3D Printer Experience: The Thingi-s on Thingiverse

If you don't already know, 3D printers are all the rage.  Hey, I'm not usually on the cutting edge of anything, but for this, I'm jumping in.  Someone I know just referred to it as a mini manufacturing device.  And it's quite true.

Friend Diego at DeezMaker has lent me one of his very old 3D printers that he had just sitting around.  Yes, I know... Who has a 3D printer just sitting around?

Well, if you are a 3D Printer Maker, you might just have one.  I'll say this now.  I'm no Diego, and it's not the Bukito (his new printer which is available through Kickstarter until August 4th http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deezmaker/bukito-portable-3d-printer-take-it-everywhere), but now I've got a working 3D printer and I'm looking for Thingi-s to print.

It's a lucky thing for me that there's a Thingiverse that has lots of designs that I can use to try out this printer.

My second 3D print is miles ahead of my first print, a bracelet that I have worn around but which suffered from my decision not to adjust the printer bed before trying my first print.

I fixed that yesterday and picked a print that would be less than 5 hours long.  Perhaps it was 5 hours, but it was in 4 files, which meant the parts would be small.  Lots of little prints.

I made a planetary gear system.  It's not perfect (the outer ring is too small to fit all the parts), but all the parts are there, and they look pretty nice. 

I'm finding out that the Thingi-s on Thingiverse often come with the .stl design print file provided, but not the SCAD design files.  And the .stl files are limited.  So I should use SCAD.

Hm.  Another piece of software to learn.  But if I want to do 3D printing, I should do this, no?

And I need to learn how to calibrate the printer.  And I need to learn what calibrating the printer really means. (temperature?, x-y-z? base plate?)

Lesson learned today: For whatever reason, the Thingi-s on Thingiverse, they don't always print out the way you'd expect them to...

If you want to check out my "vids" on 3D printing and the "vids" of my experiences with this new, mystical, magical Thingi, they're on my YouTube! channel Squigglemom! http://www.youtube.com/user/SquiggleMom

Thanks to Service Manager Sam Carillo of the Long Beach Hooman Toyota Repair Facility for the lovely example of a planetary gear system.

Of course, many, many thanks to Friend Diego from Pasadena based DeezMaker for facilitating my making with the loan of a 3D printer while the Bukitos are still in the pipeline!