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Sheet Metal Brake and 3d Printer.
S. Heslop:
I guess the deal is that FDM style 3d printing isn't so useful unless it's cheap and available. You could build an insane machine in the style of a pick and place gantry but then you'd still be squirting out globs of plastic into a wobbly shape. I was looking at 5 axis CNC carving machines before I admitted 3d printing would be alot simpler and cheaper.
Earlier today I bumbled into one of those metal 3d printing company's websites and noticed they'd STOLEN MY IDEA. The idea being to 3d print parts from whatever metal filled plastic they use in metal injection moulding then process it in the same manner. It's an idea thats so obvious i'm sure alot of people considered it, but I dropped it myself when I realised that by the time you've gone and built a hydrogen furnace and figured out the whole solvent processing step you might as well have bought a nice milling machine and all the attachments.
Those SLA machines seem interesting, as do the inkjet type, for producing highly detailed (and even coloured) models for more artistic purposes. For actual sculpting of one-offs it'd probably still be easier to go with clay and molds than do it in software. But they did make an interesting use of those machines in a couple of stop motion films. But again it was kinda self defeating since they more or less just made a CG film with all the animated faces, then exported them out into models to photograph. They didn't have the uh... hideous charm of regular stop motion and just looked like low framerate CG films.
Also I gotta say that laptop kayzed1 sent has been a godsend. In the middle of a Windows reinstall and all kinds of things are going wrong. Mostly that driver providers seem to be dropping support for windows 7, or at least windows 7 freshly installed. Hoping installing all the updates stops the nvidea graphics card driver refusing to install otherwise i'm going to be digging for older versions.
Joules:
LOL, I will jerk about with a 32bit controller on my rebuild.
Don’t get too disheartened, you have seen the print quality I can produce on a cheap printer (or maybe that HAS put you off). Just don’t have your hopes up for high precision, especially with a large volume machine. All the engineering prototype stuff I have done has fitted in a 150x150x200mm volume. The newer model boat stuff isn’t as critical on dimensions and the prints have some flex to work with.
Consider a cheap off the shelf machine for learning, a lot more to printing than just the mechanism of squirting plastic in XYZ
S. Heslop:
--- Quote from: Joules on September 06, 2018, 01:27:12 PM ---LOL, I will jerk about with a 32bit controller on my rebuild.
Don’t get too disheartened, you have seen the print quality I can produce on a cheap printer (or maybe that HAS put you off). Just don’t have your hopes up for high precision, especially with a large volume machine. All the engineering prototype stuff I have done has fitted in a 150x150x200mm volume. The newer model boat stuff isn’t as critical on dimensions and the prints have some flex to work with.
Consider a cheap off the shelf machine for learning, a lot more to printing than just the mechanism of squirting plastic in XYZ
--- End quote ---
Hah I originally typed up something much nastier in regards FDM print quality. Like I've seen a few proudly posted before and after shots of heavily stepped holes where i'm straining to see the difference.
I think you're right though about getting a ready to assemble machine. If nothing else I could rip the head and steppers out of it when I start finding I need the bigger one. I could also see how far I can get gluing together larger objects from sections. Bit of a dull conclusion to this thread though!
Also hey i'm back on the desktop. I was able to import my old firefox data, plugins cookies logins and all. It seems to be exactly as it was. And the windows update process also installed the graphics card and audio drivers for me. It's weird! I was cursing it when it started. Now I just gotta reinstall all the programs I actively use. I might try avoid sketchup this time and go with fusion 360. I'd tried it in the past but found it horrible. If nothing else the way autodesk wants to hold your working files hostage on their ~cloud~ is offputting.
S. Heslop:
Bahaha. Spoke too soon. Turns out I installed a 32 bit copy of windows. Guess I need to find the 64 bit iso and try again.
S. Heslop:
God damn it gets worse. I figured it was no big deal since Microsoft provides the isos on their website. The memory of doing that came back. But oops, turns out they changed that system and do a CD key check to make sure you're not using a dastardly OEM CD key before downloading.
So there's a bunch of shady crap to download the isos anyways, and I was mostly going on outdated info and tried running a program that now comes with a bitcoin miner. It at least has the decency to tell you as you start it. So I've dug the ol' torrent client from the old hard drive to download this iso from a website that people a year ago were saying is reputable. I'll try find more up to date info as it downloads.
Thing is that torrent client in later updates also added a bitcoin miner, so for a while people were sticking with the older versions. But a friend warned me a bit back that that version is compromised now and a big security risk to run. But what other option is there. I was hoping this'd be a nice clean install but now it feels dirty before i've even installed it!
Edit: Maybe it's time to dust off the old Micro$haft. Around windows 7 time I was starting to think maybe they'd turned it around. Then they abruptly dropped support for a bunch of their products, then they came out with the horrid tablet focussed windows 8, then they started adding telemetry and data collecting in updates. And now this!
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