I only use pretty basic modelling, and have no interest in advanced CAD featueres, I've tried both the link branch and ondsel, and I honesty think they're about the same level as regular freecad. None of them are even near as intuitive to use as for example onshape, they're actually a bit of a chore to use IME.
You don’t even have to touch any “advanced” modeling features for FreeCAD to be useful. I primarily use extrudes and revolves of sketches in the Part Design workbench. The workflow is exactly the same as what I do at work every day in SolidWorks.
FreeCAD doesn’t let you be as loosey-goosey with geometry as some commercial software. That’s because they don’t have an army of developers paid to work on “nicety” features like that.
I can break SolidWorks models the same way that I can break FreeCAD models. No CAD software is immune to this. Some fail more gracefully than others. It doesn’t mean it’s unusable. You should have seen the repairs I had to make to a SolidWorks model today because I needed to convert a generic extruded feature into a sheetmetal feature…. It took a few minutes, but it’s no different than fixing things in FreeCAD because you changed the design.
I don't want to spend hours just getting to know how to use the software for my basic needs. FreeCAD is (or was when I tried 8 months ago) not intuitive enough for me, so I moved to something that allowed for easier simple modelling. 3D modelling is not what I enjoy, I just need it done so I can do the stuff I actually enjoy. It's a tool I want to spend as little time as possible with.
You only need an account if you want access their cloud storage and sharing management. You can get a tiny free account if you want. I signed up for the freebie since I sometimes work between 2 computers on the same project. But if you only use one computer, it's not going to get you anything extra.
You can add Ondsel Lens to your regular install simply by installing it through the add-on manager if you want.
I think each person has to recognize that there is a time/energy cost to get out of enshittification hell, and then decide how much they're willing to pay. If the answer for you is at least "an afternoon of video tutorials", then Freecad will be fine for you. It's a complicated tool that you need some help learning; that's ok. It won't become your new hobby.
If you don't want to pay that cost, that's understandable. If you feel mad that there is a cost at all, that's ok too. That's how enshittification works, and it sucks. As I said, each person will have to decide whether and how much they're willing to pay to get out of it.
Anyway, the MangoJelly tutorials in YouTube are really excellent, and will have you up and running in a few hours at most. (My CAD needs are also very basic, and I was done after the first two parts, 30 min each.) For following along, I would recommend just using the main version, so that it matches his tutorial exactly, and do the steps as he shows you. It feels dumb, but it's such a fast way to learn. You can decide later if you want to switch to one of the other branches, depending on what features you care about or what annoys you most.
The feature freeze is on and they have a UI overhaul and a Topological Naming Problem fix.
I am using the 0.22 dev version with the fix and oh boy it makes a huge difference. Obviously deleting a face where there was a feature attached to results in an error still. It makes it viable to use the mainline instead of realthunder fork.
I found Freecad has become fairly intuitive if you already have traditional parametric cad experience, there's definitely a few quirks but generally super easy to adapt to if you come from solidworks, inventor and the like, trying to convince my dad to give it a try as he's been getting back into design since retiring and he's been paying for a solid works license. Personally use ondsel but mainline freecad is totally useable.
But, there is a free account that even gives you a bit of cloud storage if you want it. Or you don't even need to sign into it if you don't want. They do want to sell cloud storage for commercial use - Daddy's got to make a living you know. But, the software is still open source and free to keep and use as you see fit.
But don’t do this. Really. The fdm layers are unhygienic, and there’s a not-insignificant risk of things snapping off and leading to awkward emergency room visits.
A better solution is printing a 2 part mold and casting silicone.
I was really impressed by the lulzbot manual mentioning this! Its also important to consider that most 3d prints can be sensitive to water unless sealed too.
They have like 236 ender 3's nowadays, ofcourse i'm not asking google as i'll end up on some website that's shilling for creality and completely ignores the other brands.
