Blender for 3d Printing - Great Tutorials by 3D Printing Professor

How to Design Parts for CNC Machining by Adam Bender

OpenSCAD Tips and Tricks by Benjamin Engel

Benjamin Engel created this great OpenSCAD tutorial where you will learn few useful tips and tricks.

MIT Software for Drone Design

MITCSAIL developed an interactive system for computational design, optimization, and fabrication of multicopters. The computational approach allows non-experts to design, explore, and evaluate a wide range of different multicopters




Project paper in PDF: http://cfg.mit.edu/sites/cfg.mit.edu/files/copter.pdf

Hopefully this software will be open sourced one day. I could not find it online.

CAD Tips and Tricks for Better 3D Printed Holes

Angus from Maker's Muse shows how to design holes that are easier to print.

Tutorial on how to hide secrets inside .stl files by Angus

Angus from Maker's Muse shows how to hide a printable geometry or entire objects inside a .stl file.

3D Printable Parametric Slew Bearings

Christoph Laimer published  another very useful project. He developed a fully 3D printable and working parametric slew bearings. Since they are developed to be sturdy they can be used in many different project where a simpler 3D printed ball bearing would fail.

Since the design is parametric, you can adapt it to fit your needs. One version even has conical bearings.

Project description:

Ball-bearings are very popular for 3d-printing. However they often fail for real applications. Using Fusion 360 I've created a parametric design of a "Crossed Roller Slew Bearing". The result is a pretty accurate and robust bearing. The bearing including the rollers is 3d-printed in separate parts. There are a few screws needed to clamp the two halves of the inner race together.

Here is the full video:





Thingiverse page:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2375124

A360 download page:

http://a360.co/2r9MFf5

http://a360.co/2r9JnZf

ViaCAD by Punch!CAD

I'm always on a search for the new and interesting software tools and when I received a tweet from Punch!CAD about their ViaCAD product I decided to take a look.

ViaCAD looks like an easy to use CAD that has an acceptable learning curve and feature set. You can start from the easy models and move into more complex stuff as you learn. Since it has support for many file formats I was able to open and edit things from various sources. The community behind it and support/tutorials available helped me find answers quickly.

The price seems very affordable and there are no additional fees or vendor lock-in features. It runs both on Windows and Mac machines.


ViaCAD has some powerful 3D printing features and tools:

• 3D Print Check: This tool checks a part for print viability, displaying warnings or errors to the user.
• Surface Normals Check: Facet normals define the inside and outside areas of a part. If facet normals are pointing the wrong way, the 3D printer may have problems creating the part. If you have a normals issue, there are several commands that can help you fix this problem.
• Overhang Analysis: The Overhang Analysis tool provides a means to visually inspect modeling areas that may require structural support for 3D printing. Meshes, surfaces, and solids facets normals are compared to the work plane direction. Angles that are less or equal to 45 degrees are highlighted as red.
• Wall Thickness: The Wall Thickness Analysis tool provides a means to visually inspect modeling areas that may be too thin for 3D printing. Meshes, surfaces, and solids facets are examined using ray intersections. 
• Preview Slices: The Preview Slices tool provides a user interface to slice models given a direction and thickness. The dialog box allows for animation through the slices and single stepping. One use of the Preview Slice tool is to verify a part has closed, non-overlapping sections, a requirement for 3D printing. The Save Slices option provides several options to save slices to DXF, STL or adds the results directly into your drawing.
• Auto Position: The Auto Position tool translates the model to the positive x, y coordinate system at z=0.
• Support Structure: Manually adds geometry to support material as it is created by the 3D printer. Support structures controls, include Attach Radius, Midpoint Radius, Base Radius, Base Thickness and Drag base and midpoints to modify structure location.
• Show Printer Volume: Toggles the boundary of the default 3D Printer. The volume is defined within the Printer Definitions dialog box.
• Printer Definitions: Sets key parameters of the 3D printer, including length, width, and height of the volume accessible by the printer. The parameters in the Printer Definitions dialog box are used for commands such as 3D Print Check and Auto Position.

Here is the ViaCAD presentation video:




For much more information go and check out the company website:

http://www.punchcad.com/

In the future, I'm going to explore ViaCAd further and see if it can bring a CAD noob like myself on to the next skill level.

Design thin PLA objects and make them strong in your oven

"CNC Kitchen" published this great video on how he designed gardening clips for his raspberries. He focuses on how to design thin-walled object in Fusion 360 and how to make it more weather resistant and stronger by annealing them in his oven.


Here is the video where you will learn a nice and easy design flow process and see several tools in action:




Here is the clip STL:

http://a360.co/2qouqQO

Here is the CNC Kitchen YT channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiczXOhGpvoQGhOL16EZiTg


And here are the PLA clips in the oven at 80C for 1 hour:

3D Printable Hinges Design Tutorial

Angus published this great tutorial on how to design and 3D print movable hinges.






You can find the files from the tutorial here:

https://gumroad.com/l/HFUjr

How to Make a Better 3D Printed Vise by Christoph Laimer

Christoph Laimer developed this useful 3d printed vise and published an in-depth video on design process and various variables that go into design process, like strength, materials, etc.


Here is the video:




Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2064269


Here are the main components after printing:

Tom Stanton 3D Prints his RC Flying Wing

Tom Stanton show us his trials and tribulations to get a 3d printed flying wing RC aircraft in the air. Interesting watch if you are into this hobby.

Here is his first video where he goes into design and basic parts printing:



Here is the fully 3d printed flying wing being developed and tested:



The aircraft was printed from clear PLA filament with a 0,4mm nozzle at 220 degree Celsius to maximise the layer strength. Weight of the aircraft was 730g.

