Andy's inquiry about 3D printers a bit over a month ago reinvigorated my interest in 3D printing. I had a couple of Hadron Ordbot 3D printers that I started building from parts a few years ago but never quite finished. I did a little bit of online research and bought a Qidi Tech 1 3D printer on Amazon for just under US$700. It's basically a Chinese clone of a FlashForge Creator Pro, which is a copy of a Makerbot Replicator 2X (I think). To answer the earlier question, it has a USB port and if I get the permissions correct it should be able to print directly from Linux via USB. I need to get that working. So far, I haven't even tried. I just swap SD cards to print my files.
I usually write my own G code for my simple CNC machining, but that wasn't going to work for 3D printing, and I had been interested in developing some parametric CAD skills. Autodesk duped me a long time ago the AutoSketch forced upgrade to AutoCAD Lite, with a subsequent forced upgrade to AutoCAD which is when I bailed and lost all of my proprietary CAD files. So I haven't been eager to jump back on board with that very enticing Fusion360 deal that looked to me like an Autodesk attempt to recapture the market share they lost to Solidworks. I believe once they wrestle the market back from Solidworks, they'll be back to their proprietary software rental ways. Also, I asked about Linux support for Fusion360 on the Autodesk forum, given that they already support Windows and Mac so they probably have cross platform development tools that would make a port to Linux not too big a deal. That was confirmed by the Autodesk representative who seemed almost gleeful when telling me that there would be no Linux version of Fusion360. The reasoning was almost Balmer-Microsoft "Linux is cancer" offensive. I was told that Linux users won't pay for software. I explained that I spent $1200 for Eagle electronic CAD software back in the 90s when that was real money, and I bought it specifically because it was good software that natively ran on Linux. Fortunately, FreeCAD has been improving a lot lately. It still isn't Solidworks or Fusion360, but I'm able to do serious work on it. Install the FreeCAD Daily release (currently version 0.17) for the latest and greatest updates. The stable version 0.16 is a bit outdated. There still isn't a good CAM solution for CNC machining, but work continues on FreeCAM. The weird thing is, there is a very nice looking Finite Element Analysis module in FreeCAD. Go figure. There are good free open source slicers, but I paid US$150 for Simplify3D. It has a lot of features but it's still fairly easy to use, and it's stable and not buggy. I export an STL from FreeCAD and that's the input to Simplify3D. That's my entire 3D printing tool chain. I'm on the cusp of producing 3D printed products to sell online (aka "additive manufacturing" or "fused filament fabrication"). I ordered a second Qidi Tech 1 printer on Amazon last night to support the start of production, hopefully next week. I can't help imagineering a design for a 3D printer that's optimized for small scale manufacturing. Fully enclosed heated build environment for ABS printing. Heated build platform. Configurable with up to 4 extruders that can be used for printing four simultaneous items for faster throughput, or two simultaneous items with two different materials (two colors, build material and support material, or two different materials such as ABS and polyurethane in the same part). The electronics and software are largely off-the-shelf, although I'd use beefier discrete stepper motor drivers and NEMA 23 steppers instead of the little stepper driver chips with glue on heat sinks and NEMA 17 steppers for X, Y and Z axes. Most of the mechanical parts including the motion control hardware would be a Misumi bill of materials. But then I thought of my two partially built 3D printers and I bought another 3D printer. :-/ I'm not sure I can convey just how cool it is to be able to design a quick prototype to test a concept in a few minutes, have it print in 20 minutes while I'm reading email, and very quickly run through several design iterations in an afternoon. Even better, because I plan on 3D printing the finished product, my prototypes are using the same materials and methods I'll use in production so my prototypes are the initial stage of the finished design. I basically play with it until I get what I want, developing a portion at a time, and when I'm satisfied, array as many as will fit on the build plate and press print. That is SO cool. I've been printing in ABS and flexible polyurethane. Based on previous experience with 3D printed objects, I expected fairly ugly and fragile parts. Nope! There are some .2mm layers on my parts but they're even and there are no strings or blobs. The parts are incredibly strong! Other than the slightly layered look, these parts seem functionally equivalent to injection molded parts. These are very structural parts. 3D printing technology (including the filament) has come a long way in the last three years. Expect a small explosion in 3D printed commercial products soon. It's too easy to CAD and print parts, the manufacturing is almost completely unattended, and there are no setup charges for molds or fixtures. It's also possible to 3D print parts that cannot be manufactured any other way. Even if you're not a small scale manufacturer, a 3D printer is a great tool. Suddenly, all of my projects are 3D printing projects. Why make aluminum chips on the mill when I need a funky bracket, when I can CAD the part in a few minutes and print it in ABS, usually while I sleep? With a 3D printer, every morning is Christmas morning. I go into my office and the 3D printer is finished making my part. The bed has lowered and the LED light is gleaming off the new part. It's as if the 3D printer is proudly saying, "Look what I made for you!" On 05/16/2017 12:05 PM, Chris Albertson wrote: > Autodesk Fusion is 3D CAD software for making 3D designs. It will also > "slice" those models and output the g-code that will drive a 3D printer > layer by layer. Fusion can also produce g-codes for driving a mill or > lathe. That is one of Fusion's best features: It is an end-to-end system > where yo use the same software for concept renderings as for manufacturing > by either subtractive of advice process. You can 3D print a prototype > then later mill the same part. > > Fusion is free for hobby use, students and any small-time shop who make > less than $50K per year with the software. If you are selling more than > $50K they want a paid up license. > > There is other free software but it tends to be the work of one of a couple > people. Fusion is suported by an industry heavyweight > > What I don't know is if Fusion will slice an STL file that it did not > create. Can it slice an imported one? > > > > > > On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 4:42 AM, giorgio foga <giorgiof...@hotmail.it> > wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> >> anyone can suggest me a good cam for additive manufactoring .. (fdm) ... >> free or payment not so important, but just need to install it on linux... >> >> >> regards >> >> goirgio >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> ------------------ >> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most >> engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot >> _______________________________________________ >> Emc-users mailing list >> Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users >> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