I usually just use it to find some sort of peer reviewed recommendations (ie YouTube reviews) - it's usually pretty easy to tell there who's being genuine
No and I hate it :( Even if there are a few legit review sites still around it's near impossible to find them among all the fake reviews being pushed by search engines
As odd as it sounds, as long as you can feed enough filament into the melt zone faster than it can come out the nozzle you can make larger widths and heights than the actual filament width itself. It’s technically just packing it in.
I can only imagine how hard it had to be to tune the retraction though
This is what isn't making sense to me, if the opening to the nozzle is 2mm and the filament is 1.75, what is it "packing in" against? Why doesn't it just go through the center of the hole in the nozzle?
My guess, it probably does just "go through" the center of the nozzle (leaving 0.125mm clearance on either side), until it presses against the build plate/ previous layer, and it then squishes out to 2mm.
So it wouldn't necessarily be pushing filament into the nozzle faster than it can come out of the nozzle, since there's nothing stopping it from freely flowing out of the nozzle; it's pushing filament faster than the nozzle is moving, creating a buildup outside the nozzle equal to the desired layer size
Extrusion is a mix of temperature, feed rate, speed and pressure.
Basically the hotend temp could be high enough that the plastic melts but it still “pushes” just fast enough to build pressure to drive it. Not too much, otherwise the filament grinds and extruder skips, but at the right amount you can keep up with the feed.
The nozzle, lifted up a bit, moves slow enough that the filament comes out and spreads out from the pressure pushing on it. Making the line wide and tall.
The dance is keeping those in sync. Move too fast and the lines are thin, too slow and they’re too wide.
Nozzle too high and it doesn’t blend into the layer below as much as sit on top. Too low and the extra pressure pushes the filament around and it curls back up onto the nozzle.
Why doesn't it just go through the center of the hole in the nozzle?
If you are asking about printing with bigger nozzle size than filament diameter, there should be positive pressure in all parts of hotend and filament is just moving slower where bigger cross section is. I don't have experience with this kind of printing tho.
Btw, where did you find that nozzle is 2 mm? In video they mentioned printing 2 mm layer height, but that doesn't define the nozzle size. You can print different layer widths and heights with the same nozzle. Good cross section is recommended for decent layer bond, but it looks like they are just laying the filament down with no squish.
For proper 2 mm layer height I guess we need 4 mm nozzle and 6 kg hotend/extruder lol
These work similar to a normal 3d printing setup, the water in the tube is the unmelted filament, the nozzle is the nozzle, and the water spraying out is the extruded filament. This works because the water (unmelted filament) is being pushed through a hole smaller than it's own diameter, creating the positive pressure you mentioned.
If I remove the nozzle, such that the opening is the same size as the tube, or even widen the nozzle so the opening is wider, there's no way for any pressure to build up, and the water/filament won't be propelled/ "extruded", it will simply pour out the end as if pouring out a cup of water (or hand feeding filament through a tube). It doesn't matter how fast I pump the water gun, or extrude the filament, as long as there isn't anything restricting the flow, there's no way to build up pressure.
All of this to say, of course there's something that makes it possible because we've got a video of it. But there's more at work than simply, "feed more filament than is able to flow", because as the video explains, the nozzle is wider than the filament and thus not restricting the flow.
My guess is either it is not a typical, hollow nozzle; there may be some kind of baffling for lack of a better term that disrupts the flow of the filament, pushing it to the edges of the nozzle. Shitty sketch of what I'm describing:
Either this or at the beginning of the print the nozzle stays in place and extrudes in one spot until enough has built up for it to start moving. I'm leaning more towards the blocking in the nozzle though, that would creat the positive pressure inside the hotend like the printer is used to.
Interesting comparison with water gun, but that would be equivalent of extruding in the air (even then I see it possible if the nozzle is not way too big). Think about connecting water pipe to a bigger diameter pipe. Water would fill the whole volume and it would just move slower if flow is laminar. There is also filament infront of the nozzle while printing so that should provide resistance (plus friction in the nozzle) to allow pressure build up. Nozzle shape might be important here, but I guess they just drilled 2.4 mm hole all the way through.
