Five guests made tonight’s 3D print meeting another fun gathering. Newcomers Panos and Phil were here to see what it’s all about, new members Casper and Jaylen came by for more practice with the Replicator 2, and veteran Enric showed up with his cool blinky roller skates again; now controllable by WiFi!
Panos would like us all to know about the company he works for: Fictiv.com. I understand that they facilitate commercial 3D printing and other CAM manufacturing by ensuring that the designs submitted meet reasonable specifications. Then they turn the work over to third party shops that actually own and operate the machines. I won’t post his e-mail address on the web, but let me know if you want to contact him (or maybe try their website).
Ray popped down to show us what he’s done with one of the orphan Cupcake CNC printers I put up for grabs. The X/Y motion component was perfect for his new laser engraver! …I’m sure we can expect a full report from Ray once the project is complete so I won’t say more, except that it’s great to see someone breathe new life into old hardware.
Jaylen found a cool model on Thingiverse. It’s some kind of space-age looking helmet–you’ll have to ask him about the details. We made it exist with the Replicator 2. The author of that model had apparently never printed it before so this might just be the first physical rendition the universe has ever seen. Unfortunately, the experimental nature also meant there’s lots of nasty support material to remove. Ugh! Good luck Jaylen!
Then, we adjourned to the next room for another off-the-cuff demo of modeling with Fusion 360. This is much more fun with the cool new projector! Casper was first to respond to my invitation to shout out an idea for a new thing… unfortunately it was the kind of thing I’m not terribly good at: “some kind of pendant,” she said. <sigh>.
But I gave it a shot using Fusion’s loft tool (in retrospect, the sculpt mode might have been a better choice). Nobody has ever accused me of being artsy, but we got something passable thrown together; sliced it in two for easier printing; then printed it on my delta and glued it together.
It’s always fun to go from “idea” to “thing” in just a few minutes (even if you don’t identify as artsy).
Here’s the Fusion360 model in case anyone wants to see how it was done.
And here’s Enric, just posing like a goofball in case you’d rather see how that’s done.
-Matt