New to 3D Printing  

Re: New to 3D Printing

Congratulations on your purchase. You made the right choice (choosing Prusa and the kit version).

Lucky you, Prusa is currently delivering in a week or two. Take your time with the assembly process. Use the one on the website and read the comments of each section beforehand. There are very good tips there.

Re: New to 3D Printing

Two pieces of advice.
Take your time building it and get it right the first time. Lots of YouTube videos on the build. I watched them on things I did not understand.
Stay away from MakerGeeks/Filament Geeks. They have huge sales but will never ship your filament. Almost everyone in 3D printing has had a bad experience with them. They lure you in with 50% off sale and you will never ever get what you ordered.

Re: New to 3D Printing

Hey and welcome to the OP (and everyone else).

Me and my girlfriend are new to 3D printing and like you, did a ton of research before opting for the same printer kit.

I hope your build goes well, should be fun!

Re: New to 3D Printing

Thanks everyone. I purchased a direct - to - garment printer about 13 years ago when they were converting Epson printers with CNC controlled work tables to do the job. What a nightmare that was. I have little doubt that this will be a much easier learning curve. At least i hope. 😕

Re: New to 3D Printing

Printer shipped! It's on it's way. Looking forward to building it. Now i need to decide on cad software. I have been using Corel Draw for years so i am thinking about Corel Cad. If anyone has a better choice that's reasonably priced i would love to hear about it. I can tinker with available print items for awhile but i bought the printer to create my own designs so i will need to learn CAD i guess.

Re: New to 3D Printing

you picked a good printer.

For CAD software its up to what you like/have/or can use. Most are expensive to buy but there are ones like tinkerCAD. I use an old version of AutoCAD 2015 and also have solidworks. I had zero experiance of CAD 12 months ago, apart from 2D drawings. Now i'm pritty good with the 3D models

Re: New to 3D Printing

Thanks Robin. I have played with some of the free cad software but unless i am missing something i can't see where i can actually edit the components of the design other than basic stretching etc. I need more editing features than i think most of them can provide. Corel Cad is a bit pricy but i believe it is more affordable than AutoCad and other premier CAD softwares. Someone please correct me if i am wrong. I would love to use free software if it would do what i need it to do. Anyway, i was just notified that my printer will be delivered on Wednesday. Seven days from order to delivery. I am quite impressed with Prusa so far. 😉

Re: New to 3D Printing

I use FreeCAD (running on linux) for home use, which is a little limited compared to commercial CAD software, but still pretty good. I'm afraid I can't really comment on how well the windows version works, but it should be OK. It's worth mentioning that commercial CAD software (as used in industry) can cost more than a mk3 printer, for a software licence which will only last for a year.

For most tasks you might want to do in FreeCAD, there seems to be a tutorial somewhere on the internet. However, so far I've found a couple of areas which give me problems:

1. It's a little tricky to set up planes for extrusions or cuts which don't align with the XY, YZ, or XZ planes, (Maybe I haven't found the right way yet!)

and

2. adding chamfers or radii to the edges of faces with small dimensions or sharp corners can often fail, when they wouldn't fail in commercial software. This seems to be a known bug, which occurs in a library not written by the FreeCAD developers.

Re: New to 3D Printing

I would second for FreeCAD ... the package is quite powerful and works fine for me under Win 64 bit. Did selftraining via a lot of community tutorial videos. If you are used to solid modelling workflow in Catia v5 or similar it is a quick transition. You just need to figure out the location and order of commands.

Re: New to 3D Printing

Be sure you add grease to the bearings before assembly ...

Re: New to 3D Printing

OK the big story. What i intend to ultimately do with the printer is to create a plug which i will use to make a mold for a radio controlled jet that i designed. This is a business expenditure so if i need to spend $700.00 or so on CorelCad hopefully it will eventually pay for itself at some point. In the past i have used the archaic method of hot wire cutting a plug from foam and after days or weeks of filling and sanding produced a usable plug. I anticipate a much easier process by printing the plug. There will still be finishing but i am hopeful that it will be much less work than the foam method. In addition it should be much more accurate in following the design drawings compared to eyeballing a foam model. I have the design created in side views, top views and profile views of major sections. I only need to put it all together in a 3D model ready for printing. I know this is a handful starting from scratch in the 3D printing business but i assume everyone else started from scratch at some point. If there is a free CAD software program that will allow me to do what i have suggested i would gladly save some cash and use it. Otherwise, since i am quite capable with CorelDraw i figured CorelCad would be a suitable choice to transition into 3D design. Thanks for all of you for your input. I do appreciate any help.

John

Re: New to 3D Printing

Fusion 360 is a good cad program. Free at first, then moves you into a paid use model. Also it is capable, and superior for true cad over many other options.

Personally - from the marketing, CorelCAD looks like it is architecture specific, and you should check if it has any math capabilities to help with true ME issues like gear and thread creation, meshing control, interference checking, etc.

Re: New to 3D Printing

That's the kind of advice i was looking for. Thanks Tim, i do appreciate the help. I will check out the Fusion and see what i can do with it.
John

Re: New to 3D Printing

Fusion360 is free for hobbyist. Using it for 3 years now without them trying to push me into a payed model. You just have to refresh your free license once a year.

Re: New to 3D Printing

Windows only, Designspark mechanical, its from RS components and is free.
https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/mechanical-software

I just could not get on with Tinkercad and whilst Free-Cad looked promising, I found it too buggy.

Re: New to 3D Printing

OK, Fusion 360 is up and running. All i need to do now is figure out how to use it. I am use to using nodes and other tools in CorelDraw to create objects. The bezier tool is my best friend. I can see that 3D design is a whole new animal. This will probably take some time to figure out. I can't even figure out where to start. But i will play and learn.

Re: New to 3D Printing

Check out the Videos of Lars Christensen.

He's very good at explaining the workflow..

Re: New to 3D Printing

Check out the Videos of Lars Christensen.

He's very good at explaining the workflow..

There are quite a few free tutorial videos out there and I agree Lars has the best soup to nuts collection of them but Fusion 360 has some good beginner videos I would look at first.

Also once you are making more than $100,000 a year with what you design in it; you are expected to pay for Fusion 360

Re: New to 3D Printing

Watching Lars now. Thanks for the info.