Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 31 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers, for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Andy Cottom, Kevin Buckner, and Chris Weber.
You guys have a good week?
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Yep.
Chris
Yep.
That’s not pretty quick.
Frank
Well, that’s good.
I’m glad that we started it in normal time today.
It didn’t throw me off at all.
Chris
Well, I had to take my old water heater out down to the dump today, so that’s why I was running a few minutes behind, guys.
Yeah.
Andy
Was it 300 pounds heavier than it was when you bought it?
Chris
No.
I let it drain.
Frank
I don’t know.
That part of Ogden, I would accept that it was heavier because of oxidation inside of the water tank.
Chris
Yeah.
It was pretty rusty.
Andy
With it being taking it down to that part of Ogden, you probably just could have floated it with all the flooding they got.
There’s that, too.
Chris
Especially while the recycling plant is right next to that part of the river.
Frank
I just had a weird thought.
Has anybody been down to the disc golf course to see how flooded out it is?
Andy
No, but that would be kind of fun.
I should go alongside there and take my drone through it and take some video of it because guaranteed it’s flooded out.
Frank
I mean, I don’t think that we’ve been back in force since the last time it flooded out and half the thing was…
Chris
Yeah, we lost half of the parkway.
That was great.
Yeah, that was really great.
Andy
Yeah, I don’t think we’ve been back because they didn’t repair it when we were out disc golfing, did they?
Frank
I know that…
Chris
It was the following year.
They did.
Frank
They’ve done a lot of grooming.
They had a fire at one point, so that helped them with their grooming and thinning out some of the trees and whatnot.
They’ve got the back, what is it, back nine, that you have to have a special understanding to play the extra nine baskets for.
Chris
I know that the land was sold for development last year, so it may not be accessible anymore.
Andy
That sucks.
I mean, I know we don’t go play golf anymore, but it was nice knowing it was always an option if we wanted to.
I still got my discs.
Do you?
Frank
Yeah, I got mine.
I’ve thought about what it would be like even to print something for them and just haven’t gotten that far.
Andy
Oh, that’d be cool to print your own discs out of TPU.
Frank
I don’t know that I would print my discs though.
I don’t think they would stand up to the abuse personally.
Chris
I was thinking about printing something to hold little LED lights just on the inside corners or on the inside corner of the discs so that when you throw the disc, it senses the movement and lights up, then you can look over in the grass and see your disc blinking so that you can find it real easy.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frank
I don’t feel like it’s such a problem in broad daylight.
My issue has always been I need some kind of tracker on it.
Chris
Oh, or I could use these little Bluetooth trackers.
Frank
Yeah, something like that so that you can find your disc in the middle of the swamp.
Chris
Yeah.
Yeah, just grab your phone out and go, it’s right around there, okay, cool.
Frank
I’ve lost a dozen discs in that little, I guess not technically a swamp.
Andy
My biggest memory of us disc golfing is you wading your ass into that swamp in that cold.
Oh, that was an early spring, I found the disc and it was a little like right about my hips, but it was at the bottom of the silty swampy area and the only way I could get it because my toe shoes weren’t allowing me to try it up so I had to go down with my hand and the only way I could reach it was by holding my breath.
So I just dunked myself to grab this $10 disc out of the bottom of a freezing cold stale body of water.
Andy
Yeah, it was terrible.
It was one of those moments when you came back that was absolutely hilarious and nobody dared laugh.
Frank
Yeah, well, I’m prone to those, honestly.
Half the time you look at me and go, oh, that doesn’t look comfortable.
And then the other half the time I look at it and go, oh, that was not comfortable.
Yeah, good times back then.
Andy
I’m sure we could use a lot of 3D printing techniques to involve with our little golf game.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
I’ve got these little two dollar Chinese Bluetooth tracker things that are meant for your keys.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
They’re great for finding your keys around the house, you know, regular Bluetooth range.
Andy
I use those too, yeah.
Chris
So yeah, you just print a little thing that lets you glue that on the inside of your disc and counter counterweight it so that it’s still balanced so that your disc isn’t off so far by putting this tracker on it.
Frank
Yeah, the way you throw, would you know it was unbalanced?
Chris
Ouch.
Andy
You know what one thing that was kind of neat is my son’s got his glasses and my son’s only nine.
So of course, they’re constantly getting lost.
So we buy the super cheap ones knowing we’ll replace them, but we let them pick out his frames and he picked out glow in the dark frames because he’s nine.
And one of the absolute neat things about them that we discovered is we’ve got an actual like high powered black light and if he loses his glasses anywhere, we always just turn out the lights, go get the black light and shine that around because oh my gosh, glow in the dark, just bright light.
I mean, it reflects that so hard.
Chris
Oh yeah.
Andy
So easy to see.
If I could go back to back when we were golfing, I would love to have had that flashlight and then I would have just painted the discs, you know, like they glow green or whatever and then went with that.
Frank
Like, geotag the area where they think they are and go back at night.
Chris
Or dip them in tonic water.
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Good times.
Frank
Well, and I’ve still got some glow in the dark filament might be a black light.
Chris
Yeah.
That’s the great thing about printing glow in the dark stuff is like so for the fourth of July, we can’t do we haven’t been able to do fireworks over at my house for like almost ever since I bought the house.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Like because of the park or…
Chris
yeah, because of the because of that hill with all the weeds and things that.
Frank
Oh yeah.
Chris
Always such a big fire hazard might…
Frank
well, and if it burns away, then you get lawn creep and all that other stuff where everybody’s been complaining about that for a while anyway.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, the city’s pretty much banned my whole block from from doing fireworks all of these years.
So instead we’ve been doing glow in the dark parties.
Frank
Okay.
Andy
Okay.
Chris
So we’ll we’ll set up some black lights and have a bunch of of those glow sticks and things, but I didn’t I didn’t have glow in the dark plastic last year, but this year I do.
So now I’m going to be able to print some really fun things to have around for these glow in the dark party glow in the dark fourth of July parties and also that’s I can put them away and put them with the holiday stuff and pull them out year after year.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
It’s going to be nice.
Andy
That does sound nice.
Frank
That does sound fun.
That makes me want to go get some black lights for like my living room and that sort of thing.
And I’m going to have my nephew for the weekend before.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
So we’re going to do the fourth of July and I’ve got a great view of the valley.
So we don’t we don’t travel for the fourth in July anymore.
We just go out on our back balcony.
Chris
So yeah, just like we do in my backyard.
Yeah.
That’s awesome.
Frank
And so, yeah, that’s a fun idea.
And now is the time to put it out there so that anybody who hears it can go, yeah, there’s like two months until fourth of July.
Let’s do this now.
Andy
Fireworks are stupid expensive nowadays.
We moved on to the 3D printing Estes rockets and buying Estes engines put in them and shooting those off for the fourth of July instead of…
Frank
They’re basically bottle rockets anyway.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris
Oh, and you know what is still relatively cheap is dry ice.
You can make dry ice dry ice rockets.
Chris
Yeah, that’s true.
Frank
With the chance that they’ll turn in the dry ice bombs, but I guess it’s no worse than putting black powder in a Coke bottle.
Chris
Oh, no.
So what you do is you 3D print a pressure release cap for like a bottle.
And so, it’s specifically printed in a way that it will give at a certain pressure and that the bottle will not.
And so you end up with a directional pew
Andy
yeah, you got a good point.
