Diddums' 3D printing journey

[Diddums]

Thought I'd document my journey a bit in here in case anyone can benefit from it.

For context, I've been in engineering my whole life, I've made folding ice skates, I know my way around a lathe / milling machine fairly well and can read technical drawings. My production of said drawings is very limited however, last time I attempted anything in CAD the PC I was using had an "MMX" sticker on the front of it

I've been "off the tools" for many years now and haven't kept up, but I still understand the fundamentals a bit.

Anyway, bought a Bambu A1 & AMS Lite combo, printed a Benchy and a few other bits, and that was that. My wife then discovered the power of this thing and now everyone at her office is wearing 3D printed Christmas earrings, the nerds.

Anyway, the reason I kindasorta stopped was because of my lack of knowledge in CAD and the seemingly insurmountable mountain I had to climb in order to start printing my own custom stuff. I had a fair few ideas I wanted to print but didn't know where to start. I did loads of googling, youtubing and asking on here and thanks to all helpful folks on here and on Youtube, settled on Fusion360. I chose this because of the absolutely insane amount of online resources and guides for it, honestly there's a tutorial for everything.

Anyway, I decided to attack this by going straight in to a design that I wanted to create - stupid move. I needed to know so many little techniques and tricks that in order to learn all of them, I'd be jumping all over the place instead of learning in an organized, well thought out manner. Discouraged, back to the backburner.

This afternoon my World of Warcraft subscription expired and I couldn't be bothered to make the payment so I thought I'd give it another go.

One of the vids I kept coming back to was this one:

I just followed it to the letter and now have my first print published on Makerworld:

2x8 Block - experimental by Diddums

Just learning Fusion360 and this is the first item I've made.

makerworld.com

Keep in mind this isn't intended for printing, just me figuring stuff out so don't waste your filament



I'm really glad I did this, will be starting the next vid in a few mins. Rather than learn F360 just for 3D printing, I'd like to learn it in all its totality so I can design anything if I need to.

So yeah, tldr is just stick with it and follow the process, don't try and reinvent the wheel and it becomes a lot less daunting!

 

[wafflecart]

Keep going mate, I started off in tinkercad but quickly moved to fusion 360 when I found tinkercad a nightmare to go back and edit things. Fusions timeline is godsend.

If you get the basics down you’ll be golden:
- first thing in fusion is create a new component and do everything in that. You probably see people in videos always do this.
- everything starts with a “sketch”
- then extrude that sketch
- don’t forget you can then also do sketches on top of things you’ve extruded (bodies) or planes you’ve placed etc. Just like you would in real life glueing or nailing things together.
- can do cut or combine operations by extruding into other bodies.
- chamfer or fillet corners to make things look nice. Like in woodworking.
- while doing sketches you can also turn on construction lines. This allows you to place lines that are there for measurement or alignment or to easily place things but they don’t interfere with extrudes. Like using a pencil in woodworking.
- if you do something once but need to do it again add in a plane and then use the mirror or project tool.
- use timeline to go back and edit, everything forward from that position should magically update and inherit the changes.
- for things you want to do around an axis like you would in a lathe use a sketch and the revolve tool.

 

[ShivP]

Interested to follow this. I use CAD on a daily basis in my day job, and it's been a while since I started (7ish years!), but always something to learn

 

[Ace Modder]

I'm on the same path as you diddums, and I did the same first tutorial as you, but not started a second one yet.