Al and I were talking on the podcast today about a sweet 3D printed wide-format camera build, and we got to musing on why we 3D-print.
For Al, it’s an opportunity to experiment with 3D printing itself: tweaking his machines to get the best performance out of them. Other people make small, functional objects that they need in their daily life, like bag clips or spare parts for broken appliances. Some folks go for the ornamental or the aesthetic. The kids in my son’s class all seem obsessed with sci-fi props and fidget toys. The initial RepRap ideal was to replace all commercial fabrication with machines owned by the individual, rather than by companies – it was going to be Marxist revolutionary.
But there’s another group of 3D printer enthusiasts that I think doesn’t get enough coverage, and I’m going to call them the hobbyist industrial designers. These are the people who design a custom dog-poop-bag holder that exactly fits their extra-wide dog leash, not because they couldn’t find one that fit in the pet store, but because it’s simply fun to design and fabricate things. (OK, that’s literally me.)
It’s fun to learn CAD tools, to learn about how things are designed, how they work, and how to manufacture them at least in quantity one. Dreaming, designing, fabricating, failing, and repeating until you get it right is a great joy. And then you get to use the poop-bag holder every day for a few years, until you decide to refine the design and incorporate the lessons learned on the tough streets of practical use.
Of course none of this is exclusive to 3D printing. There were always people who designed-and-built things in the metal machine shop, or made their creations out of wood. In that sense, the 3D printer is just another tool, and the real fun isn’t in using the 3D printer, but rather in the process of bringing things out of your mind and into the world. So maybe there is nothing new here, but the latitude that 3D printing affords the hobby designer is amazing, and that makes it all the more fun, and challenging.
So do you 3D print for necessity, to stick it to the man, to pimp your printer, for the mini-figs, or simply for the joy of the process of making things? It’s all good. 3D printing is a big tent.
Since FDM printing isn’t particularly fast nor economical, I fall into the fun + necessity camp, and usually to fill the gaps of mass-manufacturing; bits of hardware, mounts, widget-brackets, bushings and the like that aren’t available from quick-and-easy retailers.
“It’s fun to learn CAD tools” is grotesquely wrong however as the several packages that I’ve force-fed myself all suffer from the same problems with deeply layered operation and dependency leading to anomalous behavior, all of it governed by the dark syllogism of Clarke’s Third Law (“any sufficiently complex technology is indistinguishable from chaos.”)
To be fair, it’s a lot of fun when and if it all works out, so I guess the real answer to why I do it is “operant conditioning”.
probably the biggest single reason i enjoy 3d printing is openscad. There’s some flaws and inflexibility to it, and it’s certainly not for everyone…but i really really hated every other cad tool i used or saw, and i hate changing from one tool to the other, and i hate major redesigns of tools that work (which seems to be a constant with GUI tools)…and openscad has consistently just worked and met my expectations for the entire 12 years i’ve been doing this. The most important thing is that if i get an idea in my head, i know what it’s gonna take to make that into a product. I never get dragged down a rabbit hole of UI surprises or whatever. The design process always takes about as long as i expected it to.
So i’m not sure it’s what you want but you might give it a try, if the idea of a simple text based “programing language for solids” has any appeal at all to you.
Have you played OpenSCAD and AI? It gives some interesting results.
I’m the same, OpenSCAD is da bomb. A new way of thinking.
OpenSCAD rocks. Great tool.
For 12-15 dollars a spool I can 3d print stuff on more or less equal quality with dollar store slop and a little higher quality if I use abs/asa.
It’s economical enough.
I am paying 6 to 8€ for 1.1kg Jayo highspeed petg. Absolutely economical.
As someone used to commercial grade CAD tools – no, learning FOSS CAD tools isn’t fun, it’s painful. OpenSCAD seems to be designed for people who can look at the Matrix code and see blondes, brunettes, and redheads. While FreeCAD has bugs big enough to star in their own Kaiju franchise. Trying to copy a complex part into FreeCAD generally turns into a trial and error process of figuring out which approach won’t break the model. Sorry, but while the FOSS world has some programs that can go toe to toe with commercial offerings, mechanical CAD isn’t one of them.