Chris
That’s actually a thing you can do with your 3D printer is print pressure relief caps.
So that they blow up at a certain ish pressure.
Andy
Yeah.
And even if you accidentally overdo it, you’re still going to wind up blowing off the cap, 3D printed cap well before the bottle explodes.
Chris
Exactly.
That’s the point.
Yeah.
Andy
That’s cool.
That’s a neat idea.
Chris
They’re not dry ice bombs anymore.
They’re dry ice rockets.
Andy
I’ve got a setup, a nice setup for water rockets for making like two liter bottles and clipping on the end, filling with a little bit of water and all that.
It’s got like an old brake handle for the release and it’s made out of metal.
It’s kind of a nice one for the kids.
Frank
For our visual listeners, he was squeezing his hand like with a bicycle brake.
Andy
Oh, like a bike brake, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it’s got like that setup for the release.
It’s kind of a nice little setup and being able to take the kids out and launch those kind of rockets with just compressed air is a lot of fun.
I bet dry ice would pack even more of a punch.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
I bet it would.
Andy, have you worked on any projects this week?
Andy
Oh my God.
So I’m still, I finished up all the stuff that the wife had me doing for this play.
I’ve been putting all these.
Frank
That was a month and a half long project for you, dude.
Andy
Yeah, I put like five freaking reels through the printer, which is a lot for me, but they all came out really good.
And now my printer is taking a nice little break, which is nice.
But other than finishing those up, I haven’t started any new projects for this week.
I’ve got a couple I need to do.
Last podcast, I mentioned that the, what’s it called, the impeller for my fish tank pump.
I’ve given up on trying to print a better one.
I’ve got some pretty good designs and I’m only increasing the output by like maybe one and a half.
It’s not much better than that.
So I’ve decided to go with a, just a different pump altogether and doing all, looking through all the aquarium style pumps have to be submerged.
The couple that don’t are kind of stupid expensive.
And so I wound up settling on a hot water circulator pump for a house.
It’s something that runs really quiet.
It runs all the time and it’s, it’s the one I picked out was $30 and it’s got a minimum flow rate of 400 liters an hour.
And then the maximum’s up like 16 or something, but filters the size of mine are typically about 400.
So it fits perfectly within that.
So I’m going to use that.
But that means I get to make fittings for that system to be able to adapt to this pump.
I get to take the pump off of the canister and then make a fitting for that that can, you know, have a barbed hose fitting that I can put a pipe onto the pump and then from the pump back into the tank.
So this is going to be my second attempt to make, to 3D print something watertight.
And I’ve decided to do that with TPU.
Even though TPU is not aquarium safe, I’m going to use some silicone spray to waterproof the TPU components.
And so the water won’t actually be in contact with the TPU, it’ll be in contact with the silicone.
It’ll be like a, that stuff develops like a silicone sleeve over whatever you spray it on top of.
So if I spray the entire component, then I’ll be more or less working with silicone and not the actual 3D printed part.
Frank
And then the TPU is more of a core.
Andy
Structural.
Yeah, it’s just a structural component, but that’s, that’s three components.
I get a print, the adapter from the canister and then the two adapters that go onto the pump.
And so looking forward to that, I’ve never tried to do that before.
I, the only other thing I’ve tried to print that was watertight was a very small barbed adapter for my 3D printers water cooling system where it went from a quarter inch hose down to a two millimeter ID hose.
And they just don’t make those kind of barbed adapters.
So I 3D printed one and it’s working.
And I wasn’t expecting to, excuse me, I wasn’t expecting it to, but it’s not leaking.
So it’s working great, but that’s the only other time I’ve had a success there.
So I’m hoping that this will work.
If it does, then I’m going to buy another pump for our other tank and swap its canister pump out too.
But that’s on the docket.
My phone case that we’ve talked about a bunch, I still have not sat down and cut that up to print it.
So I still need to do that.
I’m still using the terribly stiff case that I made a long time ago, um, which is kind of annoying, but, uh, but yeah, as far as 3D printing goes, that’s, that’s all I did.
My little brother’s coming over today.
He says he’s got something he wants me to print a replacement for if we could do it while he’s here.
So I’ll probably be on the printer today for, you know, 10, 20 minutes on a small print.
But other than that, that’s been it for me.
Chris
So you’re hooking up a small boat motor to your aquarium.
That’s pretty cool.
Andy
I, I tell you what, this little $30 pump, man, it’s cast iron, the end of it, and it’s just this huge meaty.
It looks and feels like a very well built pump.
I’m very surprised that it was only 30 bucks.
Frank
Seeing you guys talk about it.
Just reminded me that I’ve got a sump that I run, uh, vinegar through my, uh, water heater with twice a year.
Andy
Oh, that’s a good idea.
Frank
Just made me wonder.
Andy
Have I ever showed you the adapter I made for my sump pump that I 3D printed?
Frank
Um, maybe.
Andy
This was a long time ago.
So I got a pretty nice sump pump, but the, uh, the only problem is, is that it’s, um, it’s adapting a hose to it was, uh, really kind of a difficult thing.
The hose doesn’t fit over it quite well.
Frank
I do think that we had this conversation and my sump came with an adapter for that purpose.
Andy
Yeah.
Well, my, my sumps got a two inch diameter output, I believe it is.
And, uh, I, I got, I wanted to doubt it comes when I use it, it can purge that two inches at a very high velocity and I don’t need that velocity, but the threads on the inside of that, the, or the threads on that two inch output are on the inside.
So whatever adapter I put into it is reducing the, uh, the volume that the pump can push out.
Okay.
So I wound up making a TPU ring that can clamp onto the outside of that pipe.
And then that can then attach to a three inch discharge hose.
So I can get everything out of the sump pump that I can with as little restrictions as possible into a three inch discharge hose…
Frank
and still have something that connects to it.
Andy
yeah, but that locking adapter, that it’s a big old barbed fitting that attaches to the hose and it locks into the TPU ring that clamps onto the, around the outside with a screw that kind of holds everything together.
It’s just one of those little projects that turned out really nice.
So it was, this was before we did the podcast.
This was a while ago I printed that, but, uh, figuring how much flooding we got going on here at the moment.
I’ve got, I live in an area where my house is on a hill that I don’t have to worry about the flooding, but you know, I’ve got the big carpet dryer and the sump pump and all that for any friends or family that, that might require it during this season, ready to go.
And that’s one of the things that I’m kind of happy to have is that big old beefy sump pump that can, that can do, you know, a three inch purge hose.
Frank
So I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a three inch hose outside of the Navy.
Andy
It’s a fire hose.
Yeah.
It’s just like a fire hose.
Frank
Yeah.
That’s, yeah.
The three inches, the standard on the ships and is it.
So I mean, I grew accustomed to working with them, but I just hadn’t occurred to me that somebody in the civilian world might care to have a three inch fire hose.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it works really good.
I think I got 50 foot of hose.
So from a basement, clear to the outside, it should reach just fine.
And it’s a, it’s a flat discharge hose.
Frank
So anywhere in Ogden, that should get you from where the pump is to outside.
Just easy.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, just be just being ready to go for your own basement as a backup plan.
If you ever did have a flood, you know, you want to be prepared with that kind of stuff.
Frank
So especially in an old neighborhood like that, you can’t necessarily trust the drains in the basement.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
No kidding.
