Transcript:
So if you haven’t noticed by now or maybe you’re just new to the channel. I really like 3d printing. I use 3d printing in a surprising amount of my projects, even the ones that you wouldn’t think have interviewed printing in them, so today’s video we’re talking about 3d printing and whether or not a 3d printer can be a useful tool for you to have. [MUSIC] All right, so first things. First, there’s a couple of different types of 3d printers out there, but for this video we’re only going to worry about the most common one, which is also the easiest one to use, and since these types of 3d printers are just a fancy glue gun that instead of melting glue stick, melt this plastic wire here, which is called filament and that molten filament is then laid down on the print surface layer by layer until it has created the shape that you want and that’s basically how every 3d printer works. It’s just layers up on layers of different types of materials to create the shape that you finally want. There’s other types of 3d printers that instead of melting plastic filament use lasers to melt plastic powder or a uv light to cure a liquid resin. Those are cool and all, but we won’t worry about those for now. So a lot of people when you ask them. If they know about 3d printing, they will say, yeah, sure, that’s the thing that makes like small plastic toys and figures, right, and, yeah, sure you can definitely print small plastic toys like this cute, little low poly Pikachu, or even this functioning rubik’s cube with braille patterns on it, but printing toys and small decorative items is definitely not the only thing 3d printing is good for, like, take my last video, for instance, where I 3d printed this entire huge camera arm that the camera is sitting on right now, and although it took me a really long time to print all these parts, The end result is that I now have a camera arm that I would have to pay a thousand dollars for if I was to buy commercially or take another one of my bigger 3d printing projects where I 3d printed literally hundreds of these boxes to organize all my small parts. Just the way I wanted to do so. I guess the short answer to the question, whether or not 3d printing is useful is yes, absolutely it’s super useful, but there’s a catch now. The reason why 3d printing is so useful for me. Is that let’s say I have an idea. I want to print these boxes because of my background and my skill set. I’m able to go my computer create a 3d model of this thing and then have it printed out on the 3d printer, which is great. I’m really quickly able to get exactly what I want, but that’s also. What kind of is the problem you see in order to get the full potential out of your 3d printer? That kind of comes with needing to know at least the basics of 3d modeling. Because if you don’t have the ability to create your own 3d models, you’re kind of stuck with the stuff that’s already on the internet that someone else already has 3d modeled, put on the internet for you to download and print for yourself, which don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of really great stuff out there like there’s a bunch of really useful stuff that I’ve downloaded and printed that someone else designed. And if you want to, you can download all these things that we’ll talk about in this video. All of these? I made available to download for free ill. Leave a link in the description below as well as I’ll leave links to all the other things that are designed by other people, also in the description below, but to summarize, yes, 3d printing is super useful but to get the most out of your 3d printer. You kind of need to learn some basic 3d modeling, which I think is a really great skill to have anyways. It’s not only useful for 3d printing, but also to plan and visualize your projects before you start building them. There’s also a lot of really great software out there that is free to use. I would personally probably recommend learning fusion 360 and there’s a lot of great resources out there that will teach you everything you need to know to get started with 3d modeling, So let’s have a look at all the really cool 3d printing stuff that I have here in my workshop. We can divide all these things into two main categories. The first one being where the printed part is the final product like these assortment boxes or these joints that I use to make this side table or bar stool, although a little flimsy bar stool and the other category being 3d printed parts to help you make the final product like these 3d printed router guides that I used for the work table or these drill guides that I use to drill the holes in the camera rig that I just built, so let’s start with a couple of the cool things that I found online that other people have designed that I’ve printed, and that I find really useful. Which is this little guy right here? What is it you might ask? Well, it’s a little 3d printed dust cyclone. So this guy separates out all the dust from my bandsaw into this bucket right here so that it doesn’t go into the vacuum cleaner and clog up the filters. I’ve got it permanently hooked up to my bandsaw, and it does a really great job at collecting all the dust. This is a really cool two-part design and it works in a way that it forces the dust to spiral around the outside of this shape and then fall through this funnel into the bucket, and then all the clean air gets sucked out up in through that hole. This thing is just basically a really small version of the really big one that I built for the big dust extractor that we have in the other side of the workshop. If you haven’t seen that yet, there’s a two-part build series on that. I’ll leave that linked right up there, and in order to connect this thing to my bandsaw, I actually 3d model and printed this guy down here that connects the bandsaw to the holes from the vacuum cleaner and while we’re at it, let’s have a look at some other a little bit bigger dust collection, things that I printed, so I’ve also printed a bunch of these things. What are these you may ask? Nope, they’re