I’d disagree, for a lot of uses it’s way cheaper than getting a part or a batch of parts made by any other means.
If you have to pay someone, the setup charge alone for CNC adds up quickly, or the postage & delay for services like JLC or SendCutSend.
Even if you have machines at home, 3D printing a part and iterating is WAY cheaper with FDM than turning multiple lumps of stock into swarf on a mill or lathe, plus it’s faster and easier to design it and hit “print” than have to actually spend the time setting up & making the part yourself by hand.
sure if your only requirement of the part is aesthetics. FDM parts are close to useless for testing iterations of much of anything other than appearance.
Totally wrong about this assertion. My company regularly does fit checks using FDM printed items and it’s saved a great deal of money in prototype manufacturing costs.
For my part, I have several 3D printers at home and they are rarely used to make anything that’s not functional and useful. No printing anime characters on my machines. I’ve got full size CNC machines also, but 3D printing is way more practical in all but the most extreme cases.
Yeah, at work and at home, we 3d print most of our stuff first to test fit and how easy it is to assemble, and once we know those are good we mill it. Faster and far cheaper.
Most prints that I do at home are primarily structural/mechanical. FDM can be very strong in the correct applications
The amount of incorrectness in your statement is astounding. I design and make parts here at work with our H2D in mostly ABS. These parts are used all over the production floor and in the machine shop. Heck, I’ve even designed and printed spools for spooling stuff we make – in fact I’m currently printing a spool half in ABS as I’m typing this.
I also print lots of jigs and fixtures for use in the machine shop – soft jaws, angle plates. custom labeled dividers for those cheap compartmented trays and much more. You need to be aware of the strengths and limitations of FDM printing though and work within those rules.
Lol
Good one
You can see how wrong you are by looking at all the plastic stuff around you. There are a LOT of things that 3D prints can be used for. I printed a TPU jack pad and used it to lift my car.
One of the appeals of 3d design and printing things, for me, is the physical ease of it. I used to spend more time with tools but my hands no longer work as well, and the cost in pain of wielding tools has become daunting.
Having the opportunity to share the results of “i made this cuz it was fun to do so” widely is icing on the cake.
Add that to the fact that FDM can make things that would be difficult to build otherwise and I’m hooked. How else to build this, for example? https://www.printables.com/model/1511345-the-bombard-vortex-bong-v3
You can also avoid going into stoner shops…. if that floats your boat.
I think I can identify with most of the reasons you’ve given. There’s two more though, space and time. If I want to learn woodworking or welding I really need a dedicated space for it, while a printer can fit on a spare shelf and is about the side of a microwave. Your time is needed to design objects but after that it’s hands off, the printer can work 24/7 to create whatever you want so with a spare hour each day you can get a lot closer to a finished solution.
Personally the printer is an appliance and it’s all about the end result. I do not enjoy tweaking the machine itself, or 3D modelling all that much though rapid prototyping and iterative design is nice.
Recently I needed a way to passively drain a portable air conditioner as its sump pump wasn’t triggering properly. I found a model of furniture levelling feet so printed those to lift the aircon up, then found models of hose barbs and printed off about 10 trying to find the right size for an existing hose. After that I designed a little box with an open top and mashed the hose barb model into it so it would catch condensate and drain down a pipe. That first iteration had air lock problems so I added a 15 degree tilt to the box and barb which solved it. If I’d had to buy in all the parts, cut and assemble them myself this whole process would have taken longer and the end result would have been worse.
This is a good point – I can have a 3D printer next to my computer where I have a clean comfy warm seat and instant access to a cup of tea. Having to put on scruffy clothes and go outside to a cold garage and spend hours whittling away on the mill or lathe is therapeutic for sure but when you just want a part to solve a problem now being able to draw it & hit “print” is really magic.