Yeah.
There are play pipes that are really scary.
In fact, scary enough.
I bought insurance on mine.
So when it fails, I’ll be okay.
Chris
Yeah.
That was a good 12 grand.
I had to pay to fix mine.
Andy
Did you have to do yours?
Chris
Yeah, I did about four, four years ago, I think
Andy
I had no idea.
Wow.
Chris
Yeah.
Yeah.
The play pipes collapsed and that was that.
Andy
That kind of sucks.
I wish it would have been known or been in that situation now because like, I got a back hoe.
We could have dug it up and fixed it ourselves.
Chris
No, there was, there was, there was city requirements.
Oh, was it out in the road?
No, but the city requirements for doing it was that it had to be a licensed contractor and then they, you had to pay for, you had to pay the permit for the work and have an inspector check it.
Andy
Oh, okay.
I still got the mindset of that I had growing up here where I just tried to do everything myself and not consider the proper ways of doing things and I’m trying to get out of that.
Frank
Well…
Chris
As far as your, as far as your main goes, the city has, does have regulations.
So I want to follow those.
Andy
I had no idea because the lateral going out to the main is yours until it hits the sewer main in the street.
Frank
Right.
Chris
And it is yours.
But if, if you’re caught getting it done by anyone in the city and you’re just doing it yourself without a permit or any of that stuff, yeah, you’ll be in big trouble.
Frank
I get the whole permit.
You need to call before you dig and all that other stuff, but if you’re putting in something that should work and you get an inspector, it shouldn’t require a, now there’s a lot of should all over this statement.
And I understand the whole let’s have people state certified so that, right, so in order to get the job.
Chris
Yeah.
In order to get the permit from the city, you have to have a, it has to be a licensed contractor getting the permit or something, at least with this, at least with the sewer main, they, they, they care less, they, they care a lot less about electrical and stuff like that inside the house.
Andy
But that’s funny.
That’s where I would have drawn the line, even though I’ve done a lot of stuff inside my house.
Frank
On the other side of the electrical.
Right.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Frank
Well, okay.
Let’s go back to when you bought the house, it should have been condemned.
So…
Andy
that is true.
Chris
Frank, Frank dropping the S bomb everywhere today,
Kevin
Right?
Andy
Yeah.
No, no, he’s, he’s not wrong.
My house, when we purchased it was a property to be condemned.
Nobody could live in my house until certain things were repaired.
Thankfully, the things that required to be repaired weren’t major things that, I mean, they were major.
Like gosh, the fridge had fallen halfway through the floor because the ice maker on the fridge was leaking for years and years and just deteriorated the floor.
So I had to replace those entire floor joists.
So it wasn’t like small things.
However, things like the roof had never leaked and this, this has got the old military foundation, the reinforced concrete, what 16 inches of concrete foundation.
And so the foundation’s good..
But, but yeah, so everything else about it was good, but there were major problems with it that led the house to be unlivable.
And that’s one of the reasons why I was able to buy it so cheap.
And one of the reasons why I could not live in it for like the first three months we had it.
It had no toilets when we bought it for God’s sakes.
Chris
Yeah.
That was interesting.
Andy
I don’t know what was going on here with the people who had it before me because they had it repossessed by the bank.
So it was an absolute disaster in this house and we completely tore it out and rebuilt it the inside of it.
Frank
It’s unfortunate and yet common when the bank takes a house, I’m pretty sure they expect it to be flooded and gutted when the bank takes it.
And you know, it might be 10%, might be 1%, might be even less than that, that actually leave a house in that condition.
They just expect it to happen.
Chris
Yeah.
I was reading stories about repossessed houses where the people decided to drill holes through all of the, through the water main and stuff like that on their way out.
Andy
Just to be a pain.
Frank
That strikes me as petty.
Chris
Yeah.
As soon as somebody turned the water back on or pulled the valve and the house would just flood.
Andy
Geez.
Chris
That’s stupid.
Frank
It’s petty.
Anyway.
Chris, you work on anything this week?
Chris
No, not really.
As I mentioned, I was, I did last weekend, I did my water heater.
So and during the week, this week, it was all just kind of planning in things.
The child’s birthday is coming up.
So it’s getting, getting invitations ready and things.
So playing with not Photoshop, making invitations and stuff of that nature.
So not been playing with the printer at all this week.
Frank
So there’s a side tangent because I guess that’s where we’re going today.
What’s your problem with saying GIMP instead of selling Photoshop as not Photoshop?
Andy
Is that what you use is GIMP?
Yep.
I use GIMP.
Frank
GIMP’s good.
They’re pretty good and they’re open source.
So yeah, but let’s advertise for them instead of Photoshop since we’re getting paid so much for all of this stuff anyway.
Chris
By the way, I, I hate Photoshop.
I had to try to remove it from my sister-in-law’s computer when she, when her license expired.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Good.
Hugging.
Gravy.
That’s what I’m talking about.
Andy
I’m still using that old JASIK PaintShop Pro from the 90s.
Chris
Oh yeah.
I had that on my old laptop.
That thing was actually pretty robust.
Was everything I needed to do so I never moved on.
Frank
Well, there you go.
Hey, Kev, have you learned anything new about your FDM printer this week?
Kevin
Yes, I have.
Well, more, more so the, the slicer software.
I didn’t know until yesterday about the function called ironing that makes the top part of flat surfaces look more smooth.
Now I thought it was interesting Andy said the smooth like the contact on the build plate because the underside of the things I’ve been printing look the same as the top side in that picture I’ve shown you.
So there’s got to be some function that would smooth it out on the build plate also that I’m unaware of.
Andy
Do you have a textured bed?
Kevin
Yes.
Andy
That’s why.
Kevin
Okay.
Andy
It’s a flat plate glass bed for mine.
So that’s why my prints come out like shiny from the bottom.
But yeah, if you’ve got a textured bed that’s going to help with adhesion.
But yeah, it’s always going to be that textured then.
Frank
I thought you had a smooth tempered glass bed like mine, Kev.
Kevin
Nope.
It’s, it’s textured and I think I read something about it saying that it’s an acrylic overlay.
Frank
Hmm.
Chris
Hmm.
Kevin
It’s, it’s textured and, and I kind of wonder if I need to get a new one because with my adventures with leveling it improperly, I kind of sort of etched the bed with the nozzle.
Andy
Oh, no.
Chris
You know, I’m sure, I’m not sure that’s something a little bit of sandpaper won’t fix.
Frank
And if it’s on the edge, don’t worry about it.
You’re probably not going to come anywhere close it.
Kevin
No, it’s.
Frank
Oh, it’s in the center.
Yeah.
That could be a problem.
Even if you do take sandpaper to it, if you take off, what is it?
I don’t know.
Well, you have to zero one millimeters of top…
Chris
then you have to do it across the whole bed kind of even.
Frank
Yeah.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
That, that could be.
Chris
Oh, no, no.
Frank
It gets real complex real quick.
Chris
No, it’s not.
What you do is you have a, is you lay out some sand, some sand grit on your, on your workbench big enough for you to take the whole piece of glass on the workbench and run it all at the same time.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
That’s assuming, Kevin, do you have a workbench that you know is perfectly flat?
Kevin
Not one that I know for sure is perfectly flat.
Chris
That’s a good point.
