1 Topic by rcav8r

  • rcav8r
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Topic: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

Hi all;
Been wanting a 3D printer for a few years now and was waiting for the technology to mature a bit.  It has a long way to go, but it's to the point where I decided to jump in.
I was on the fence between the Solidoodle, and the MakerFarm Prusa.  I went with the Prusa as I like to build things, and it prints directly from an SD card with no fiddling. My PC is rather old, and I would hate for it to hang during a long print.
The Prusa was a super easy build.  Unfortunately my RAMPS board went bad as I was getting the bits and pieces moving, so it's in the process of being RMAed, so I haven't actually printed anything yet..
Love this forum as I've sure learned a lot as after all the principles are the same for the 3D printers.  This forum reminds me of the Phlatforum (for the Phlatprinter) as it doesn't matter what printer you have, help is available , and mostly friendly wink
I've built and heavily modified 2 CNC mills with a Phlatprinter being my current CNC mill.   My main interest is Electric R/C aircraft which I design (and cut with my Phlatprinter) Already have tons of ideas for the 3D printer.
For my mill I use Sketchup, and DevCAD (2D TurboCAD like CAD/CAM).  Looking for a simple and cheap 3D modeling program.  Sketchup is nice, but it does have it's limitations (no easy way to do 3D fillets)

2 Reply by Rincewind

  • Rincewind
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Re: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

rcav8r wrote:

Hi all;
Been wanting a 3D printer for a few years now and was waiting for the technology to mature a bit.  It has a long way to go, but it's to the point where I decided to jump in.
I was on the fence between the Solidoodle, and the MakerFarm Prusa.  I went with the Prusa as I like to build things, and it prints directly from an SD card with no fiddling. My PC is rather old, and I would hate for it to hang during a long print.
The Prusa was a super easy build.  Unfortunately my RAMPS board went bad as I was getting the bits and pieces moving, so it's in the process of being RMAed, so I haven't actually printed anything yet..
Love this forum as I've sure learned a lot as after all the principles are the same for the 3D printers.  This forum reminds me of the Phlatforum (for the Phlatprinter) as it doesn't matter what printer you have, help is available , and mostly friendly wink
I've built and heavily modified 2 CNC mills with a Phlatprinter being my current CNC mill.   My main interest is Electric R/C aircraft which I design (and cut with my Phlatprinter) Already have tons of ideas for the 3D printer.
For my mill I use Sketchup, and DevCAD (2D TurboCAD like CAD/CAM).  Looking for a simple and cheap 3D modeling program.  Sketchup is nice, but it does have it's limitations (no easy way to do 3D fillets)

Hello rcav8r, welcome to the forum! I'm sure we are all glad that you decided to participate even if you have a different printer, and I'm sure that with your good deal of experience you will make valuable contributions to the forum. I mostly  use FreeCAD for designing, it makes me desperate sometimes but it can do some things that SketchUp can't. And it's available for Linux, which is my main decision criterion.

3 Reply by ronsii

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Re: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

Welcome Rcav8r, Glad to see you like the forum smile

Always great to have another RC enthusiast here!!! In sketchup I have believe there are plugins for fillets although I have not used them...

4 Reply by ITman496

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Re: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

The plugins for fillets that I've found (I think its called roundcorner or something) seem to work fine.  Except when you get to really tiny or weird angles, they fail. But even autodesk inventor fails me sometimes with fillets..

5 Reply by ronsii

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Re: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

ITman496 wrote:

The plugins for fillets that I've found (I think its called roundcorner or something) seem to work fine.  Except when you get to really tiny or weird angles, they fail. But even autodesk inventor fails me sometimes with fillets..

A lot of things don't work right in sketchup when using small measurements that's why I usually make the part 100 or 1000 times as big then scale it back down later in RH.

6 Reply by rcav8r

  • rcav8r
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Re: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

THANKS for the warm welcome and tips for fillets in SU.. I'll be sure to check them out.
I have tried FreeCAD, but it seems to hang after a couple of objects are created. That was a few months ago, so I'll have to grab the latest updates, and try again.

7 Reply by Rincewind

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Re: Greetings from Pittsburgh PA

rcav8r wrote:

THANKS for the warm welcome and tips for fillets in SU.. I'll be sure to check them out.
I have tried FreeCAD, but it seems to hang after a couple of objects are created. That was a few months ago, so I'll have to grab the latest updates, and try again.

Yeah, things can change overnight with this program smile