I obviously don't know much about this nozzle, I'm not trying to teach anyone, I'm just having fun brainstorming and hopefully learning something new
I obviously don't know much about this nozzle, I'm not trying to teach anyone, I'm just having fun brainstorming and hopefully learning something new
Exactly what I'm doing! Haha.
My problem with the "water into a larger diameter pipe" idea is that, while the filament is melted, it isn't a free flowing liquid that expands quickly to fill it's container; I'm trying to picture the balancing act that would be required to get the filament to expand by pushing against the build plate/ previous nozzle, but I can only see it ending in a nasty clog.
You're probably right and it's likely much more simple than I'm making it out to be. I still like my idea of a baffled nozzle, though. Haha
This makes me curious about the effect of nozzle shape on the output. Would a square holed nozzle work or look different than a normal round nozzle? What about an oval or star shape? Hmmm.
Personally I love openSCAD, but it is probably really unintuitive to someone without programming experience and even then has it's own limitations.
FreeCAD is in a weird position ATM, it is actually really good! ...just not in the stable release... The Dev version is significantly more palatable, and they even went on a feature freeze to really push through with their major 1.0 release.
For now though Onsdel (Sort of a fork of FreeCAD packaged with Dev release and UI improvements) has worked really well for me thus far!
Is there a good tutorial or better yet, videos showing how to use ondsel? When I tried to use it, everything pointed at free car and the ui was too different.
I am not certain, I have used FreeCAD tutorials for Onsdel to great success.
I think what I do is just listen to the tool name they reference, and then just look where I assume it would be to find it, rather than trying to find tools in the same places as them
Well I wasn't all that worried about this until now! Thanks for unlocking new anxiety. My prints run through the night in the basement. Does this happen often with modern printers?
It was a significant problem in early machines. Most now have thermal runaway protection. As long as your wires don’t short out, it shouldn’t be a problem.
And the only wires that have enough energy to be a problem are the heaters- hot ends, heated beds/enclosures.
The firmware keeps track of how much energy is going to them and will shut the printer down if the energy is inconsistent with the reported temperatures. (Aka thermal runaway protection.)
You can also usually add secondary thermistors and if they deviate too much, triggers the same result. (And the machine will usually start trilling to get attention, etc,)
Eh. when was the last time a mosfet melted on anyone? not saying it can't happen, but mosfets are at fairly reliable. as long as you're not trying to push wayyy too much power through them; and also proper surge protection to avoid things like bad power in your house frying them.
It’s not that they melt as much as they just keep dumping heat into the heater cartridge and wires.
And if failed in an on state thermal runaway isn’t going to stop it.
It’s relatively rare though. I’m not too worried about it but it’s one of the reasons I watch my printer and of course there’s thermal fuses for such occasions if you really needed it.
It doesnt happen often ofcourse. It is super rare, but there are many horror storries on google. I think the biggest reason for fire hazard is a kitchen stove, still most people dont have any protection even there (including me).
These cans cost like 2-3 kg of filament and hopefully they will never be used and end up like a "waste of money". Im spending money on this hobby anyway and this upgrade might help me sleep better 😁
I have been using tangledfilament.com for my PLA and it's been great. Their goal is to get to $10/kg for US manufactured filament and then expand to PETG.
Oooh, tangled. Thanks for reminding me about them. Having all US produced product is a nice plus and if they can keep it that cheap domestically, I'd happily buy it for all my bulk printing that doesn't care about color. $15/kg is about as good as it gets these days.
I hook a filament around my neck before going to sleep. Every morning extruder pulls me out of the bed instead of using alarm. Don't need a clock anymore and love to print in the morning anyway
I can't comment on other software since my experience with the commercial options is near-zero. However, specifically in FreeCAD you can do some incredibly tricksy things with sweeps and lofts. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of them.