Andy
It would be a good idea though to get used to it and get some printing done with it and really zero it in on how to use it because then later on down the road, if you want to switch out beds, you might want to go to a different kind of bed.
The textured beds are great for adhesion, but it’s, it’s a little bit like a handicap too because then you can’t get the good bottom surface area or surface, you know, quality as you can with just straight plate glass.
Chris
I’m not sure that’s entirely true there and because when I print stuff, I do get a nice smooth shiny surface on the bottom of mine and I do have a textured bed.
So I’m wondering if, if maybe it’s, uh, maybe it’s a little bit to do with his print settings a little bit to do with his, uh, bed temperature because I do have my bed temperature a little higher than recommended.
Chris
Okay.
Kevin
But it’s not anything, if it’s anything to do with my bed temperature, it would, uh, it would be that it’s maybe too low.
I haven’t adjusted the bed temperature at all.
Chris
Okay.
Yeah.
Cause my recommendation I think was for 40C or something like that.
And I, I have it up at like 55 to 60.
Frank
Yeah.
I run it about 50 myself.
So this, this might be it.
Andy
I print PLA cold.
I don’t run my bed heater for PLA.
Well, I mean, when, when I, I just go with the default settings and the default settings are for PLA to, uh, heat it up to 50 or 60 degrees.
So it’s not like it’s hot.
It’s just warm.
Andy
Yeah.
Well, yeah, that’s fine.
Uh, the only reason why I turned my bed heater off is because it does help with adhesion, but I noticed a difference in, it was kind of hard to sell.
It wasn’t better or worse, but you could see the first like three millimeters or so that touched the bed were of a different color than the rest of the print.
And when I turned the bed heater off, that completely stopped that.
And since I use hairspray, I don’t have to worry about adhesion issues.
So the heated bed isn’t for adhesion.
So I just leave the bed off.
Chris
I don’t know that I’ve noticed that with my
Frank
I haven’t noticed any discoloration either.
That’s interesting.
Chris
Except for the, uh, except for the prints where I’m printing color changing stuff, but that’s because it’s supposed to change color when it gets hot.
It doesn’t stay.
It doesn’t stay discolored, but like the prints going and like down at the bed where the color change stuff is, is, is still hot because the bed’s warm, you know, it’s one color.
And then the part of the print in the middle where it’s had time to cool off is another color and then everything coming off the tip at the top is still kind of hot.
So it’s back to that same color.
It’s kind of interesting to see those color change ones print because it doesn’t.
Frank
I still haven’t played with any of the color change.
I keep thinking about it and not, well, uh, have you printed anything noteworthy?
Kevin
Uh, yes, yes, so, um, I, I have printed now most of what I need for two of the tube racks that I was talking about last week, uh, right now I’ve, I’m printing all of the end and side pieces for both of them and then that, and then I’ll just have the one more bottom piece to print for that.
And so I should have that all done tomorrow so I can get those assembled and take them to work on Monday.
And then, uh, I’ve also used my resin printer to print some mini figures and though one I printed last night, it’s kind of turned out pretty interesting that, um, I, I didn’t do a thorough job of cleaning all the black resin out of the resin vat, um, because I had read that using regular paper towels is not the best idea with, um, with the FEP because they leave little micro scratches that, uh, shorten the life of the FEP and also increase the chance that the, uh, printer won’t be able to pull the model off of the FEP and, and that’s probably part of the reason I’ve had some failures, like they pull off of the build plate partway through.
Uh, so these, the people who are saying this recommend using the, um, those blue disposable shop towels.
Chris
Yes absolutely.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
And also to use a silicone scraper to get most of the resin out of the vat.
So I, I used a silicone scraper that I went and I bought at the grocery store specifically for my printer, um, because I figured I didn’t want to use the, the same ones that I’ve got in my kitchen that I use for food applications.
Frank
Yes.
Chris
Well, only if you permanently, only if it’s permanently now for your printer and not going, going back to the kitchen ever again.
Kevin
Sure.
So I just, I went and bought a new one and it’s, it’s like $3.
It’s not like it really matters.
Chris
Uh, but it’s kind of like how I use old, old oven trays out in the garage.
Yeah.
Ever going back to the kitchen, but they’re really handy for, you know, cleaning off.
Frank
Tool management and bolts and all that stuff.
Kevin
Right.
I don’t have any of those, um, disposable shop towels yet.
So I, I just did the best I could with the, uh, um, with the silicone scraper.
And there were just a few drops of black left in it.
I didn’t think it would matter.
And especially since the blend of colors, like I took everything that I had done for the Easter eggs and I put them all in the same bottle with a, that had a little bit of gray left in it.
And that’s what I decided to use yesterday.
I was, I was printing up an NPC orc figure, um, because we, with our game, we have this NPC orc that comes and helps us out sometimes, uh, although he hasn’t done as much since my brother-in-law and my nephew joined, but he’s still made an appearance from time to time.
And so I feel like that it might be beneficial.
Anyway, the, uh, the resin was mostly kind of the, the classic peachy dark flesh color that you see from time to time in, in plastics and stuff, but there was some marbling that happened with the black that looked almost deliberate because the base has this large stone on it and that part is, uh, is gray black kind of smoky looking and everything else is mostly just the same color as everything as, as the, the, um, peachy resin and, and I thought it was interesting that with this, I thought the black was just going to disperse throughout the rest of the resin and no marbling would happen because it was all added at the beginning of the print and really the marbling that did happen was way into it.
So I’m really surprised that it happened there and it just made me say, you know, I wish I could figure out how to make that happen on purpose because anytime I’ve tried to make the marbling happen, it doesn’t.
The resin all just blends together and then there have been a few times when I’ve thought that the resin colors are just going to blend together and then they’ve ends up marbling.
So I don’t know.
I don’t know how to make it happen on purpose.
Frank
Make yourself expected to be solid when you really want it to marble and it will psychically decide to do the exact opposite.
Kevin
There you go.
Chris
Schrodinger’s earth print here.
Frank
What is it?
There was a compound in some sci-fi show where they had, oh, no, it’s Doctor Who.
Nearly psychic paper.
Chris
Oh, yeah.
Kevin
Slightly psychic paper is what he calls it.
Frank
Yeah, but it was nearly psychic when it started because, yeah, anyway, all right.
So real quick, what I did this week was not very much.
I designed a table to put the controller for my 3D printer on so I can take my toolbox and slide it underneath.
Andy
I love the design of that table.
That looked like something you would have seen in the stores here at Design.
That was awesome.
And I want to see it when you print it.
Frank
It’s a nice design, except it utilizes too much surface area on my build plate.
And I think it actually reaches outside of the temperature warming area because all of the corners curled up.
Chris
Oh, the problem I did when I printed my shelf.
Gotcha.
Frank
So I have outsourced the processing for figuring out how to make it modular to my subconscious and been ruminating on that all week rather than printing anything.
I don’t know how you ruminate subconsciously, but I’ve been doing it.
Chris
Most people just call it the back burner.
Frank
Same idea, yeah.
And so my friend has been off and I’ve been trying to think of how to design that.
I do have a plan for, in my head, I still haven’t put it into action yet, but the exhaust on my table saw is horizontal to the ground.
And I created a little thing early when I got it to just go on it.
It’s a little wooden box with an angle for all the sawdust to hit and then angle it down into the bucket.
And I’ve been meaning to redesign that with 3D for the last year and haven’t done it yet, so I’m probably going to design that today.
