lc controller because I don't have to fuck with drivers, just shows up as a gamepad and all i have to do is some very basic code for the inputs.

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>im mentally disabled and i want a gun
nah that's okay son

Oh neat, I have a buddy who loves ED, he would probably find this stuff neat.

Oh this is really cool, I didn't think of anything like this. I have a Rift Touch and I guess there would be some good stuff to add.

>muh gaymes

My main ED ship for the longest time was a federal dropship, shes quite the fair lady. Now I fly a corvette

thingiverse.com/thing:2800117
I also designed a proper stock for the vive wands for fallout 4 VR. This design is "functionally perfect" but not really beautiful. None of the pre made designs I tried worked well because they cost real money, were needlessly complex or the stock came out right behind the vive wand. This immediately becomes a problem when you try to pull the wand up to your face to use the scope, because the stock gets in the way of the vive display.

Having the stock offset made it much more comfortable, and the design is still ambidextrous how I have it so if you try fallout 4 vr give this a go.

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>ED
user, ED is the closest thing to a job you can get. Middle aged men play it and have a blast.

What did you make for your gun?

>Middle aged men play it

A replacement charge handle, the one that comes with it is a small single finger design. I recreated it to be two fingers, and am working towards making it a folding design.

another nice thing about my 3d printer is it gives me a reason to use that Pi I bought a while ago. this is running off a pi 1 b+ and works great.

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You win this time, one day you'll try Elite.

Fucking sweet. Does CAD have a steep learning curve? Just got a 3D printer and feel like I should probably learn some.

try tinkercad first then move to autodesk fusion 360. both are free but you want to get an understanding of how the printer likes its files set up before wading into autodesk

I don't think so, but at the same time I already had an understanding of Blender quite well and a bit of Maya before taking a course in AutoCad. I didn't find it hard, but there are useful things in it that you may not pick up on your own of just goofying around.

i'd say try a youtube course that shows you around, or if you want to pay get some kind of a cheap tutorial website. I used CGCookie when I learned blender and it was well worth the price.

Nice, thanks

What sexual things can I 3d print

>inb4 my dick

If you have a decent printer and know what you're doing you can print in filaments like polycarbonate that will stand up to pressure and heat.

Isn't PCB only a bit better than ABS?

was meant for

PC is out of my range, I'm sitting at 240/100.

I have an FDM printer but i don't really use it for anything.

The detail level isn't good enough for printing figurines and miniatures.

How good is 910 alloy?

It's much better in terms of heat resistance, which makes it a bitch to print. Most printers require a heated enclosure to be able to actually get a quality print out of it, whereas ABS is pretty easy to print without an enclosure and with low end printers. It also has a lower thermal expansion coefficient.

In terms of strength, it has a higher tensile strength and impact resistance, and a higher flex modulus. The main benefits of ABS over polycarbonate are cost, weight, and ease of use for machining, or in this case printing.

Shame I can't print in it. I'm trying to see if certain PLAs might be more worth my time for a part printed to resist a good amount of abrasion from moving and continued strength for lifetime use.

The other part that makes it a huge bitch to work with is that it absorbs water vapor if left out, so you either need a dry box to store it in and some way to keep it dry while you're printing or you have to basically bake it for a few hours before you print with it. But yeah, once you do get a good print out of it you usually don't have to replace whatever you printed.

Yea, I read about that being a problem with some filaments. I just looked into NylonX, but It's just outside of my extrude temp range. Which sucks.

Mine does about 110/300, I could probably go hotter on the hot end but I've never needed it.

So after reading a bit, I think the strongest stuff I can print with is ASA or PET-G.

yes, i want one

so i can download a car and print it

Yes, and I'm waiting for the goddamn printer to start right now. We're outta ink.

PET-G is a good material, I used it before I was able to print nylon or polycarbonate.

It seems pretty neat but it's probably pretty expensive to get into. All I can think of do with it would probably use it to make custom gunpla parts or replace broken parts without having to send off to Japan to get a replacement.

I think most of the low end printers are around 100-200 for decent DIY stuff. Mine was almost 500 dollars. Which was part of the money I had set away for the RTX cards, but I felt they just weren't worth it.

Yeah, but is it like a regular printer where it's cheap (comparatively) but they fuck you on the ink? Or is the plastic(?) relatively cheap? Also, is there any special software or knowledge required to use a 3D printer assuming you want to come up with stuff yourself and not just download plans off the internet other people have come up with?

no 3d printers don't screw you over like ink based printers.

any decent filament based printer can use any filament. If you want a higher quality filament you can always splurge for more. all 3d printers use gcode, and how you get your input file into gcode is up to you.

resin printers are different because they're special and neat and shit.

Filament is usually sold by the weight. 1KG for about 20 bucks on the cheap end, 15 if you want to be really cheap but that has some major quality draw backs. Even the most expensive stuff which is really good (you need a high temp printer) is like 50-60 bucks and that shits usuable as parts. Pending on how you print a 1KG roll could get you 100-200 scaled chess pieces.

As for software, CURA is free and does a fair job, and you can import shit from all sorts of 3D software. The best slicer software though is like 150 bucks (what converts your 3d model to a 3d printable layer)

Because figurines and custom cases aren't restricted in various ways

So after thinking it over a bit and wanting to try something complex over just designing parts for shit I need. I'm going to recreate SV-001 in AutoCAD and see how well I can get it to print.

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the treads will be a pain in the dick, your best bet is to print them sideways and glue to the model ater

Was actually going to make it in several pieces anyways.