Tag Archives: stuff

OpenSCAD tutorial outline

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They’ll continue, but I think the next one will come out on Friday.  So far I’ve covered the interface of OpenSCAD, 2D forms, and 3D forms.

My goal is to show people how to use OpenSCAD in a way that is intuitive and builds quickly on what was taught earlier, with a secondary goal of getting the reader to be able to make something useful as quickly as possible.  Here’s the rough outline/idea of where I’m going:

  1. OpenSCAD interface
  2. 2D forms
  3. 3D forms
  4. Union/difference/intersection
  5. Rotate/mirror/translate/scale
  6. Variables/module
  7. Linear and rotational extrusion
  8. Using other programs to make using OpenSCAD easier (Sketchup, Inkscape, Notepad++)
  9. Include/libraries
  10. Conditional and Iterator Functions

I know I’m leaving a lot out of that outline.  What would you like to see?

So what are you going to make?

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I remember the first time I heard this question.  I was babbling to a friend of mine about how I wanted a MakerBot.  His response was to ask:

What is it you need that you want to spend $1,000 getting?

My first inclination when I hear this question to say, “Anything.”1

My second inclination is to step back, think about it for a moment, and then wonder whether I am going to ever actually print $1,000.00 worth of stuff. 2

Thanks to Jeff Keegan for unintentionally reminding me to post this.  :) 3

  1. Sometimes I’m tempted to respond, “Anything I damn well want, Nosy Noserton.” [↩]
  2. Although, at this point, it would be closer to $1,250 of stuff… [↩]
  3. That bastard. [↩]

Have you printed in HDPE?

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I just noticed MakerBot discontinued their 5 pound rolls for HDPE.  This page is essentially taken down.  However, when it was last up it contained the following product description:

Update: Discontinued. It’s not fun to print with this stuff.

This is HDPE plastic aka High Density Polyethylene aka Milk Jug plastic. This is a nice, smooth, high quality plastic. It comes as a filament in 5lb coils with a diameter of 3mm.

This plastic is cheaper than ABS, but has a higher shrinkage factor which makes printing large objects more difficult. It does have a much lower coefficient of friction so you can print things that are very smooth.

I’ve never printed with this stuff.  Have you?  A higher shrinkage factor than ABS sounds pretty awful.  Then again, I mostly print fairly small parts, so then again I might not care.  And, for the last listed price of $30 for a 5 pound roll… it’s a dirt cheap printing option.

MakerBot Cupcake CNC print resolution

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Some people have asked me about the MakerBot’s print resolution.  Although this information can be found on the MakerBot wiki, there’s no harm in disseminating this data. 1  Before I get into some of the technical stuff, let me just say this – the print resolution is pretty freaking good for a $750 DIY robot and it will give a $15,000 commercial printer a run for it’s money.

As a printer that can create objects in three dimensions the normal two-dimensional printer resolution jargon of “DPI” or “dots per inch” doesn’t mean much.  The printing resolution for the X/Y axes is 0.085mm and the resolution for the Z axis is 3.125 microns.  Most of the time you’re going to have a Z axis resolution of about 1/3 of a millimeter.  If you print with layers much smaller than that it will take forever to print without a huge increase in quality.

Or, to put it another way…  if you were to hand me two objects one printed on a MakerBot and one printed on a commercial printer, I’m going to ask you why the heck one of them costs $14,000 more than the other.  I’ve printed some pretty intricate and detailed stuff on my MakerBot.  As I tune it I hope to improve it even more.

  1. If you haven’t poked around the website, I highly recommend it.  There’s a lot of information about the Cupcake CNC, RepRap, fused deposition modeling, robots, and all sorts of stuff. [↩]