And then it’ll be truly back burner and subconscious for the table.
And that’ll probably make an appearance again here in a couple of weeks if I ever figure it out.
Andy
Okay, well, that’s good.
Frank
Because modular design.
Yeah, so we’ve got a topic this week.
Andy
I like this topic.
Frank
Yeah, it’s screw-theds.
Andy
Yes, screw-theds.
Chris
Yeah, talk about screw-theds.
Frank
Screw-threads.
What confidence do you have in screw-threads or not?
Chris
Well, I had something interesting happen at work this week with screw-threads that you do want to take into consideration when you’re designing your prints.
So we have… anybody that’s working with screw-threads in production, you have gauges.
So you have a thread gauge, and then you use a thread plug gauge and a thread ring gauge.
The plug gauge goes on the inside, and then a ring gauge goes on the outside, right?
So on these particular parts, we’re making a crud-ton of them at the moment.
And the ring gauge we have to check them in the inspection room wasn’t working.
It just barely came back from calibration, and it wasn’t working.
But the one we have on the shop floor for the same thing was working just fine.
So we went and took a check on the optical comparator of the threads from one and the threads on the other, and it turns out that the major diameter, so that’s the bigger pointed end part, so it’s the inside V of this thread ring that we just got from calibration, was wrong.
It didn’t come to a V.
It was more like a truncated V, right?
And the one we’ve had on the shop floor, it was still a truncated V, but it wasn’t nearly as short as the thing we just got back from calibration.
And the one on the shop floor has been was calibrated like two months ago.
And so they’re both in calibration, but all of a sudden, we got this one back and it’s not working for our thing.
So we’re sending it back to the calibration company.
But it’s something to consider is that you have both, you have an inside diameter and an outside diameter for your threads and the V’s that go between them.
And you need to make sure that both of those are where you want them to be or your threads will never, never work.
Andy
Now, just to be curious, do you use with most threads, like when I’m 3D printing threads on two 3D printed parts, that way I can have control of the pitch and the thickness of the thread period, I tend to do like a D shape of thread, you know, hard chamfered lines, but kind of a D shape thread to give it the more strength.
I know some people brought it a little bit more using like a triangle shape to cut a thread.
But is there any difference there to using the wider cut that would kind of more look like a truncated triangle being an on purpose D shape?
Chris
I think the truncated triangles are a lot better at holding watertight, being watertight.
Andy
Are they?
Chris
Uh huh.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
I, it feels to me like the major support for that would be you would have a straight plane through the whole thread instead of a complex one that has to butt up against the other part.
So any of those places being misaligned would mean that it wouldn’t be as tight.
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Does that make sense?
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
But for our listeners, just so you know, and the pitch Andy’s talking about is the angle the threads go around, that’s, that’s the pitch.
Andy
Yeah.
When we go to design threads, when we’re actually designing them manually, you usually get to choose the shape of the thread that you’re using, the cut that you make.
And I think most people will choose something more similar to a triangle shape, but our printers struggle with printing edges well.
So I’ve always tried to go with like a more D shape thread when I, when I do it because it prints better that way.
And then gives you a little bit more of a cleaner thread.
But if you’re screwing it into something that is not another 3D printed part and you can’t control the threads, then you’re trying to mirror what’s already there.
You know, so I’m not always using the D thread shape.
It is often a triangle shape because that’s usually how tap and dyes wind up cutting threads is much more of a triangle shape.
So.
Chris
Yep.
They’re always, always triangle shape.
Frank
I would say it depends on how big in diameter the hole is every, every tutorial I’ve seen for making threads, whether it was a freeCAD or Fusion 360 or just a general tutorial, they do a profile that is a, for lack of a better description, it’s a low poly D shape.
But there’s like only, there’s three lines for the slope and then it’s flat in the bottom for the valley part and that profile is just cut out in a thread on the surface or built up depending on if you’re doing additive or subtractive for the thread.
But yeah, because it, at that point, you’re basically doing it parametrically.
It’s going to be the same shape as the other one that you print anyway.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
But yeah, the, the square lines seems to be more common for anything I’ve seen.
Andy
Okay.
That does make sense.
At least when it comes to 3D printed parts, that definitely makes more sense that we would strive for that.
And I think it gives it a lot more, you know, the, the bigger threads we could make too on our 3D printed parts, the, the better things go because, you know, resolution is a problem.
I know we try to shoot for a minimum of 10 layers per thread for your pitch.
So whenever you’re printing a, a threaded item, you know, you want at least 10 layers per, per thread, but…
Frank
Just to give it the…
Chris
No, no, no, I want to see Andy print an M 12 1.5 bolt.
Andy
I printed at 50 microns.
Thank you very much.
Frank
Well, okay.
Chris
okay. So, so print me some of those bolts.
I’ll, I’ll go use them for holding my trailer hitch on.
Andy
It probably wouldn’t wait, wait a 15 mil say it against a 15 millimeter bolt.
I was thinking like an M five
Chris
M 12. M 12, I 1.5.
Or 1.25.
Sorry.
So that’s, that’s a thread every 1.25 millimeters.
Andy
Oh, okay.
That would be huge.
That would be pretty easy to do.
Chris
No, there’s, there’s, there’s just really fine.
That’s all.
I’m just
Andy
okay.
Yeah.
Cause I mean, when you’re printing threads, you do want at least 10 layers per thread.
So if you’re printing a threaded part that needs to be that fine, then you’ve got to adjust your layer height to compensate for that.
Frank
Well, and I don’t know It’s weird.
When I do printed threads, I like to do them in bigger diameter things anyway.
Like this is the, the spindle I used for my, uh, oh yeah, spool holder.
Yeah.
I think is 15 millimeters across.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that’s right.
When you’re printing, like when you’re 30 millimeters across, but it’s easily three millimeters between the threads too.
So, you know, it’s a comfortable slope.
When I’ve done smaller prints, I don’t like to print the threads, but I would rather use a different way to connect things.
Andy
I completely agree.
But what about the time where you need to build a part that threads into a non 3D printed part?
Cause if we’re printing both parts of it and we’ve got the size, we’re going to print more coarse threads because it works better.
But if you’re stuck screwing something down to it, like a great example is this pump challenge thing that I’m talking about.
I’ve got to make an adapter to screw down to the pump’s, you know, threaded end itself.
And I’m going to be stuck at what pitch and thread depth that they used on that particular part.
Frank
When they machined it because you don’t want to re-thread the thing yourself.
Andy
Yeah.
Exactly.
So my layer height is going to be purely determined on the thread pitch of that component.
Frank
Fair.
Chris
Especially with metric, because metric is easy to do.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding.
You know, usually I just calculate it out.
I’ll just measure.
I won’t try to figure out the thread pitch that’s proper on it.
I’ll just count the threads, you know, for however length of time or length of thing that I got, and then I’ll just use those measurements in my cut.
And it’s worked every single time.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Threads seem hard, but I’ve never had one fell on me except that one time when I printed them backwards.
Chris
Okay.
Yes.
Well, American threads, how it works is you just divide by one.
So if you’ve got a 32 pitch, you divide by one or you take that, you take one and divide by 32.
Frank
You measure how many there are in one inch and there you go.
Chris
Yeah.
So if there’s 32, you divide, you take one, divide it by 32, and that’s what you get.
