Christmas is fast approaching, and you might hope Santa will bring you a 3D printer. If you are new to 3D printing, read on.
Select your printer based upon your needs, budget, and willingness to spend uncountable hours fine-tuning the thing so it will actually print parts that fit together. If your final list contains a Dremel 3D20, then just shoot yourself in the head now and avoid years of frustration! Many books recommend a Creality Ender, and explain how to set it up and fine-tune it to get the best results possible, no ammunition needed.
I wanted to print custom parts for my rockets without spending too much money. I got my Dremel 3D20 “for free” by using up enough Airmiles for a round-trip ticket to Europe! I fought with it for several years, getting advice online that proved useless. Eventually, I found a book that helped me to setup my printer so that it printed well enough that I didn’t need to use any of those special words that I learned in the Army! The Dremel did not enjoy being told what to do, and self-destructed shortly thereafter. I still have the book, and I still consult it often. It is “Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD,” by Colin Dow, and is available from Amazon. Chapter 9 teaches you how to design and print rocket parts.
Once you have a 3D printer and understand how to use it, where can you get designs to print? Most people go to Thingiverse on the Internet, but there are dozens of big sites. Problem is, most of the prints are garbage. Some won’t slice, some won’t print, some won’t fit. Find Jamie Claye’s site on Thingiverse; he knows what he’s doing!
Sooner of later you will need to design your own part. OpenSCAD is free software. You use it to design parts by “coding” commands and parameters. Once you have the code for a BT60 nosecone, you can change the numbers within the parameters to immediately generate a nosecone of any size. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you need to be a computer programmer to work with OpenSCAD. The “coding” that you will learn and use is not real computer programming – in fact, it would drive a real programmer mad if he tried to make it flow properly! So how do you learn OpenSCAD? Duh, remember that Colin Dow book?
That’s it! Currently, I use the Dremel as a foot-stool in my workshop. 3D printing is done on my Creality K1 Max, which is a great printer, but not for beginners. I still refer back to Colin Dow’s book on a regular basis. Merry Christmas!