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.

 

[Chaos666]

There is two of us then

 

[Diddums]

Thought I'd come back to this for a bit. I want to make a little cubby insert for my bike. The issue I've got is that the shape is quite complex, so I started off with a 3D scan using an app called Kiri Engine, which I must say is pretty impressive.

Now I'm trying to learn retopology which is turning out to be quite the challenge. Blender seems to be the way to go, which I've never used before so now I'm learning that too.

This isn't a learning curve, more like a learning solid wall of solid granite.

I'll keep chipping away though, all good fun.

 

[BeeP]

Thought I'd come back to this for a bit. I want to make a little cubby insert for my bike. The issue I've got is that the shape is quite complex, so I started off with a 3D scan using an app called Kiri Engine, which I must say is pretty impressive.

Now I'm trying to learn retopology which is turning out to be quite the challenge. Blender seems to be the way to go, which I've never used before so now I'm learning that too.

This isn't a learning curve, more like a learning solid wall of solid granite.

I'll keep chipping away though, all good fun.

More of an achievement when you get it though.

Got a pic of what you are trying to do?

 

[Tackle_Berry]

Thought I'd come back to this for a bit. I want to make a little cubby insert for my bike. The issue I've got is that the shape is quite complex, so I started off with a 3D scan using an app called Kiri Engine, which I must say is pretty impressive.

Now I'm trying to learn retopology which is turning out to be quite the challenge. Blender seems to be the way to go, which I've never used before so now I'm learning that too.

This isn't a learning curve, more like a learning solid wall of solid granite.

I'll keep chipping away though, all good fun.

If you haven't already check out "Blender Guru" on Youtube, the donut one is extremely popular but for 3D modelling where the end result is to be 3D printed the chair tutorial playlist I think is more useful as textures etc from the donut do not matter. Aryan on Youtube is good to follow along with too but more of a challenge as it's not so beginner friendly but playing at .75x etc helps.

 

[Diddums]

More of an achievement when you get it though.

Got a pic of what you are trying to do?

This is a little cubby on the side of the under-seat storage on my scooter. The little hooks are for a rubber band which holds the standard Honda tool roll in place (it's a bit dirty in this pic, it's been cleaned since):

The hooks are molded in place so can't be removed. The space is incredibly underused and very poorly packaged. I'd like to print my own little box that can slot in and contain some tools / air canister / small torch / etc. I've managed to do a 3D scan of it using the app, but as you can imagine it's extremely rough and only to be used as a guide, but it's a starting point. Ideally I'd like to be able to pay a pro to hop on a Teams / Zoom / whatever call and teach me as this will be the first of many little projects. It's quite frustrating having the vision but not the ability to do these things myself, and looking around online, there are a million different ways of doing it, and loads of them involve using addons that are no longer available, or software that's no longer supported / etc.

If you haven't already check out "Blender Guru" on Youtube, the donut one is extremely popular but for 3D modelling where the end result is to be 3D printed the chair tutorial playlist I think is more useful as textures etc from the donut do not matter. Aryan on Youtube is good to follow along with too but more of a challenge as it's not so beginner friendly but playing at .75x etc helps.

Thanks! I'll have a look

 

[BeeP]

This is a little cubby on the side of the under-seat storage on my scooter. The little hooks are for a rubber band which holds the standard Honda tool roll in place (it's a bit dirty in this pic, it's been cleaned since):

The hooks are molded in place so can't be removed. The space is incredibly underused and very poorly packaged. I'd like to print my own little box that can slot in and contain some tools / air canister / small torch / etc. I've managed to do a 3D scan of it using the app, but as you can imagine it's extremely rough and only to be used as a guide, but it's a starting point. Ideally I'd like to be able to pay a pro to hop on a Teams / Zoom / whatever call and teach me as this will be the first of many little projects. It's quite frustrating having the vision but not the ability to do these things myself, and looking around online, there are a million different ways of doing it, and loads of them involve using addons that are no longer available, or software that's no longer supported / etc.




Thanks! I'll have a look

Having the scan is a great way to start, if I was drawing something to slot into there I would normally start with the customer model of what they have and then draw my parts to suit, finishing with an assembly of all parts in place to kind of proof fit before actually machining anything.

Looks like a great little project though, good fun in a kind of smash your head off a wall kind of way.

 

[Diddums]

Yeah it's very rewarding, but I'm honestly at a loss as to where to go next with it. I think I might need to find some online tuition. Ideally I'd like to start a small side-hustle manufacturing these little quality-of-life mods for bikes as I reckon there's a bit of a market for them.

 

[Tackle_Berry]

This is a little cubby on the side of the under-seat storage on my scooter. The little hooks are for a rubber band which holds the standard Honda tool roll in place (it's a bit dirty in this pic, it's been cleaned since):

The hooks are molded in place so can't be removed. The space is incredibly underused and very poorly packaged. I'd like to print my own little box that can slot in and contain some tools / air canister / small torch / etc. I've managed to do a 3D scan of it using the app, but as you can imagine it's extremely rough and only to be used as a guide, but it's a starting point. Ideally I'd like to be able to pay a pro to hop on a Teams / Zoom / whatever call and teach me as this will be the first of many little projects. It's quite frustrating having the vision but not the ability to do these things myself, and looking around online, there are a million different ways of doing it, and loads of them involve using addons that are no longer available, or software that's no longer supported / etc.




Thanks! I'll have a look

Unless I am missing something, could you not take some straight measurements and using some radius gauges sketch out the bottom of the tray then extrude the to the height with a outward taper and then finally sketch two rectangles on the bottom face and create pockets to allow those existing parts to fall in too? Could also then add a fillet to the bottom for the curve on the perimeter.

 

[Tackle_Berry]

Super rough 5min job to show what I mean, obviously no real measurements just a rough sketch. I would then import that in to a slicer and cut the top and bottom profile leaving just a few mm to print and then test the fit.

 

[Diddums]

Super rough 5min job to show what I mean, obviously no real measurements just a rough sketch. I would then import that in to a slicer and cut the top and bottom profile leaving just a few mm to print and then test the fit.

The fact that you just knocked that up in a few minutes is depressing

I really need to get some proper lessons. I've made a posting on Fiverr, see if anyone wants to hold my dumbass hand for a bit and show me how to not suck!

 

[Tackle_Berry]

The fact that you just knocked that up in a few minutes is depressing

I really need to get some proper lessons. I've made a posting on Fiverr, see if anyone wants to hold my dumbass hand for a bit and show me how to not suck!

While I don't use Freecad anymore and I'm aware you don't I would recommend checking out Mango Jelly "Basic Beginners FreeCAD v1.0" as he does a great job of explaining how to break down and think about what steps are needed to create whatever it is you want to make. Once I completed that and actually ended up ditching Freecad I just did the same Fusion in 30 days tutorials you listed above.

 

[Diddums]

While I don't use Freecad anymore and I'm aware you don't I would recommend checking out Mango Jelly "Basic Beginners FreeCAD v1.0" as he does a great job of explaining how to break down and think about what steps are needed to create whatever it is you want to make. Once I completed that and actually ended up ditching Freecad I just did the same Fusion in 30 days tutorials you listed above.

Thanks, will definitely have a look!

 

[Tackle_Berry]

Thanks, will definitely have a look!

I'm pretty new to this too but if I can help with anything send me a message.