And I think that one’s like 0.3215, or it’s, yeah, it’s something like that.
Andy
Now, I think what I’m doing, all I would do is take the caliper and just measure from the first tallest pitch to the last tallest pitch, and then count the threads in between that measurement, and then that is the thread pitch that I use that I cut on whatever component that I’m doing.
Instead of trying to figure out, okay, what thread pitch is this and then, you know, go into there.
I’ll just do whatever it is and make it that way instead of trying to stick to an SAE standard of some kind.
Chris
Yeah.
We’re talking about the same thing from different ends.
Yeah.
Andy
Makes sense.
Makes sense.
You do this professionally and I just do it by trying.
So you’re always going to know how to do that properly compared to..
Frank
Andy’s going to improvise and end up doing it backwards and have it work just fine.
Chris
So yeah, see, what I’m doing is I’m programming a machine to say, okay, put your probe here every so many, every so many pitch, you know, because that’s what it should be, you know.
Andy
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Because you got to stick to those standards.
Chris
You’re coming from the other, you’re coming from the other.
Frank
You’ve got standards, Chris.
Chris
I’m just saying.
It’s easier.
It’s a lot easier for me to work with metric in this regard than it is to work with standard.
Kevin
I think it’s always easier to work with metric.
Frank
One unit tends to be more refined, more precise than one in metric than an SAE.
So you get to deal with more whole numbers instead of what was that calculation you gave us, Chris?
That’s three, four, two, one.
Chris
Yeah, that one.
Frank
92nd thousandths.
Chris
0.03125.
Yeah.
And that’s a 32 thread pitch, so.
Frank
The only reason I remember how many feet or in a mile is because somebody said something about tomatoes.
What is it?
Three, five, two, eight, something like that.
I used to remember how many feet were in a mile anyway.
Andy
I just had to memorize it something.
Kevin
There are 5,280 feet in a mile.
Frank
Yeah.
Five, five, tomato.
Chris
Five, two, eight, oh.
You’ve got five tomatoes.
That’s right.
Frank
But yeah.
It’s a good way to remember that.
Andy
I like that.
Five, two, eight, oh.
Frank
Because SAE is stupid.
And the only reason we’re not on metric is because metric was defined after the American Revolution and in stead of before.
Kevin
Yeah.
Well, there’s that.
And also, they did try, but then the ship that was carrying the standards to convert to metric got ransacked by pirates and they never made it.
Frank
And they took all the standards.
Kevin
Yep.
Frank
That sounds like a political hit to me, probably.
And then they tried again in like the 70s, but people were just far too ingrained in their silly SAE that they didn’t stick.
Well, they didn’t do it very well either.
They should have done a more phased approach.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Well.
And if I keep hearing.
Chris
It was a little too hard, too fast.
And most industries were like, we can’t afford to just switch like that.
All of our stuff is already made and set and designed, and we’d have to buy and change so much that it’s just so insanely expensive to try to do this all at once that we’re just not going to.
Right.
Frank
So the funny thing to me about that is, number one, the argument for the longest time in Kingston has been, if we do this, all the car mechanics are going to have to have two sets of tools.
Kevin
They already do.
Frank
Yeah.
They already do.
And the other argument or the thing that makes all of this conversion stuff look kind of ill-placed, I guess, I don’t know, is we only had to bury one multi-billion dollar robot on Mars and the whole scientific community switched over to metric within a year.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding.
Yeah.
What we need to do is just take all the metric equivalents to SAE and publish them as SAE, but with proper metric measurements.
So I don’t even know how I would describe something like this.
So instead of having a, like a half inch, you would have, what’s a half inch in metric?
Chris
12.5.
Andy
Yeah.
You would have a 12.5 millimeter wrench that you could use on.
Frank
With a secondary measurement at half inch.
Andy
Yeah.
But it would be written as the other way around.
So it’s labeled in SAE, but is in fact a metric measurement.
So then we can move all of our cars and stuff into metric and all the people who are stuck on ASE.
Frank
Chris, if you were to estimate how many cars use metric measurements in their construction that are supposed to be domestic made, how many?
Chris
So guess what?
This is where things get really interesting.
Ever since, I think it was right around 2010, 2011, when that whole big thing went down, all domestic cars are made in metric.
Andy
Oh, really?
Oh, that’s so good to hear.
Frank
So at some point, Congress doesn’t get a vote.
The commercial and scientific communities have said, no, this is stupid.
We’re just going to do everything in metric.
Chris
Yeah.
So what they’ve done is domestic cars, they use metric, but they use different metric than import cars.
So what they do is they have 10 millimeter, which is really close to 3 eighths.
So your average American Joe with an SAE set can still grab his 3 eighths and go use this.
And then they use a half inch so that you can grab a 13 millimeter wrench, or I mean they use 12 millimeter and sometimes 13.
So the guy can still grab his half inch wrench and still get the bolts off.
And then they use 15 or 16, so somebody, or they’ll use 14 or 15 or 16 so that the guy can grab his 9 sixteenths or 5 eighths, you know, and still.
So you follow me?
Frank
So realistically, you only need one tool set and you just do it on the domestic cars.
Andy
But the people with SAE sets are still covered.
Frank
Yeah, they don’t need a, uh, second set.
Chris
So they use the SAE, they use sizes that are really close to the SAE sets so that they’re still compatible.
Frank
That’s awesome.
Andy
Okay.
That is good.
Frank
So the last thing in the government is the only people that can make this happen.
The last thing to go to metric is going to be the maps and the roads.
Andy
Yeah, I think that’ll take a while.
Chris
So let me tell you, in the production industry that I’ve, you know, been in for the last over a decade, almost two decades, just about everything that is manufactured in America is still being done with SAE.
But then when stuff has to be done for international reasons or whatever else, it’s checked and verified in metric at the end.
So everything is done with SAE first.
Frank
That sounds to me like, that sounds overly complicated to me.
Chris
Well, I do have, there are a couple of customers that require everything to be done in metric the whole way through, which is, which is kind of nice.
We have one customer currently at my job that I’ve been like, yeah, I want to do their stuff because, you know, it’s in metric.
So it’s like, it’s a lot easier to work with and figure out and have done, you know…
Frank
Fun.
So on the threads point, I have had a project just kind of bouncing around in my head of making attachments to go on the end of a broomstick.
So that I can do things like put my cordless drill on the broomstick and put a like flower hook or something in the ceiling without having to climb, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got 12 foot ceilings and my stool is only one foot tall.
So if I have anything I want to do with my ceiling, I need to figure out something else.
And so yeah, that was one idea.
And while I was at it, you know, my brain just goes off in a million directions and says, Hey, if you’re going to do something like that, you can do all these other cool things with a broomstick too.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
So your solution is to make a really big extension for your drill instead of getting a step ladder.
Frank
Yes.
Chris
Okay.
Just so we’re clear.
I’m the guy who lived on a boat that was built to sink, not the guy that was jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.
Andy
I’ve never considered that about that, but yeah.
Oh, I love that.
Frank
I know how to swim.
So I don’t know how to fly.
Andy
No, that sounds like a good project and you would need to be able to 3D print some threads for that.
Andy
So in your, in your want to be web software that you use, do you use a tool to make threads for you or do you still do them manually?
Frank
I can do them manually.
I have gone so far as to figure that out.