not a part of some big medieval armor. They’re actually big y joints that go on our dust collection system. Let me show you you see in here. We’ve got these really big dust extraction pipes running up here, and we’ve got two of these mounted up there and there, and these things act like really big wide joints so that we get nice and turbulent, free air to flow all the way to the dust extractor, which is behind there and yes, you can usually buy these, but here in Norway in that size, they were basically impossible to find or if we could find them. They were like insanely expensive, so with a little bit of time and about 15 20 bucks in plastic. We just printed some. Okay, so let’s have another look at some article things that other people have designed that I’ve downloaded printed out and that I find really useful. One of these things. Is this guy? This is a self-centering dowel jig that uses a couple of bearings and a couple of bolts together with a bunch of 3d printed parts to allow you to take this guy slap it on there. And now these two parts kind of clamp together like this so that you can drill a perfectly centered dowel hole now. This is a perfect example of 3d printing being super useful. Even though you don’t have any 3d modeling skills, download this thing, insert a couple of bearings and you’ve got yourself a tool that you normally would have to go and buy in a hardware store, okay. We made a bit of a mess, but don’t worry. I’ve got this 3d printed vacuum cleaner nozzle tip adapter. This thing goes on my regular vacuum cleaner. I mean, it’s meant to reach into tight places, but you get the idea. This thing is also just downloaded on the internet. Oh, and just as a final little fun thing, I’ve also downloaded these things. Which are these are organizers for all the different sizes of nozzles that I have for my different 3d printers and yeah, I still have to print another one for my new Prusa printer, which, by the way is printing an exciting new project for my next video. But that’s all you get to see a lot. You’ll have to wait until next week to figure out what that is for so like I said, 3d printing can either be the final product or it can be used to create the final product and one of my favorite ways to do that is by creating 3d printed molds. This is a mold! I designed a while back. It consists of three of these identical parts with another part in the middle. These all go together like this to create this negative space in here also called the mold that will make one of these planters that you can have a little plant in. Isn’t that so cool that you can download and print out something in flimsy plastic cast into it and then the end result. Is this really nice and heavy, actual product and like? I said this thing you can download for free. The link is right below that like button and the same goes for all of these. Which are the router templates that I use to router out the candles for both my work table drawers for the miter saw station drawers and for assortment cabinet drawers. They all work with this guy that gets attached to a router and then follows the shape here so that you can router out that pocket in your drawer fronts and you know what creating templates and jigs and other similar things like this is actually really commonly used in a lot of industries like the automotive industry, where they use 3d printed parts as alignment guides when they assemble the vehicles now talking about drawer handles, let’s have a look at some 3d printed. One’s, so if you haven’t seen this guy yet. This is where a lot of the assortment boxes live here. I’ve got everything organized in all the sizes, everything from m3 up here to m10 12 and a bunch of other stuff, all over the place. I won’t go into more detail about this thing. There’s a full video on this entire build that you can check out up here, but I just wanted to show you that. These handles also are 3d printed, and in my opinion, they look really nice now. Just above here this thing. I believe you have not seen yet. I’ve 3d printed these holders that I’ve attached to a board and they all fit different sizes of cups, so I have easy access to everything from Big 1 liter ones to the really tiny ones, all right, moving on now, while we’re on the subject of organizing stuff, I do actually have a few of these inserts that you guys have not seen yet so like my assortment cabinet. This whole thing is filled with different sizes of assortment bins. But I’ve got one more cool thing in here and that is I’ve got a glove dispenser That also perfectly fits within this grid and down here. I’ve got these holders for the sandpaper for the orbital center that also perfectly fit in the same grid. All right, so let’s finish this video off with a rapid fire list of a bunch of the other cool 3d printed parts. I’ve got in here holders from Bosch L boxes that hold them in place on the doors that I made, and you handle from a drill press because the original was missing as well as a new frame for the new switch that I installed on the same drill press, basically, all the parts that I made for this electric scooter made from an old skateboard deck, Pikachu, baby and baby Groot and last, but not least, of course, all the parts for this massive camera arm thing that I just spent hundreds of hours through your printing so yeah. I think that pretty much sums up this video, So I hope this video has helped you get a little bit better. Understanding of what 3d printing can be useful for, and maybe some of the challenges and limitations 3d printing might have so. I really hope you enjoyed watching this video. As I said, I’ll leave a link to where you can download all these parts either. They’re designed by me or if I’ve just downloaded and printed them, there will be a link in the description below, and if you enjoyed the video, please give it a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe and ring that bell. So you get notified every time I upload something new as for now, Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you guys in the next one. [music] bye!