What is the 3D printing community/group looking for?

Hi Enrico,

Very interesting observation about Origami. I've noticed that with some particular electronics too, although I didn't have a name for it. For example a radio has the Origami effect that you mention. Mess up just one part of the design, and the rest of the design and performance can be severely crippled no matter how good the rest is. Golf too frustratingly has the Origami effect : )

And especially with mechanics, where many people ignore subtle things that should be observed, such as scaling. Some for example may think that if a small $200 3D printer works, then they can take the design and just enlarge it, forgetting that the design was engineered and parts were selected and optimised for a certain volume and a certain combination of hardware.

Shabaz you correctly pointed on the central aspect. And you have no idea on how many issues this class or mistakes can generate.

Enrico.

The actual 3D printer, from a hardware perspective, isn't something I feel I'd need a whole lot of education with. Where I get stuck is more to do with modelling the prints on the computer, rather than the actual process of printing them out. because of this, I don't really feel like I could justify buying one.

Some guidance, courses, hints, tips, advice and all the rest in this respect would be immensely useful to me, and would probably remove my barrier to actually looking at buying (or maybe making) one.

A 3D printer is a bit like a microwave oven - until you get one it is hard to visualize how useful it will be. So on the motivation side, just assume it is going to be much more useful than you can currently visualize.

On the learning curve side - mechanical CADD generally has a lot of legacy baggage making it cumbersome - a lot of steps to do anything and a lot of remembering how and what to do. I tried many CADD packages over the years and always ran into a big problem - I didn't use them enough to remember how to be efficient so every time I needed to do something it was a frustrating exercise of muddling around trying things and looking up things. I wish the interface was a efficient as Corel Draw. Anyway the (free) package I use now is 123D Design because the user interface has been minimized to an extremely small number of tools and commands - which I can pretty much remember. And if I forget, the re-learning curve is very fast. It is not immediately obvious how capable the package is because many or most of the functions in other packages seem to be missing. However it is almost always able to achieve the same results - just takes a little more thought, which I enjoy (usually).

Another vote for a low cost build along!

It's time I will start writing some articles... One is already in my draft area

Shabaz-

Did you watch the video posted on their website?  peachy-printer.  I still think its odd the way they went about the whole thing.  It almost seemed like a joke at first.  But I hope they can rebound from it as their product has tremendous potential.  Ryaln took a very interesting approach when he came up with the printer.

Nate

Thanks you all for the feedback.  It seams like the majority of you said that having some sort of modeling tutorials would be beneficial.  What tools specifically as there is endless amount to choose from?  Your average user would probably use something like Autodesk 123D, OpenSCAD, TinkerCAD (Autodesk Owned also).  Now you get into more complex software such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, Sketchup, Revit, 3ds Max, Onshape (my favorite non Autodesk product).  Let me know what i should focus on as I'm pretty fluent in most listed except Blender. 

Nate

Nate I am maintaining (at least I try) what I promised. I am starting - the first is already saved in draft - a series of articles to explore all the possible aspects concurring to reach a well 3D printed object. I use things and materials I have experimented, from the CAD approach (no matter what cad it is) up to the printer assembly or modding to get the better performances. It is not a easy job but to be honest I like to share it here, that IMHO it is the community that most deserve something like this. Sure many things are missed (for now at least, in future who can say?) especially related to the materials used. I have worked a lot with the ABS and recently almost only with PLA while in this moment I see that it is growing fast the offer of different kind of materials available on the market to produce specific 3D printed objects.

As a preview, the following image is the subject of this first article.

Enrico

I know another topic that i think would be beneficial would be the slicing program and all the settings that can make or brake a print.  I would say this was the biggest obstacle i had to overcome when I first got into printing.  Depending on the object being printed, using slic3r is beneficial but other times you might want to use Kisslicer.  Richard Horn did a great blog post a while back on the different slicing programs and how they generate tool paths that effect the quality of the print.

Nate