Now a FreeCAD, they didn’t have any preset thread recommendations with Fusion 360.
They have the SAE, they have metric and they have, I want to say another half dozen standards that you can choose from and I just use the basic metric standard and what it’ll do when I choose the profile that I want to thread on, it’ll say, oh, this profile is 15 millimeters across.
Here’s a 15 millimeter thread to put on it.
Chris
So by the way, if you’re, if you’re 3D printing something to fit into something else, do yourself a favor and just stop by your hardware store or auto auto store or whatever and buy one of those little thread pitch gauges that show you.
Andy
yeah, those can be helpful.
Chris
That way if you don’t know and you’re not and you’re not like Andy where you can just put your calipers in and get it figured out, you can use that little thread gauge to just say, okay, this is what it is.
This is what I program.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Andy
It is nice that they make it that easy.
We’ll type it in because doing threads manually takes a minute.
It’s a fun thing to do.
I love doing threads because it’s complicated.
Frank
It’s a good exercise to get into because you have to, you have to understand how the thread works.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
But if you just need a thread, it’s great that they have tools to just be able to click that off and have it done.
Frank
And I’m assuming that your not online pseudo softwares of service also has profiles that you can choose from.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, that it does.
That it does.
It’s got the quick click that you could just select the thread pitch for a particular inside or outside cylinder of any kind and you could just select the thread to cut.
I think it’s got a few options that you need to input like how deep the cut supposed to be and stuff like that, but it is fairly automatic, but I’ve never honestly used it.
I like doing it manual, so I’ll keep on doing that.
But if you got to do a lot of them, I’m going to figure out how to do that just so it’s quicker because it does take a good five or six minutes of really thinking it through to get threads correctly so that they’ll work.
Frank
The profile takes a little bit of work for sure.
There was one thing where it took me quite a while to figure out how to get the chamfer on the top edge because when the thread is the same all the way to the edge, that’s great, but you have to have it really dialed in just perfect before the threads will catch.
Chris
Yeah, you need a good lead in.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You always start with a plane above the surface and spiral it in and then go clear past the hole.
Frank
Well, I learned at least with Fusion 360, I don’t know how SOLIDWORKS would do with it, but if in the history you do the chamfer around the top and then you go back before that chamfer and put the thread in, then when you come back out, it puts the chamfer back on it.
So you’ve got the profile that you want to put the two pieces together.
Andy
Okay.
So you’re essentially doing the same thing.
You set it up properly right at the surface, but then you hold off on that cut, apply the chamfer, so it’s actually starting within the gap so it gives you a lead in, right?
Chris
That’s what it sounded like.
Frank
Yeah.
Okay.
So you’ve got the profile all designed up and then you got a chamfer as the last step.
You go back in the history and insert the step where you put the threads in it.
So the threads are calculated for the whole size of the original profile, but the chamfer basically lays on top of it.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
That makes good sense.
Frank
And it, I was irritated that it took me so long to figure that out because like I said, you know, I did some little jewelry box things that have screw on lids and they were such a pain in the butt to get the lid on because it’s a 300 millimeter cross thing and if you’re just a little bit misaligned, it doesn’t like to thread together.
So yeah, finally figuring that out was nice.
Andy
You know what would be fun is cutting something where you’re cutting both ends like that, but cut it so it’s got two sets of threads going into it.
Frank
I have seen some of that.
I’ve seen some fun stuff with threads specifically.
Andy
There’s not just one spot that it can start that it can start to spot.
So it’ll be a little bit easier to get going.
Frank
Specifically with 3D printed stuff.
One of the funner things is cross threaded specifically designed to be cross threaded.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
And then you have forward and reverse threaded bolts.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Or not bolts, nuts.
So and the guy designed them so that you could basically just drop the nut on and gravity would feed it on.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
So he drops a couple of them on this 3D printed cross threaded bolt and the nuts are spinning different directions as they go home.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
So you can have reverse threads and forward threads and they’ll still both go in the same bolt.
That is cool.
The same nut.
Yeah.
He was making nuts that did that.
That was pretty cool.
It’s pretty nuts actually.
Frank
Kevin had the dad jokes earlier and now it’s Chris’s turn, I guess, waiting for Andy to come up with something worthy.
Andy
I love dad jokes but I just don’t come up with them on my own.
Frank
What else was there?
Oh, I think that the subject came up, of threads, talking about, like you take your little, I guess, M5 or whatever that you’re going to screw in and letting it cut the threads itself as you’re putting it in.
And we were talking about, I don’t know how much I would trust the threads.
That’s how I see it structurally.
Andy
A lot of the ones that I do that are simple like that, that I plan on using a self threaded screw for, that’s the way I do it.
I usually cut the screw hole thicker and then use sheet metal screws.
Because they’re, you know, they come to a point they’re a little bit more self starting without having to drill bit.
Frank
They’re designed to cut, like, cut the thread as they go though.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
If I’m using self threading screws on something I printed, usually I won’t even cut threads or anything for it.
I’ll just leave it as a hole.
Andy
I do the exact same thing.
Chris
Yeah.
That way you don’t have to pull out and drill a pilot hole on the thing you just printed.
Frank
I haven’t ever even really considered the sheet metal screws because I like to have my sheet metal screws because they can drill the little hole I like to have them for whatever sheet metal I’m doing.
But I have planned around little half inch to one inch long wood screws.
Andy
I think that’s what I’m referring to, not the screws with the little drill bit at the end.
It’s just the ones that come to a point.
Frank
Those are wood screws.
Andy
Wood screws?
Okay.
Chris
Well, not necessarily.
There’s also the same screws.
Regular construction screws though.
Construction screws.
Yeah.
They’re not necessarily for wood or sheet metal or plastic.
They’re just kind of a universal rough thread screw.
Frank
As opposed to, like, I was saying the sheet metal screw has got a half an inch of threads and underneath that it’s got a drill bit integrated into the shape of the screw and then specifically so it can get into the sheet metal and then thread itself tight.
Chris
Yeah, or concrete, or yeah.
Andy
So not those, just the ones that come to a point.
But pretty much all my projects, that’s what I use and if I take them apart and put them back together, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with that.
But if it’s something that you’re going to unscrew and unscrew a lot, I could see it would be better to use like a threaded insert or something like that, printing a nut inside of your print or something.
But if it’s just, you know, like my thermostat that I built, use that.
The little gate stopper that I built, use those.
Pretty much everything I do uses the same screws.
And I’ve got my bag of favorite screws that I use that I’ve got a little drawing of the sketch that I would use to cut the appropriate holes for it and all that.
Frank
So one thing I do like about the wood screws is the profile of the thread is really thin.
So even if it doesn’t take the same track as it did before and it has to cut, it’s not displacing a bunch of material.
So it can, in plastic, for instance, you can reuse the screw in the same hole several times until it starts compromising the hole.
Chris
And a lot of times they’ll usually catch where they did before too.
Frank
Quite often, yeah, with like the little M5 screws, I feel like the threads are so tight that even just a little bit off and cutting a new screw or a new track would compromise the hole.
Andy
Yeah, I completely agree with you on that one.
It’s too fine.
Frank
So definitely in a case like that, I would, I like the thought of the inserts.
You just heat up the little piece and you drop it in the hole that is basically the right size anyway, and then it’s a brass threaded anchor for your screw, and that’s cool.
I just don’t have any.
