I have a couple of older Bosch tools - a drill and a reciprocating saw. The
se run on 18V NiCd or Nimh battery packs. My newer tools are Porter Cable 2
0V LiOn. Rather than buy a couple of new packs for the Bosch tools, I opene
d up and emptied one of the Bosch packs and added a 3D printed holder for a
Porter Cable pack.
Woo Hoo! It works a treat. In coming days, I will refine the design - this
was more of a proof of concept deal (and I had some work for the recip saw)
. There's much room for improvement - mostly getting rid of all the empty s
pace where the NiCd cells used to be, but for now, I'm happy.
I did similar recently by replacing the 14.4V 12 NiCd cells in my Bosch
drill with 4 lithium ion 18650s. I used tabbed cells and mounted them to
a PCB and mounted a supervisory board above, the assembly is fixed in
the battery pack with 3M double sided foam tape. The original charger I
gutted the internals just leaving the bare PCB and contacts and routed
an external lithium ion charger in through where the mains cable went in
and connected it to the contacts. All works great and has given a new
I have a couple of older Bosch tools - a drill and a reciprocating saw.
These run on 18V NiCd or Nimh battery packs. My newer tools are Porter Cable
20V LiOn. Rather than buy a couple of new packs for the Bosch tools, I
opened up and emptied one of the Bosch packs and added a 3D printed holder
for a Porter Cable pack.
Woo Hoo! It works a treat. In coming days, I will refine the design - this
was more of a proof of concept deal (and I had some work for the recip saw).
There's much room for improvement - mostly getting rid of all the empty
space where the NiCd cells used to be, but for now, I'm happy.
============================
Polymer clay like Fimo and Sculpey are PVC resin that can be molded to shape
and then baked hard. I don't know how they compare to 3D printed resin for
structural strength, but I've found them useful to capture the shape of
irregular cavities. They might combine with 3D printing to fit contours you
can't measure.
That's really cool. I wish I had the time these days for that sort of
thing. I've got a couple Milwaukee M18s drills that have served me well
as daily use tools, but I'm down to one good battery. The wife is
getting tired of my swiping her Makita drill and impact driver when I
need to do something. LOL. She says she bought Makitas for the house
because she knew I couldn't steal her batteries.
I have a couple of older Bosch tools - a drill and a reciprocating saw.
These run on 18V NiCd or Nimh battery packs. My newer tools are Porter Cable
20V LiOn. Rather than buy a couple of new packs for the Bosch tools, I
opened up and emptied one of the Bosch packs and added a 3D printed holder
for a Porter Cable pack.
Woo Hoo! It works a treat. In coming days, I will refine the design - this
was more of a proof of concept deal (and I had some work for the recip saw).
There's much room for improvement - mostly getting rid of all the empty
space where the NiCd cells used to be, but for now, I'm happy.
======================================
How do you like 3D printing, compared making custom parts with machine tools
or cutting and gluing?
I could see it for prototyping plastic parts that would be injection molded
in production but for home projects I usually need more strength and don't
care much about cosmetics.
As an example of an irregular shape that isn't too hard to carve out the old
way, how difficult would it be to create a CAD model to print the hull of a
model clipper ship?
I've found my 3D printer quite useful, the only non practical thing I've
printed was the 2 little owls model that shipped with it on the SD card.
I've printed soft jaws for holding tubing, a guide to keep the tubing
square on to the linisher belt or at 45, a special funnel to aid filling
a mould, a jig to place castor mounting plates in the correct position
before clamping and welding, and a few other things including a pitot
tube holder for one of my neighbours model plane. It did finally force
me to get a grip on 3D modelling and I'm using Freecad currently.
Parts with accurately-placed curved tunnels through them (eg for cable
routes) are easy with 3D printing; with most machine tools, not so much.
That depends on a bunch of factors, including the level of detail that you aim
for; what design software you use and your skills with it; and what you start
with, such as photos, measured drawings, or an existing model. For just a
hull-shaped object, draw a few Bezier curves and surfaces and be done in five
minutes, with top-end software; or maybe never with low-end. The thousands of
ship and boat 3D print files (some free, some expensive) on Thingiverse and
other 3D model sites have been drawn with dozens of different packages, with
people spending a few minutes to a few years making and refining the designs.