Tom's Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/StantonFrames/about

Thomas explains how to get the new and free Autodesk Netfabb Basic

3D Modeling in Virtual Reality with the HTC Vive and Kodon

Here is a demonstration of 3d modelling for 3d printing in VR environment with Kodon software.




The rabbit looks somewhat weird:

Kodon on Steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/479010

For other VR projects click on "virtual reality" tag beneath,

Automatic Design of 3D Printable Robots by Disney

Disney Research released their software demonstration which shows how it is possible to automatically design 3d printable robots that can move with different cinematic and motion systems.

You basically just input what you want a robot to do and algorithms calculate the 3d printable design. I see dark future for human engineers job security.

Now it is used for small robotic creatures, but I can see it being used to developed large military mechas or smaller mission customizable war bots.




From project description:

We present an interactive design system that allows casual users to quickly create 3D-printable robotic creatures. Our approach automates the tedious parts of the design process while providing sample room for customization of morphology, proportions, gait and motion style.

The technical core of our framework is an efficient optimization-based solution that generates stable motions for legged robots of arbitrary designs. An intuitive set of editing tools allows the user to interactively explore the space of feasible designs and to study the relationship between morphological features and the resulting motions. Fabrication blueprints are generated automatically such that the robot designs can be manufactured using 3D-printing and off-the-shelf servo motors.

We demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution by designing six robotic creatures with a variety of morphological features: two, four or five legs, point or area feet, actuated spines and different proportions. We validate the feasibility of the designs generated with our system through physics simulations and physically-fabricated prototypes.

Project homepage:

http://www.disneyresearch.com/publication/interactive-design-of-3d-printable-robotic-creatures/

It just needs to be bigger and carry some lasers!

How To Design a Chainring Using Open Source Tools

Rich Olson has another great tutorial on how to design and make chainrings using open source software and low cost CNC.





Here is the link to original post with all the tools and scripts needed:

http://www.nothinglabs.com/chainringgen-making-a-chainring-with-open-source-software/


Rich makes a chainring for his bicycle but they have different uses in power transmission. Beside metal they can be also made on a small CNC from other materials like carbon fiber.




Finished carbon plate chainring for a custom bicycle:

Fab Forms Give Validity and Manufacturability to Customizable 3D Objects

Geniuses at MIT developed Fab Forms software that enables interactive and customizable design of 3d objects. Designed object can be customized by end user and still remain printable or machinable. Hopefully their code comes to some use in public and not forever lost in academic IP limbo.


Fab Forms description by MIT developer team:

We address the problem of allowing casual users to customize parametric models while maintaining their valid state as 3D-printable functional objects. We define Fab Form as any design representation that lends itself to interactive customization by a novice user, while remaining valid and manufacturable.

We propose a method to achieve these Fab Form requirements for general parametric designs tagged with a general set of automated validity tests and a small number of parameters exposed to the casual user.

Our solution separates Fab Form evaluation into a precomputation stage and a runtime stage. Parts of the geometry and design validity (such as manufacturability) are evaluated and stored in the precomputation stage by adaptively sampling the design space. At runtime the remainder of the evaluation is performed. This allows interactive navigation in the valid regions of the design space using an automatically generated Web user interface (UI). We evaluate our approach by converting several parametric models into corresponding Fab Forms.

Project homepage:

http://cfg.mit.edu/content/fab-forms-customizable-objects-fabrication-validity-and-geometry-caching

Design 3D Printed Cranial Plates

Here is a great detailed tutorial by Materialise on how to use their 3-matic software to design custom cranial implants for complex skull and head injuries. Useful for both medical professionals and amateurs.

3D Printing Complex Data Sets of DNA, DEM and Sound

Here is a compilation of few detailed guides on how to design 3d printable objects from complex data like DNA, topological maps and sound.


How to get 3d printable objects from 23andme raw DNA data set


With this tutorial you will be able to take raw DNA data from 23andme DNA analysis and model a 3d printable object in OpenSCAD with a custom plugin.

Detailed guide and software:

http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Print-a-sculpture-from-your-DNA/

https://github.com/jjg/3dna 3dna code for OpenSCAD


How to 3d print geographical maps, topology, landscape and other geographical data


3DPrintingNinja developed an Instructables tutorial on how to convert DEM (digital elevation model) data into 3d printable objects.

Detailed instructions:

http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printing-Models-of-Landscapes-Topology-Mountain/


Sonic Sculptures


With this free app you can get 3d models from visualized sound waves.




Download the software and get the instructions here:

http://blairneal.com/portfolio_page/sonic-sculptures/

http://www.thingiverse.com/laserpilot/collections/sonic-prints

Design your own 3d printer from recycled parts with this FreeCAD add-on and web services

If you want to make a 3d printer from electronic waste and recycled parts from junk 2d printer, you will find this software tools very useful. They generate model of a 3d printer with FreeCAD plugin based on the parts you have. It should help you enormously to design your own custom 3d printer from available parts.

Example of the generated 3d printer:

The projects are still in development and I don't have enough knowledge to test it out but it looks very promising. There seems to be a link between those two projects but I'm not sure what it is.

You can try the web applications where you can input all of the parts and their specifications and get the output FreeCAD design:

Retr3D https://www.wevolver.com/matthew.rogge/retr3d/main/description/ 

source code is available at: https://github.com/Maaphoo/Retr3d

or

https://cdn.rawgit.com/masterperson40/ewaste3Dprinter/master/config_generator/index.html

Here is the part of the web app menu with ton of options for various parts:

Github.io page (currently not working):

http://masterperson40.github.io/ewaste3Dprinter/

Source with comments discussion:

http://hackaday.com/2015/07/20/automatically-designing-3d-printers-from-e-waste/

Let me know if you have any experiences with it!