Engineering test pieces

[Captain Starfish]

It's been a while since I used my printer, kinda got over the initial excitement and it went into my toolbox then life and work got in the way of projects.

Cranked it up the other day, though, and THIS is why I bought my Max 1 way back when. I now have 4 axis machining capability but delrin and aluminium are expensive and labour intensive when I have to re-do stuff after realising I'd missed something in the design. Being able to crank out a print, drill and mill critical surfaces and bores to tolerance, test fit everything and just reprint design tweaks instead? It makes design fun again.

Case in point: this device will eventually be an analyser for diving gas with a few nice features that aren't available on commercial ones kicking around already. There's a pressure regulator valve sitting behind that locking collar which requires some springs, seats and valves to be assembled to the housing.

After printing it I learned very quickly which surfaces required a tight tolerance for an accurate fit, which ones were too tight for o-rings, how things like the pressure set screw might foul on the collar and that my original design for the pressure valve (ball bearing on plastic seat) just wasn't going to work on the low pressures I'm working with. Also looking at shapes which made a whole lot of sense on the CAD screen but left me scratching my head thinking "fine, but how am I going to get tooling into that hole? How am I going to cut that pocket on the CNC?" None of these things were particularly evident working in CAD land, but they immediately belted me in the face when I had a real object in my hand.

Back to the drawing "board" and some re-design time with a new approach to the valve and some of the dimensions which will make it work a lot better.

But I just had to share a happy moment, folks: even though there are lots of limitations with what these printers can make for you in terms of strength, porosity, dimensional accuracy and all that jazz, they are the best thing since sliced bread for quickly and easily belting out prototypes.

Love it.

[Eaglezsoar]

Great job and a great use for the printer. The prototypes will work well before you commit everything to metal.

[JFettig]

Glad to see people using 3d printers for what they were made for!