A FreeCAD sticker, a FreeCAD pencil, a Hackaday Jolly Wrencher SAO PCB and the board-to-be-encased next to each other

FreeCAD Foray: Shells For All Our PCBs

July 1, 2024 by 57 Comments

Are you the kind of hacker who tries to pick up FreeCAD, but doesn’t want to go through a tutorial and instead pokes around the interface, trying to transfer the skills from a CAD suite you’ve been using before? I’ve been there too, and in my experience, FreeCAD doesn’t treat such forays lightly. It’s a huge package that enables everything from architecture to robotics design, so if you just want a 3D-printed case for a PCB project, the hill can be steep. So let’s take that first simple project as an example, and see if it helps you learn a little bit of FreeCAD.

This board needs a case – badly.

As motivation, I recently built a USB-C PSU board that uses a DC PSU and does the USB-C handshaking to provide 20 V to a laptop. It is currently my only 100 W USB-C PSU, and my 60 W PSU just died, which is why I now use this board 24/7. I have brought it on two different conferences so far, which has highlighted a problem – it’s a board with tons of exposed contacts, which means that it isn’t perfectly travel-friendly, and neither it is airport-friendly – not that I won’t try and bring it anyway. So, currently, I have to watch that nothing shorts out – given the board has 3.3 V close to 20 V at 9 A, it’s a bit of a worry.

This means I have to design some sort of case for it. I was taught SolidWorks in the half a year that I spent in a university, and honestly, I’m tired of the licensing and proprietary format stuff. When it comes to more hobbyist-accepted tools like Fusion360, I just don’t feel like exchanging one proprietary software for another. So, FreeCAD is the obvious choice – apart from OpenSCAD, which I know and love, but I don’t always want to think up fifteen variable names for every silly little feature. That, and I also want to fillet corners every now and then.

For a full-open-source workflow, today’s PCB is designed with KiCad, too. Let’s see about installing FreeCAD, and the few things you need to import a KiCad board file into FreeCAD.

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Come For The PCB Holder, Stay For The Tour Of FreeCAD

November 26, 2023 by 10 Comments

PCB holders are great tools. Not only is the PCB Solder Fren from [PistonPin] a nice DIY design, it offers some insight into the parts design process with FreeCAD.

This design nicely demonstrates FreeCAD’s workflow for designing parts.

The PCB holder uses 3D-printed parts, M5 hardware, a length of 2020 aluminum extrusion, and one spring to create a handy and adjustable design that accommodates a variety of PCB sizes and shapes. If the ends of the extrusion are threaded, the end caps can be screwed in. Otherwise, a little glue ought to do the trick.

Want a little more insight into what making a part like this involves? [Jo Hinchliffe] at FreeCAD reached out to [PistonPin] for more detail and has a blog post explaining the workflow and steps involved in this part. As a bonus, STEP files and the FreeCAD project file are all included!

Not only is FreeCAD simple to use, but it’s also flexible enough to accommodate custom, niche extensions like a Rocketry workbench, so be sure to give it a look for your open-source CAD needs.

Throw FreeCAD Some Curves

August 12, 2023 by 43 Comments

[Mango Jelly] got a question from someone trying to model a phone box with a complex curved roof. We have to admit that when we saw it, we knew it would be hard to model well. Naturally, there are several ways it could be one, but [Mango Jelly] used the curves workbench in FreeCAD to produce a wireframe of the shape, and you can see how that works in the video below.

The curve bench didn’t sound familiar to us, and that’s because it is an add-on workbench. He starts with a sketch of a curve, constrained to be symmetrical. Then the draft workbench allowed a rotation to convert the curve into a nice skeleton of the curved roof.

The curves workbench can create a Gordon surface over that skeleton. You can extrude that into a solid object. There are still some details to add, though, and you’ll see how each part of the roof takes shape.

Watching videos like this reminds us that we use a small fraction of what FreeCAD can do. You’ll probably pick up at least one tip from this video. If you need a quick basic tutorial, try the one from [NovaSpirit]. Or, try a longer one.

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FreeCAD Is Simple, According To This Tutorial

July 5, 2023 by 44 Comments

Remember learning to tie your shoes or ride a bike? Like many things, that’s easy once you know how to do it, but seems impossible before you learn. [NovaSpirit] asserts that Freecad is simple, and provides a simple walkthrough to create a part in the video below.

If this were riding a bike, this tutorial would be akin to watching someone ride a bike to pick up tips. You’d probably still want to have someone explain details to you before you attempt it yourself.

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Using FreeCAD To Replace OEM Parts

June 10, 2023 by 46 Comments

As much as we might all like it if manufacturers supported their products indefinitely with software updates or replacement parts, this just isn’t feasible. Companies fail or get traded, technologies evolve, and there’s also an economic argument against creating parts for things that are extremely old or weren’t popular in the first place. So, for something like restoring an old car, you might have to resort to fabricating replacement parts for your build on your own. [MangoJelly] shows us how to build our own replacement parts in FreeCAD in this series of videos.

The build does assume that the original drawings or specifications for the part are still available, but with those in hand FreeCAD is capable of importing them and then the model scaling to match the original specs shown. This video goes about recreating a hinge on an old truck, so with the drawings in hand the part is essentially traced out using the software, eventually expanding it into all three dimensions using all of the tools available in FreeCAD. One of the keys to FreeCAD is the various workbenches available that all have their own sets of tools, and being able to navigate between them is key to a build like this.

FreeCAD itself is an excellent tool for anyone repairing old vehicles like this or those making 3D prints, designing floorplans for houses, or really anything you might need to model in a computer before bringing the idea into reality. It does have a steep learning curve (not unlike other CAD software) so it helps to have a video series like this if you’re only just getting started or looking to further hone your design skills, but the fact that it’s free and open-source make it extremely attractive compared to its competitors.

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How To Model A Twisted Part In FreeCAD

May 6, 2023 by 84 Comments

Quick references are handy, but sometimes it’s nice to have a process demonstrated from beginning to end. In that spirit, [Darren Stone] created a video demonstrating how to model a twisted part in FreeCAD, showing the entire workflow of creating the part as a blend of surfaces and curves that get turned into a solid.

FreeCAD is organized using the concept of multiple “workbenches” which are each optimized for different tools and operations, and [Darren] walks through doing the same jobs in a few different ways.

This twisted bracket is a simple part that is nevertheless nontrivial from a CAD perspective, and that makes it a good candidate for showing off the different workbenches and tools.

The video below is also pretty good overall demonstration of what designing a part from a mechanical drawing looks like when done in FreeCAD. As for mechanical drawings themselves, we’ve seen FreeCAD can be used to make those, too.

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Using STEP And STL Files In FreeCAD

April 16, 2023 by 11 Comments

If you’ve tried FreeCAD, you know that it has a daunting number of workbenches and options. [MangoJelly] has a large number of video tutorials on FreeCAD, and the latest one, below, covers working with STEP and STL with the tool.

If you’ve ever wondered why designers like to work with STEP files and not STL, this video answers that question immediately. A part brought in from a STEP file is closer to the original CAD object. It doesn’t have all the operations that make the part up, but it does have proper faces that you can work with like a normal part. The same part imported from STL, however, is one single mesh.

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