Electronic hobbies and discussion

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Nov 15, 2018
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Hats off to you for doing it the hard way. I used Blender around 20years ago, and could make some visual stuff, but abandoned it as soon as possible. Forever free is an important feature.

Agreed schematic CAD for board layout is a totally different beast. The EE I work with gave me a tour of Altium, but I'm not smart enough to operate it.
You know, I was about to look into an easier 3D Modeler, like Tinker CAD, but I just stuck with Blender.
 
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Nov 26, 2019
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Tinker CAD is supposed to be pretty good. I like F360 but I won't pay for it so I know that I could lose out at some point.

Need to fix my printer one of these days... Just haven't wanted to deal with it lately.
 

Stairgod

Two bad decisions away from buying a bulldozer
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Apr 22, 2019
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I have F360, and had a free license for two years. But now they want me to pay. And unfortunately the program is smarter than I am, so I can't even use all of its features
 

Stairgod

Two bad decisions away from buying a bulldozer
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Apr 22, 2019
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Did they change the hobbyist license? I haven't logged in for a while.
I was able to log in tonight and do some basic stuff. But it says license has expired.
 
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So, the test piece measured out to be pretty damn close to what I had "designed it for". The TEST piece does nothing other than just to see if I could actually create something since 3D Printing is new to me.

Anyways, the only part that didn't measure like it should have was the hole in the middle? It measured to be approx 4.5mm and NOT 5mm?

Is it the slicer program? The outside dimensions were pretty spot on... just the hole was approx 0.5mm smaller than it should have been?

Could it be the extruding speed, how fast it cools, resolution of the printer, etc etc etc? As far as I know, this printer is actually a pretty decent printer and does pretty good detailed print jobs. So it's gotta be "me"?

I doubt it is the configuration scaling settings in Blender because, again, everything else is measuring almost exactly like it should (i.e. the small block is designed to be 10mm sq and measures approx 10.1x something and the base is designed to be 20mm sq and measures approx 20.xx... anyways, really close to the actual drawing). As far as print speed/mode, I did print using "normal print mode speed" instead of "quality" or whatever the higher quality print mode is for these things.

Finally, what happens if you run out of filament in the middle of a print job??? :noidea:

Thanks guys for the likes and feedback.
 

Blender

Swiftie
Joined
Oct 4, 2018
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Chandler, AZ
Every FDM print I've had the holes were undersized. I just drill them out if they are critical and/or design with this in mind. I never looked I to it further than that.

if you run out of filament the head will keep going and the part will be incomplete. If your printer has a filament sensor it will hold position and prompt for a reload. Usually the print cools down too much and the replaced filament doesn't bond quite as well as normal layers. still a useable part, just more fragile.
 

Stairgod

Two bad decisions away from buying a bulldozer
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Apr 22, 2019
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2,439
Not familiar with 3D printing, but when programming for my plasma table I have to indicate whether it is an inside cut(hole) or outside cut(perimeter of object).
Not sure if your programs are similar
 
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Nov 26, 2019
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I'd rather the holes come out small than too big. I make sure to print a test cube and some other stuff from time to time and take into account the margin of error in my design. Usually I get it close enough that I don't have to drill anything out. When I'm up and printing again I'm going to try tapping holes in the printed pla to thread bolts in and see how well it does.

Just ordered a prusa mini+ because I guess I hate money. I want something reliable so that if (when) my ender 3 is broken I'll still be able to print stuff.
 
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Yeah I like using threaded inserts. Melt em in with a soldering iron super easy. Its just overkill for some parts and in some places they require adding a bunch of extra material to support the insert.

The box I designed to hold the MoBo and raspberry pi4 for my ender 3 uses 6 nutserts to hold the lid on. Need to overhaul that thing someday.
 
Joined
Nov 15, 2018
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Every FDM print I've had the holes were undersized. I just drill them out if they are critical and/or design with this in mind. I never looked I to it further than that.

if you run out of filament the head will keep going and the part will be incomplete. If your printer has a filament sensor it will hold position and prompt for a reload. Usually the print cools down too much and the replaced filament doesn't bond quite as well as normal layers. still a useable part, just more fragile.
I just found out that my printer supposedly has a "filament sensor". I'll be looking into this on the settings menu.

Thank you for helping me learn. :thumbsup:

Not familiar with 3D printing, but when programming for my plasma table I have to indicate whether it is an inside cut(hole) or outside cut(perimeter of object).
Not sure if your programs are similar
I would consider it similar to "WYSIWYG".

I'll be playing around more with the printer here as I do more things. This was just a simple test print.

I'd rather the holes come out small than too big. I make sure to print a test cube and some other stuff from time to time and take into account the margin of error in my design. Usually I get it close enough that I don't have to drill anything out. When I'm up and printing again I'm going to try tapping holes in the printed pla to thread bolts in and see how well it does.

Just ordered a prusa mini+ because I guess I hate money. I want something reliable so that if (when) my ender 3 is broken I'll still be able to print stuff.

tapped holes works in fdm and sls parts. I've also used the brass melt-in threaded inserts from mcmaster with great results

Yeah I like using threaded inserts. Melt em in with a soldering iron super easy. Its just overkill for some parts and in some places they require adding a bunch of extra material to support the insert.

The box I designed to hold the MoBo and raspberry pi4 for my ender 3 uses 6 nutserts to hold the lid on. Need to overhaul that thing someday.
Damn, a lot of good ideas for using threaded inserts.

Thanks everyone for helping me learn!!! :hail::thumbsup::beerscheers:
 

Chris In Milwaukee

Ain’t no mo’
Joined
Dec 16, 2019
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3,101
Age
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North Woods, WI USA
I've always liked doing electronic junk since I learned about it so many years ago. Since I've been on a kick to restore some of my vintage audio gear lately, I thought it would be fun to do a home-built amp. So I started ordering up some parts for one of these guys, a Pass Labs Aleph J:

1613505359005.png

Pure Class A, 25W/channel, JFET input stage, MOSFET output stages. Should be a fun project. While my vintage amp says it's Class A, it's got some trickery inside that makes it not Class A at high outputs. This one is so Class A that it will run about 130F degrees at rest. The real deal. It's said to be one of the best sounding amps out there competing squarely with tube equipment. We shall soon see.
 

Itaro

Seriously, FJB
Joined
Oct 5, 2018
Messages
13,115
I have one I'm running Raspbian on to use as a mini PC for playing movies on my portable projector. I can power the raspberry pi and projector off a big USB battery pack at 5v. Its a pretty rad setup for offroading/camping trips.

What are you trying to do?
Nothing really I got a coupon for a free one but pondering if it’s just going to be another rabbit hole to jump down
 
Joined
Nov 26, 2019
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Nothing really I got a coupon for a free one but pondering if it’s just going to be another rabbit hole to jump down

I mean if you don't want it I'd happily take that off your hands.

Otherwise do it! They're pretty capable little computers. Raspbian is a distro of linux and is very functional. Could make for a good little computer.

I'm running another one in my 3d printer. It allows me to network the printer using Octoprint to control it. I can monitor it remotely, upload files directly without dealing with sd cards. Change settings from my PC or phone and abort prints if I see that they are failing.
 
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