First 3D Printer

I purchased a 3D Printer, and just now learning how to use it, there is a lot to learn.

After many trials and failures, I have successfully printed the equivalent of “Hello World” for 3D Printers, which is the “3DBenchy“. This online part was designed to be a torture test for a 3D Printer, with many under-cuts, over-hangs and fills, that are somewhat difficult. This part is about 2.5 inches long.

My Printed 3DBenchy Results

3DBenchy was actually about my 10th attempt at print anything, the first few parts went horribly wrong.

Here are a few of my initial prints of a part of my own design, obviously I did not know what I was doing.

Things got better with practice and understanding of the 3D Print process and control parameters.

The above is a replacement part for an Orbital Sander, this part is no longer available from the manufacture, it will eventually be printed with Black ABS Plastic, which is similar to the original. I designed this part with FreeCAD and used Slic3r for the G-Code output for the 3D Printer.  For me, FreeCAD has a steep learning curve.

And, then . . .

On the next part, a Cable Chain of my own design, I must have lost the magic !!

But finally, things got better with practice.

Cable Chain Links

The First Two Links of a Cable Chain.

I am currently printing four Cable Links with newer/better design, I will report the results. For these link design, I have used Sketchup and Slic3r. For simple designs Sketchup is easy to use, as long as you only need “Union” style of object creation, that is, objects that touch are automatically joined together (union’d) when exported as an STL file. STL files are needed by Slic3r.

Four Cable Chain Links
About 2/3 Complete

This is fun, I think I am going to enjoy my new 3D Printer.

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