Andy
Yeah, I’ve worked a couple of times of doing it with just nuts too.
Like either printing it as an open hex hole that you can press a nut into or putting it inside of the 3D print, having the 3D print stop dropping your nuts and then resuming the print.
Both seem to work really well.
Frank
I hadn’t thought of that.
My thing for the proximity sensor for my filament, I just, because I didn’t want to have the whole depth for the screws and the bolts, I printed channels for them to travel in.
And, you know, so it’s like three millimeters on the back wall where the nut is, and the bolt goes in and it’s enough to hold it on, but it’s not, it doesn’t need to be anchored in the part.
Yeah, fun stuff.
Andy
Whatever works.
I like doing with threads, I like working with threads, they’re fun.
When my dad first got his 3D printer, he was asked by my little brother, because my dad was a machinist for 40 years, my little brother says, well, do something that is a benchmark for machining and making or machining threads on a lathe is kind of one of those benchmarks for ability on a lathe, right?
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
If you can repeatedly follow a standard for that, then you’re really good with working on a lathe.
So what my dad did was he printed off or designed and printed a nut and bolt where the threads and the core of the bolt were 200 millimeters across.
And the gap between the threads, I think was like five millimeters.
Andy
Oh my gosh.
Frank
Yeah, just this huge bolt, and he actually ran out of the filament that he was using on the bolt, and so it goes from a brass gold color to black for the tip, and I thought it was on purpose until he told me it was just because he ran out of filament because it looks like you put Loctite on it or something, right?
Andy
Okay, yeah.
That’s cool.
Frank
But yeah, no, it wasn’t a nut.
He did a bolt and a lock washer, and there for, half a minute, I was contemplating doing a bolt to go with it, but my brother didn’t want to let me borrow the bolt so I could study it.
So.
Andy
Okay, okay.
Chris
Well, you know, I printed a screw, just a little screw, so I have a short stick. A short pool stick.
Andy
Okay.
I didn’t think we were going to bring that up on the podcast, but you know
Frank
I’ve got a couple of short sticks just floating around here, Chris.
Andy
You know, you call it short, but yet you’re showing us it’s still like 14 or 16 inches long on the camera here, so.
Chris
Yeah, so it’s a pool stick.
It’s a kid size pool stick, and it doesn’t have a bumper on it.
So I wanted to move the bumper from one of my other garbage pool sticks to that one, and the threads on that one were different than the bolt, than the screws holding in the bumpers from the garbage pool stick, and so I obviously can’t reuse that.
So quick solution.
I printed up a plastic bolt to hold the little bumper on the bottom so that, you know, so my kid isn’t around there smacking the floor with the pool stick all hard all the time.
Now it happens, you know, like I do, you know, I put my pool stick down and it’s got a bumper on it.
Frank
Or maybe I’m the leaner.
I definitely lean on my pool sticks.
Andy
You know what would be a fun project to do is if you’ve got a screw that is undersized and a bolt hole that is oversized, both with different pitches, to 3D print an adapter between the two.
Chris
You mean a helicoil?
Andy
A what?
Chris
A helicoil?
Andy
No, because that would assume they were the same thread pitch.
Chris
That’s right.
Oh, you’re talking about an insert.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah, just like an entire adapter.
You can screw on to the screw end and then screw that whole piece into the bolt end, you know?
Chris
Yeah.
Yeah, they’re called inserts and McMaster car already makes them.
Frank
Mastercard?
Chris
McMaster.
Frank
Oh, and then you’re going, Mastercard, they don’t make screws, do they?
Chris
No, McMaster dash car, yeah.
They already make threaded inserts like that.
So…
Andy
Gotcha.
Frank
I mean, if you don’t need it to be too structurally, I mean, as long as you’re not like putting your weight on it or something, there’s no reason I can think of that wouldn’t work real well.
Andy
Well, even if you were.
You’re sandwiching the plastic in between two like proper surfaces.
Frank
Two solid.
Andy
You know?
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
It would be sturdy.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be.
I just, we go back to why it became a topic in the first place.
I would not trust my weight to a plastic thread.
Andy
No. Definitely not.
Chris
You got a good point there, Andy.
If you need to convert from like machine threads to some coarse threads, you know, like those screws we were talking about, we use on all our plastic, yeah, you can just print a threaded insert so that you can just put it in the machine threads and then it’s just got a regular pilot hole.
You can just run your general screw into.
Andy
Yeah.
But that, I mean, all the pressure that that component would be experiencing is compression.
So it would be pretty darn sturdy.
I think at that point, it wouldn’t matter that it’s 3D printed for its strength compared to any other plastic component because compression is compression.
So…
Frank
yeah
Andy
Our 3D printed parts only suck with other pressures.
Frank
Horizontal.
Chris
You mean like when I’m under pressure?
Yeah.
Andy
Like sheer pressures and stuff like that.
Yeah.
They don’t do so well.
Frank
They do admittedly do very well with compression though.
Yeah, like if I was having to make a jack stand for my jack or something like that 3D printed, I don’t think I would have too much of a problem with it as long as it was just under compression.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
Fun.
Threads.
Who knew?
Frank
Chair feet and table feet and all that would be interesting 3D printed.
Andy
Yeah, that would.
You can make them out of TPU, I bet that would work pretty good as a little bumper.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, there’s another project to kick around in my head until I figure out how I want to deploy it.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
And that’s another thing.
Yeah.
It’s like jack stands.
If you’re working on a car that’s actually kind of nice underneath, yeah, you can print little, what should we call it, shoes on the top of your jack stands.
Chris
That would be all the wood I’m constantly cramming between my jack and the vehicle.
Yeah.
Frank
TPU would be really good for that.
It would compress just enough to not damage your undercarriage or your frame or whatever.
Chris
Any painted components?
Yeah.
Andy
Very true.
Frank
I would not make the jack stand out of plastic though.
Chris
No, no, no
Kevin
no, no, no, no
Chris
just a little shim or shoe or whatever for the top of it.
Andy
Yeah.
Printed solid.
Frank
Yeah.
Any other threads?
Kevin, you were trying to say something and we kept overriding you.
Was it thread related or just off the top of your head?
Kevin
I don’t think I was trying to say anything.
I swear I heard your voice.
Andy
Do you think you could successfully print threads with your SLA?
Kevin
Probably.
I haven’t ever tried.
I’ve been quiet this whole time because I’ve had absolutely nothing to contribute to the conversation.
Andy
Oh, sorry.
Chris
If you think about it though, you know, threaded things are continuous all the way up, so he’d be able to print threaded things without even supports.
Frank
There would be the very small bit at the edge of the slope that wouldn’t have anything to fuse to, but I think that how thick are your layers usually?
On that, it’s…
Kevin
.05 millimeters.
Frank
Oh yeah, that’s more than thin enough.
You would have to have such a stupid, shallow slope to your thread for that to be affected by such a small layer height that it’s not even worth having it bringing it up.
Frank
Well, we’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
Very, very end.
Frank
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
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You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur 3D Pod, or you can email us at amateur, or at panelists at amateur3dpod.com.
And for individual feedback, you can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy or Chris at amateur3dpod.com.
The music in this episode was written by Kevin Buckner.
Open AI’s Whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked into the description.
And panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cottam.
Until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Chris
Sign off, are ya suckers?
Andy
Yeah, threads, who knew?