For Christmas my wife got me a 3D printer. I've been wanting one for a while, and we picked out a Monoprice MP Select Mini Pro. It isn't a huge printer, but it also required zero set up to get a print out of it. I did some tuning over the first few prints I made which were all things downloaded from Thingiverse, but it wasn't long before I took a step into designing custom stuff.
I have been playing with Fusion360 on and off for a while now. Previously, I printed my designs on my Shapeways Shop, or I've used the DXF For Laser plugin to create designs for our Glowforge Laser Cutter. If you're interested in a Glowforge, our referral link will get you up to $500 off depending on the model. Future projects will showcase using the laser cutter along side the 3D prints, and electronics.
My first custom print was one of my designs that is in my Shapeways shop. I took the Art Deco Sun Pendent without the loop for a chain, and scaled it up slightly. I then proceeded to pull the model into into Cura for slicing. Slicing is the process of turning a model into the layers which the 3D printer prints. I think the printer did a pretty nice job on the model. This was printed with minimal tuning of printer parameters, and was practically 'out of the box' performance.
Next I wanted to start using Fusion to design some mechanical devices. An easy first task was pulling in a part from McMaster-Carr. I learned about this trick from watching NYC CNC's YouTube videos. NYC CNC also has a very nice web site with all sorts of tutorials and tips on it, like How to Import a McMaster Carr CAD file into Fusion 360.
The first part I imported was a small bevel gear.
I was quite happy with how that part came out, so I decided to pull in a few more gears, and using Fusion built up a small plate with pegs two gears could sit on. Mostly I wanted to see how well these gears would mesh. I ended up making a hole in the gear the same size as the peg. I decided that since the printer wouldn't be able to exactly match that size, I should over size the hole by a tiny (0.02 mm) amount so the gears would spin freely. After printing the 3 parts, I was rather impressed with how well they worked. Keep in mind I only spent about an hour total tuning the printer settings.
Next I wanted to try some more complicated design. I found the "Spur Gear" script in Fusion which allows you to generate a
spur gear with just a few inputs (pitch diameter, number of teeth, etc.). I decided on trying to make a planetary gear system
with four smaller gears acting as the sun and planet gears. To make the ring gear to contain them, I generated a larger spur
gear, then subtracted that from a solid. I later figured out I made a small mistake, and should have specified a negative 'backlash'
amount. This would make the teeth on the spur gear slightly larger, which would make the resultant ring gear slightly looser.
I had purchased a 81 RPM Mini Econ Gear Motor from Servo City.
One nice bit about Servo City is they have 3D models of their parts, and I was able to just pull the .step file into Fusion360. Using that model
as a reference, I was able to cut a D shaped hole in the sun gear, and screw holes in the ring gear to mount it all to the motor.
Despite the ring gear being a bit too tight, it seemed that things would work for prototype purposes. Next, I designed a carriage to fit on the planet gears, and a cap to sit on the motor shaft. I cut a few channels in these to allow me to insert some heavy copper wire, and you have my first prototype of an Orrery.
I hope you enjoyed this very quick rundown of what I've done with my printer since i got it. If there is interest I'll dive into more details of what my process is. Otherwise, just be on the look out for more updates.