3D Printing Filament Spools

Today I have been working on my relatively new 3D Printer; a Creality K2 Plus.  I have started printing filament spools to be used with Filament Refills.  Filament in refill form is much cheaper and I do not have to throw away the empty spools when done. I will soon share some photos, maybe.

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Reduction Gears

Sorry, this is not an Amateur Radio post.

After many months of working with a 3D Printer, I have finally successfully created a working set of interlocking reduction gears, each section provides a 7:1 reduction. This device is about 2 inches in diameter, the total reduction is 14:1.

The original Ring Gear from Thingiverse was modified to create this multi-stage Reduction Gear. My contribution was to modify it as necessary and join two sets together.

Sketchup Model

The transfer plates (with the connecting pins) were assembled by adding the center HEX pin after printing.  Each of the two Reduction Cluster were printer as an assembled single object on the printer. No cleanup or filing was necessary.

Silicon grease is used for lube.

I may increase the size (and with other modification) this could be used as a Light Weight Field Day Antenna Rotor.

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First 3D Printer

I purchased a 3D Printer, and just now learning how to use it, there is a lot to learn.

After many trials and failures, I have successfully printed the equivalent of "Hello World" for 3D Printers, which is the "3DBenchy". This online part was designed to be a torture test for a 3D Printer, with many under-cuts, over-hangs and fills, that are somewhat difficult. This part is about 2.5 inches long.

My Printed 3DBenchy Results

3DBenchy was actually about my 10th attempt at print anything, the first few parts went horribly wrong.

Here are a few of my initial prints of a part of my own design, obviously I did not know what I was doing.

Things got better with practice and understanding of the 3D Print process and control parameters.

The above is a replacement part for an Orbital Sander, this part is no longer available from the manufacture, it will eventually be printed with Black ABS Plastic, which is similar to the original. I designed this part with FreeCAD and used Slic3r for the G-Code output for the 3D Printer.  For me, FreeCAD has a steep learning curve.


And, then . . .

On the next part, a Cable Chain of my own design, I must have lost the magic !!

But finally, things got better with practice.

Cable Chain Links

The First Two Links of a Cable Chain.

I am currently printing four Cable Links with newer/better design, I will report the results. For these link design, I have used Sketchup and Slic3r. For simple designs Sketchup is easy to use, as long as you only need "Union" style of object creation, that is, objects that touch are automatically joined together (union'd) when exported as an STL file. STL files are needed by Slic3r.

Four Cable Chain Links
About 2/3 Complete

This is fun, I think I am going to enjoy my new 3D Printer.


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