No Parking Zone! > Hobbies outside of OzSTOC

3D Printing

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StinkyPete:
During the great "Lockdown 2020", when the bike was mostly confined to the shed, and I had exhausted the painting/fixing/maintenance jobs around home, I decided to learn some new skills.

I bought a small 3D printer, and have been on a steep learning curve ever since.    There are lots of designs for just about everything you could want to make on https://www.thingiverse.com/   but I have also been trying my hand at producing some simple designs using an apparantly easy 3D design software package.     My most useful design/print so far is a divider for the bike's top box to replace the one I have been using which I made from coreflute and sticky tape.   What I did not appreciate is just how slow the printing process is, which I guess is not unexpected when it takes around four passes of the print head to lay down 1mm of plastic, and the walls of the object might be three or four layers thick.    I'll post some photos.

StinkyPete:
Printer in action.



Dice Tower for gaming



Trinkets, including a pen, SD card and USB stick holder



Top Box Divider, with water bottle holders and campartment for wallet, phone etc

Wild Rose:
That’s great Pete, it is amazing what people can make with a 3D printer
You might get good enough to start making bike parts that you can no longer get
Will be interesting to see what you have already made

StinkyPete:
There are a variety of different plastic filaments that can be used.    Most common is PLA which prints easily and which is made from corn starch,  The downside of PLA is that it start to soften at temps over 60 degrees and can abosrb water over a long time.    ABS is probably the most environmentally durable, but produces toxic fumes when being printed so I wont be using that.    The compromise is a plastic called PETG which is fully water proof and temperature stable.    There are a good variety of colours available for most of the plastic fliaments, but I simply cant affort to keep too many colours on hand.

The printer I bought also provides free access to the files so that I can manufacture my own spare parts, as much of the printer is 3D printed.

ruSTynutz:
Good stuff, Pete!  :thumbs

You might encourage me to drag out the 2 3D printers I have...not!  :whistle

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