3D printing

[rockcrawls]

The material costs next to nothing. The time that goes into modeling, converting your model into a printable form, setting up, printing, and fiddling with this stuff is where the cost is. Have spent weeks fighting with this stuff. Honestly, I never found much use for them. I went through thousands of things on that thingyverse website looking for stuff to print. I didn't end up with much. Maybe it's all improved since I gave up on it about 5 years ago.
I did create a cool topographical landscape model that is used in an educational exhibit though. It took me 10 solid days of printing 24 hours a day just to print.

[Deerhurst]

I have a $200 printer and I havnt had to even level a.bed in probably a year.





I print stuff at work all the time for end use and prototype. I print prototype stuff at home frequently. Sometimes.its gag gifts like the tacsac. Printed a shift knob for my old Sentra.



Lotta work goes into the CAD side of things.

[DAZE752]

Ive been printing cutting templates for my leather work and my girlfriends sewing projects.

I bought it to make a box I didn't want to send out to get printed elsewhere and still haven't done so.

I have found so many little things to print now, I made some pulleys to hide a light fixture away.

But like everyone else has said doing the whole drafting part of it takes the longest. Ive spent 4-5 Versions sometimes because I couldn't get the print to fit what I needed.

[OldGreyBeast]

I mostly use mine to make brackets and that kind of thing. I've printed a couple of things off thingyverse but making your own parts is really where it shines. It's nice to be able to design a part indoors in the AC and then just spit more of them out later rather than welding brackets up in the shop, having to go find metal, etc.

[oxfoot]

Did not work for my 88 4x4 tabs are too narrow to fit into the ashtray holder

[Deerhurst]

Ran into the same problem with the 86.5. The square dash is probably slightly different.





I picked up a resin print and oh lordy does this thing open up a whole new realm of printing! Printed a reed style vacuum pump body. Pulls 12inhg on the first try with about 15 seconds of 1000 grit at the reed sealing surface. Printing some 1:1 stuff for a project I'm working on right now. This thing blows my mind. And it's trippy how it pulls a solid object out of a vat of liquid.