You could create your shape there almost entirely with lofts. A loft takes two or more sketches and you can think of them like "keyframes" in 3D space. Typically you would stack them on top of each other at the specific locations you need, and at the location of each sketch the 3D solid have a cross section of exactly the shape and dimensions of that sketch, and then the shape will be interpolated in the space in between in various ways you can select. The dimensions of each sketch can, of course, be completely parametric and as dimensionally accurate as you need them to be.
The pocket tool is also extremely powerful if wielded creatively. You can knock holes of arbitrary shape and complexity through things, not just circles and hexagons, to any depth. You can create complex three dimensional curves by making a solid of some shape or another, and then making a pocket all the way through it at right angles or indeed any angle. Think of it kind of like a milling machine pass.
Lofts and sweeps and pockets FTW! That does look like the right solution for single objects.
What about objects that sit at an angle relative to each other? Can you define workplanes (sketches) at arbitrary angles? Can you later slide those planes up/down, e.g. to add more distance from the face it would sit on? For instance, in the above object, the holders on the blue face are tilted 14 degrees from the blue base, and the little red holder in front is tilted an additional 5 degrees and lifted 6mm from the front of the larger red holder.
You can set up datum planes in arbitrary orientations but in all honesty, I've never bothered. You can position a sketch in any orientation, at any angle, at any position in 3D space. You are not confined to right angles of the X, Y, and Z axes.
Sketches used in a loft don't even have to be oriented on the same plane relative to each other.
That sounds about right. QA is expensive and time consuming, so it's left up to the customer. This applies to every single part in the supply chain.
If you want a set of mitsumi linear rails for real precision applications, it's going to cost just as much or more than that printer.
This is not a "buyer beware" rant, but the buyer should know they aren't paying for consistency or precision. I am basically saying that for these printers to work reliably and with proper precision, you need to tear them down yourself and inspect each bolt.
I buy cheap Chinese stuff all the time, but my process is to tear the product down and find where costs were cut and look for any serious dangers.
Svol is well known enough that you should be able to get replacement bits for free. Or not. It's a crap shoot, TBH.
I think with a lot of import products you need to be aware that you'll be doing the QA and will in fact be working on the parts / product to get it to where you need it to be.
If you have the skills and the tools $280 + $3 for an unfinished pulley plus some time on the lathe or mill can still be worth it. I know this is asking a lot from a customer and maybe this particular example of a printer is not the best, i. e. it would totally be possible to manufacture this part within specs at cost, but I think the general notion still holds true.
you'll be doing the QA and will in fact be working on the parts / product to get it to where you need it to be.
Absolutely. Unless a person wants to spend thousands of dollars on push button solutions that cover every imaginable use case, customization is the way to go.
For solid machines, the customer should already have an idea about what parts need to be modified. If a machine was advertised to mill a widget at +/-20% tolerance, cool. If you want to spend $500 more on a custom pully to get withing 5%, awesome. Precision is expensive and customization is niche.
For cheap machines, everything is generally ravaged by bean counters at every level of design and manufacturing. As long as people understand this and can make repairs, that is sometimes OK.
While I feel OPs pain of finding a 2¢ part that was 0.3mm off center, I can only just shrug it off. A pseudo-premium 5¢ part or building a jig for a worker to test each gear would have been quite expensive and it would probably tack on $2-$5 to the end product price. ($2-$5 actually matters on sites like Amazon or Temu and could potentially cost thousands in lost sales due to product placement.)
Apparently similarly mechanically powered displays involving cams to actuate number segments were pretty popular back in the day. Here's a YouTube video I came across one day a while back about one: https://youtu.be/TANe2d0VTGQ?si=unBJmfzs6A_7PWkM
I got irrationally angry that the first digit in the clock could only be 1 or nothing until I saw the actual mechanism and realized that they did that to probably save on material.
Holy shit. I do a fair bit of small electronics repair on the side, the cost of a decent heat pad is about half that of a 3d printer... This may be what finally inspires me to get a 3d printer.
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