3D Printing - Big Struggle Featured

A mate has had a thermostat housing for his car engine commercially 3D printed here in the UK and wants to get a metal print of another item but too expensive here, Hong Kong is a possibility he said as prices are much lower. the housing has been in use over a year without issue as I understand it.

The one he has had done is nylon base material IIRC and is a powder bed process where a layer of powder is spread and then that has a binder sprayed on the area requiring bonding and then it's UV cured IIRC. Overhang not a problem as the powder provides support. Not low end currently AFAIK but these things creep downwards.

I signed up for night classes in 3D CAD using OnShape, which I can't use at home with a cellular data limit of 10GB a month (no Cable). I downloaded FreeCAD 1.1 which I think works off-line. Is anyone familiar with one or both?

On Shape is free sorta. It is strictly cloud based, and your models are public on the free plan from what I have read.

FreeCAD is free, and it runs completely on your PC, but you may want to be connected to download upgrades and modules that are specific to your application. Having an absolutely HUGE open source community there are a lot of them.

I use ViaCAD 2D3DPro64. Its definitely not free, but it its not the price of other high end CAD software, and its a permanent license. Not a rental agreement like many others.

I've also heard good things about Plasticity, and may get more involved with it since it has Linux compilations available. (also not free)