one of the basic questions about 3d printingoften is "how do you actually print something?" i'm tom, and i'm going to show you what myworkflow looks like. so last week i crashed my rc car and brokesome parts of the steering assembly. i have already printed a replacement for the suspensionarm, so all i need now is a new castor arm to make it driveable again.
where can i print 3d objects, now, when printing something, you'll alwaysstart out with a digital file. you can either download one from sharing sites like thingiverseor youmagine or make your own. since the search on these sites didn't turn up any ready-madefiles, i'll model the part from scratch. i'm using a scan of the original part as arough guide and calipers to get the dimensions
right. the good thing about 3d printing isthat you can iterate quickly when doing designs like these - you simply print one out as aprototype and improve the design from there. now, you don't have to use solidworks if youwant to come up with your own parts - there are lots of free alternatives available, likefreecad, sketchup or even blender for more artistic parts. basically, you can use anyprogram that is able to export your part to the stl format, which then contains all thegeometric details of the part you want to make. this is also the type of file that youcan download from thingiverse or youmagine. now, to prepare the stl file for printingi take it through netfabb to fix any errors that might be in the file and also to orientit for printing - i'll pick a large flat area
on one side to get the part to stick to thebuild platform. if you're using a file from the internet, you can likely skip this step. next up is slicing the part - this translatesthe stl file into a gcode file, which contains all the commands that the 3d printer needsto print the part. this is also the point where you can set all the details about howit should be printed - for example whether it is going to be printed as a solid objector a mostly hollow one, how many copies you want to print and also which quality the printshould be. for this one, i'm just going to leave the settings like they are and hit "exportto gcode". the last step in printing a part is actuallysending it to the printer. you can either
copy the gcode file to an sd card and plugthat into a printer, or connect the printer to your computer via usb. in my case, i havemy printer connected to the network, so i can just open a browser and send it the filethis way. now all i have to do is click "print" and it will start printing. after it heatsup, it lays down the first layer of plastic onto the bed and then keeps on adding layersuntil the print is done. this part was printed at a high quality setting and took about onehour. so this print is almost finished. if you printedan artistic part or a simple functional part, you're usually done at this point and go rightto using the part you just made. since this is a technical part and i need it to fit exactlyright, i'm going to do a tiny bit of post-processing
to make it perfect. so that's it - i fixed my rc car and didn'thave to order and wait for for a replacement
part. the whole process for this part tooka bit less than two hours including printing it, which is about as long as it takes torecharge a set of battery for the car. that's it for today - thanks for watching.give me a thumbs up and subscribe if you like what i'm doing!
