Dan Dubeau
Ultra Member
Thanks for sharing your story. Lends more context to your words, and I'd love to hear an industrial insiders history on printers and their progression if you ever feel like thumbing out a response
. What industries did you work in that were developing 3d printing tech? I first entered the automotive manufacturing industry in 2000. I've never worked on the cutting edge of tech, and in fact quite the opposite. Mostly in smaller mom and pop shops highly resistant to change and trying to drag them into and embrace the CNC era just to survive. Jumping from lifeboat to lifeboat every couple of years. It's been a good career, challenging. Rewarding, just not very monetarily, though lol. I've watched my little industry (automotive checking fixtures) change a lot over the years from the days we used to plot out full size designs and fedex them to customers, who would internally review them, then we'd have big in person meetings whit catered lunches and high ranking people from the big 3 etc to review large packages of jobs etc. Lead times, money, all in abundance. Now it's zoom/webex meetings and the lunch sucks. The last large job I just did was reviewed and signed off without even prints. Just a cad model, and a few webex meetings, and start building it. Can we have it tomorrow? Not a polished process yet, but shows promise. Not everybody onboard embraces tech, but IMO anytime I can shed time wasting traditions with no reduction in the end quality of the product I'm game. I always hated the "that's the way we always do it mentality" and prefer to work backwards from the finished product and strip away the time wasting procedures that don't contribute anything except traditions. If you always do what you've always done you always get what you've always got. With less and less meat on the bone with every job nowadays you have to find efficiencies or you don't survive.
As to the humor thing, don't take me too seriously. I vary rarely do myself, and like to joke around and have fun at my expense a lot. It's always tough to convey humour through words on a screen, as we all have various different personalities, backgrounds and come from different generations where references to thing may not come across as cleanly. Tone of voice, facial expressions, etc all have a big part in interpreting humour that are lacking from written word. But we all share the common bond of making chips and creating things from metal and other materials (or we wouldn't be on a metalworking site right?), so I hope we can all find common ground there. Even if my jokes aren't funny to others, they still make me laugh.
As for recommending printers? Another can of worms. I'd have to ask a question to give an answer. What smart phone do you use/prefer the best? If apple and you like IOS, I'd suggest going with Prusa, and buy into the whole system. If android go with a creality ender of your size, or another free range type of printer using marlin. That's just a connection I've made to the way people think, observing the trends on forums and youtube over the years. YMMV, but.... I started with an Anet a6 (or 8 I can never remember) from banggood a few years back. Decent entry level printer but finicky frame, and I was always tweaking something to get it to print right. I then bought an elegoo mars to get into the SLA resin game, and it's been amazing, albeit temperature sensitive. I can't print in my basement in the winter. I've bought stuff to make an enclosure heater, just havn't got around to it yet. . That genre has changed a lot since my purchase, so while I'd reccomend the mars again, I'm sure there is better out there for cheaper. It changes so fast.
My last printer purchase was a Kingroon KP3s FDM printer. This has been plug and play right from the box, and although it's smaller than my anet, most things I print never require that size anyway, so the anet hasn't been turned on it over a year. I'll probably repurpose the hardware to build something else cool with the kids. The kingroon print quality is right there with an ender (guy at work has one), and I like the stable frame and size. It's pretty portable, and doesn't need constant tweaking to print right. I could nit pick details about its design and build but honestly don't have much bad to say about it for the money it cost me, and the work it produces.
As to the future of 3d printing tech, I have no idea where it will go. I don't think it will ever truly replace machining, but it will certainly supplement it in ways we're seeing, and some we can't imagine yet. I'm just really exploring the opportunities to utilize it in my own shop more in the casting dept and it's been mind blowing how useful it has been on just the few projects I've done so far. See my recent thread on the subject for details. Lost resin SLA is something I want to pursue shortly as I build up and buy the equipment necessary for that.
I'm jealous of your flight sim setup. Our internet at home is very pricey (bell LTE), and I'm currently waiting for starlink to open up more spots in my cell so that I can dive into that world of sim rigs. I really want to get into Iracing (as an ex motorcycle racer), and flight sims too. I was never much of a gamer, but did enjoy my racing games. Cheaper, and crashes don't hurt as much. Being able to predict the weather is a fun party trick, but I'd rather not have that superpower.
As for tech savvyness, you've certainly got me beat. I'm really a troglodyte when it comes to computers and tech. I know enough to get by, but it ends there. Without the internet and the ability to search out problems and solutions I wouldn't be where I am today. It's an incredible time in human history to have the entire collection of human knowledge in your pocket. It's a shame most just use it to share catvideos and dumb dance videos on tik tok. But what do I know, they probably make more $ than I do. Nobody would pay to see a fat middle aged balding man dance around to hip hop anyway lol.
Now, to answer your last question. I use a large mix of software. At work it's mechanical desktop, rhino, and Solidworks for CAD, edgecam and notepad for CAM. At home and for personal projects I use the above, as well as fusion, and more recently the last few projects I've tried in freecad, although I'm not sold on it just yet. It's decent, but, it's....a free package that isn't as polished as others that I am used to. Big potential, but it all takes time and money to develop. Still searching for the perfect solution to all problems, but one doesn't exist. I still build a lot of things sans prints or designs just neuro cad, and the materials on hand dictating their dimensions and fit. I might just buy a seat of Keycreator for personal and professional use, as out of all the cad systems I've use over the years, that's the one that plugged into my brain the best, and would tick most boxes. I do believe they still sell a license (last I heard was $3500), and not sub only, but I'm not 100% sure. My info is a couple years out of date and it all changes so fast. I learned Unigraphics in college running on unix. At the time it was $35k a seat If I remember right. To have free options as good as they are today blows my mind.
I stripped this out of Stevens intro thread as I wanted to reply to you, just not further drag his thread off the rails. I think that about covered it. Been typing this on and off all morning in my free time. A bit windy I am at times....
I suspect there is an android version.