I finally took the plunge and bought one last year, the primary aim was to produce modern looking housings for my electronics projects so they didn’t look like something hacked together in the 80s in outsize die cast boxes. However……what actually happened was that it ended up making bespoke parts for either repairs or useful items around the house. It was at that point that my wife saw the 3d printer as something useful as opposed to being just an expensive toy. Designing something for a real life application meant I got to grips with Openscad pretty quickly. Most of the fun has been designing the parts myself and being able to produce them quickly.
Considering Al beat up on ironing parts when the 3d printed file she wrote an article about literaly had a plate devoted entirely to ironing doesn’t make me feel thay either you or her have any idea what you are talking about sorry.
That is some first rate gibberish! Congratulations!
On two occasions I have designed and printed special adaptors for flat extraction ducting, standard adaptors would have meant cutting chunks out of wall cupboards. Reprap, in the early days had many developers sharing ideas, still a good repository of use.
Thanks to HaD’s ambiguous font I can’t tell if Elliot was talking to ChatGPT etc or to Al Williams.
Neither, it’s the new Chatbot writer called Ai Williams. Why Williams …. err …. well …. i guess it’s just a popular surname on HAD.
was thinking the same :D
I was thinking the same, this is so confusing everytime, and why? Why would you even design a font where different characters look exactly the same? It’s madness!
Your randomly generated password is 0lLl01lo0O
First time I’ve ever used 3D printer, for this camera gimbal: https://hackaday.io/project/204855-weather-proof-pan-and-tilt-camera-bracket-for-rpi , which has turned out quite well. Never needed one before this as there always seemed to be a better / quicker way to get the job done. I used to use Fusion 360 until it got expensive and now switched to FreeCAD, which i actually find OK, but extremely quirky – requires a bit of experimentation to produce more complex projects by working with the ‘operations’ tree and not expecting the Fusion 360 ease of use. Dont think I’d ever want my own printer as prints from China are so cheap. Just have to plan 2 weeks in advance.
I will be honest. I am terrible at cad, I don’t enjoy the process too much. That said, I have made so many things with my 3d printers that have enhanced my life and my hobbies it is unreal. My nemesis for hobby projects was enclosures. I’ve done it all, wood + screws, cutting and solvent welding plastic, totes, etc. nothing beats a 3d printer. Being able to 3d print optical mounts, fluid pumps, jigs, extrusion hardware, etc has not simply saved me money it enabled me to do experiments that I could otherwise never afford. I’ve discovered tons of new things, invented new instruments, and a few other things.
When I was younger I told myself I would never buy one. I wanted to do everything by hand and use off the shelf materials so anyone could follow my work. Once 3d printers became affordable I changed my mind. Best decision I made but sometimes I feel like makers are missing out on going to a hardware store and turning odds and ends from the plumbing section into functioning things. Nowadays though that probably gets you out on a watch list though. Oh well…
Inventing a new crime has been my life’s ambition.
This doesn’t meet all my criteria:
Not insanely profitable.
Has not been made illegal by a majority of sovereign nations within one week.
Nobody says ‘That has to be illegal already.’
‘Post a 3d scan of your junk on thingyverse, trick people into printing it without preview.’
GD common law fraud definition.
GD computer fraud and abuse act.
Also: My 3d scanner doesn’t have a big enough scan volume.
I began 3d printing with the plan to print more printers…
The majority of what I printed the first year was printer parts or nonsense I downloaded (see Sporkleaxe).
Once I learned to design my own stuff it became a different beast to me. No longer did I need to contact the dev to edit the design slightly…I could not only do it myself but I could make what “I” was seeing in my head instead of merely downloading someone’s design.
Admittedly, Sketchup was probably a poor choice but that was what quite a few people I was working with used. Openscad never clicked with me (I don’t code) but I can edit other people’s designs still. Once I learned to properly use fusion it really got fun. Now I use Freecad and I am probably close to the same level I was with fusion.
After the first time I copied a real world item into CAD then designed parts to fit and they worked perfectly it felt better than almost any printing I had done to that point.
The printer, the mill, laser…whatever. They are all just tools that for the most part you need to learn CAD for.