An accurate and super-detailed model could take weeks or months to draw up,
regardless of what software you use, unless you start with an existing physical
prototype, scan it for a few minutes with a good 3D scanner, and then spend a
few hours cleaning up the scan.
Parts with accurately-placed curved tunnels through them (eg for cable
routes) are easy with 3D printing; with most machine tools, not so much.
That depends on a bunch of factors, including the level of detail that you
aim
for; what design software you use and your skills with it; and what you
start
with, such as photos, measured drawings, or an existing model. For just a
hull-shaped object, draw a few Bezier curves and surfaces and be done in
five
minutes, with top-end software; or maybe never with low-end. The thousands
of
ship and boat 3D print files (some free, some expensive) on Thingiverse and
other 3D model sites have been drawn with dozens of different packages, with
people spending a few minutes to a few years making and refining the
designs.
An accurate and super-detailed model could take weeks or months to draw up,
regardless of what software you use, unless you start with an existing
physical
prototype, scan it for a few minutes with a good 3D scanner, and then spend
a
few hours cleaning up the scan.
jiw
=================================
Thanks. I drew the fairly complex RF-tight enclosures for digital radio
boards with a traditional 2D CAD program, actually the line drawing feature
of the circuit board design program. I had taken a well-taught course in
mechanical drawing in junior high school and worked in the drafting
department during my apprenticeship in machine design.
The mechanical drawing course, and the drafting experience, both are
pretty helpful when using a 3D CAD program. Of course most 3D CADs
let you drag the viewpoint around to easily view an object from any
angle, but there's still the mental step of imagining a 3D object from
the 2D picture on the screen. There are free (limited) versions of
some programs, like Meshmixer from Autodesk, and SketchUp, and also
some good programs like Blender are completely free. I've seen it
compared to Rhino and SolidWorks. FreeCAD and OpenSCAD both are free
too. I've used OpenSCAD for a lot of simple designs that I've
printed, since it is easy to parameterize a design and is more of a
programming language (which I see as a plus) than other CAD programs.
However, it would be really laborious drawing a boat with it.
The mechanical drawing course, and the drafting experience, both are
pretty helpful when using a 3D CAD program. Of course most 3D CADs
let you drag the viewpoint around to easily view an object from any
angle, but there's still the mental step of imagining a 3D object from
the 2D picture on the screen.
---------------------
That's part of drafting and machinist training. Some of the samples we had
to draw were quite challenging, like the spatial relations section of an IQ
test.
The teacher had a trick of making coins stick to the wall as though they
were magnetic to wood. He used his knife to peel up tiny sharp prongs around
the edges.
---------------------
There are free (limited) versions of
some programs, like Meshmixer from Autodesk, and SketchUp, and also
some good programs like Blender are completely free. I've seen it
compared to Rhino and SolidWorks. FreeCAD and OpenSCAD both are free
too. I've used OpenSCAD for a lot of simple designs that I've
printed, since it is easy to parameterize a design and is more of a
programming language (which I see as a plus) than other CAD programs.
However, it would be really laborious drawing a boat with it.
jiw
===================================================
Thanks. Before buying a 3D printer I want to confirm that I can create my
own 3D models, with a program less complex and expensive than the SolidWorks
that Segway used. I gave a hull as an example because I'm familiar with the
lofting process, having designed and built such models as a kid.
formatting link
I adjusted the sails to make the model boat travel at a right angle to the
wind, back and forth along a straight line as low level turbulence flipped
it around, and usually return near the launch site.
A couple other free CAD systems to take look at, would be Fusion 360
and Onshape.
Fusion 360 is made by Autodesk. It has CAM capabilities, although the
free version has recently become somewhat limited. The built-in slicer
is not free, but it will export STL files so you can use your favorite
slicer. Runs on Apple and Windows.
Onshape is running entirely in the web browser, so it will work on any
computer platform, even your phone. No built-in CAM capabilities at
all.
[snip]
I have a nice Milwaukee cordless hammer drill that ran on 18V NiCad packs.
When these started to die and became unobtanium, I started to look around.
Grizly Industrial (on-line and in bellingham WA) had (still has?) a nice set
of Lithium Ion plug-compatible 18 Volt packs that fit the drill together
with a 'smart' charger.
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