A 3D printer is (mostly) a gift from heavens 30th July 2024
Lately I've been enjoying this niche hobby of designing intricate pipes in Fusion 360, and then 3D printing them. Some of my friends just kind of... laugh at it, and one keeps asking me why. I think those are valid reactions, but still, for some reason, something about the process is a lot of fun. A part of me is like "omg you're wasting filament", while the other part of me is like "girl goooo at least you found joy in something". Either way, here are some examples:
This was one of my first simple designs, I kept getting errors, so I kept it simple.
It felt amazing to see my creation in real life. I made the pipe hollow though, so there was a ton of support material, and still is, inside the pipe.
As I continued to practice, I got more comfortable, and finally created a successful design that was a bit more complicated. This time, the pipe isn't hollow. I still attached two hollow parts of the pipe to the beginning and ending, so it would seem like hollow, but I would still be able to fill the majority of the pipe with like 5% gyroid infill.
Here is my lattest creation, literally from today. The tree support were visually a nightmare fuel, but very satisfying to remove. I guess this is now my original home decore, I don't really know what to do with these, but I'm deffinitely going to make more, it would look great in yellow. I also have bigger printers at work, and I could even make the parts to click into eachother to be able to build big bodies of pipes.
I was also tasked by a friend to make a thing to connect two different pipes for his AC. I'm baffled that you can go from a sketch, to a 3D model, to reality. The sketch was done by him. The rest by me. I know that this is very simple, and nothing special, and people who do this for work have way more complex projects but... I still feel amazing to be able to do something like this, and honestly, I don't know that many people who just do these things for fun in their spare time. This part is printed in PETG, 3 wall loops. It was a lot of fun, especially because I tried to design it first in TinkerCad, but I wasn't successful. Then I tried Fusion 360, and that was even worse. I blame my lack of skill for this, but I didn't give up, because I told the friend I can do it. So finally I oepened Blender, and I got it done! The part still needs to be tested by him, and I might need to reprint it a couple times after, but at least the model is done, and can be adjusted and reprinted as needed. I really hope it'll work first time though.
Some advice:
- Sometimes, Fusion 360 throws these errors at you... It's good to save your work often, and if there's a weird error, and you're not too far in your design, it's better to just start over. That can also be beneficial though, as the more you start over, the more you remember all the steps etc.
- If you have a new spool of PETG filament and it keeps going crazy and getting stuck - don't leave the printer alone. Unless you're into spaghetti.
- Youtube is your friend when it comes to learning, but believe it or not, so is ChatGPT. Especially specific questions about Blender for example - it instantly knows what you mean, and can guide you quite well, if you know the interface at least a bit.