Learning to 3d print…and as a by product CAD design…is likely one of the top 5 things I have learned to do in my life. Even better I come from the time where you built your own printer, the amount of things you learn to do during that process cannot be ignored.
Many people nowadays get by without learning to fix/design their printer but I feel anyone printing should learn some form of CAD. It opens everything up.
I learned CAD and designed and built 3 printers back when all the available kits were trash- the first one finished in 2013. I started using Sketchup and quickly found that it is not for designing parts to 3D print- you usually have to fix the stl files before they’re printable. I switched to DesignSpark Mechanical, as easy to use as Sketchup and does 95% of what anyone would need to do for 3D printed mechanical parts. Eventually switched to Fusion360 for the other 5%. I would switch to OnShape and dump windows if I could get my 3D mouse to work in Linux.
I recently bought a Bambu Lab H2C to print smaller parts than my other printer can. One of the first things I printed was 4-color knobs for my stove (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2376975-lg-stove-control-knobs#profileId-2602246) as an intro to multicolor printing. It turned out to be easy, and the printer and slicer are fantastic. I haven’t used it too much yet, but it has never produced a bad print.
I got a printer as a “Let’s see if I like it as a hobby”. Printed a few models off the interwebs and thought “Neat.”
Then my vacuum cleaner broke. A bearing had seized (pet hair is a vacuums nightmare!) and melted through its 2″ hexagon shaped mount.
This vacuum was a few years old and I didn’t want to think about how long it might take to find a replacement part, and if I did, how expensive it would be, how long it would take to get here, and how inevitably it would end up being the wrong part and I’d have to start over :(
I looked at my 3D printer and I heard a mental “Ding!”
30 min to measure and model the part.
30 min to print a new part.
Cleaned out the bearing and installed everything.
It’s been in there for the last 5 years with no issues.
This is what truly sold me on 3D printers as one of the most invaluable of tools.
You don’t have to waste time, effort, and money trying to search for something you need and maybe having to settle for something close. You can easily make exactly what you need to fit your situation. And at home, as long as it can be done in plastic or resin. Or if you order it, metal!
Having a 3D printer has encouraged me to learn FreeCAD. Amazingly FreeCAD becomes much more powerful and versatile as I learn more.
I’ve found 3d printing useful for prototyping, limited short production runs (usually outsourced to someone with commercial grade equipment), and I’ve also been giving away some of the printing models when it makes sense for enthusiasts to home print but not so much for trying to do a commercial production run. Good for both supporting the community and publicity.
So I guess you could classify my work in the “stick it to the man” category… Except I know quite well if I pry away enough of the man’s empire I could become the man myself. But if that succeeds, I’d be a version of the man who avoided some of the mistakes of the previous man… So, progress?
3D printing scratches the same itch that, when I was a kid, I scratched with my Vac-U-Form and Thingmaker sets. Identical rush, except now I have grandkids I can make stuff for.
More secure against humans than machines that one!
Ok, but why isn’t there more focus here on the multiple states with bills that would effectively kill open source 3d printing?
I know HaD tries to stay away from politics and when those politics don’t directly relate to the topic I get it. But this seems like an existential threat to an important part of what HaD is all about. Why aren’t you firing up the readers to go fight? Do you want to lose 3d printing?
the laws being proposed wont kill open source 3d printing,
they really would only impact commercial 3d printer companies and buyers.
Good luck forcing open source projects to incorporate nerfing features.
I’ve used FreeCAD and found it marginally adequate. I’ll give a shout out to BricsCAD as a general purpose CAD program similar to AutoCAD that you can get a perpetual license to. It also works natively on Linux, and is made in Europe.
I play an online game that for a while involved a lot of accusations of cheating and reporting people, and a whole lot of people started using names like 1ll|1||l because in the font that game uses, all those characters are practically indistinguishable. It made for an interesting looking user roster.
So I reproduce vintage Auto parts and 3D printing has absolutely changed my ability to do so and it continues to be one of my favorite tools to use for prototyping or even create finished products.
Honestly hard to beat. Can’t wait for Metal Sintering SLS printing to become affordable.