Hi all,
I have just helped a mate by building a 3d printer with / for him. It's a MendelMax 1.5 (with dual extruders) and whilst it took quite a while to build (assemble from a kit) ... mostly because the 'instructions' were written by someone who knew what the bigger picture was.
Now it's done I think his wife made a good choice (she did all the research) hopefully guided by my more generic advice like, 'the frame should be as rigid as possible, ideally bought in the UK, should be Open Source Hardware and have good reviews'. ;-)
In return for my assistance he is letting me print what I want and I have slowly been making bits for what I hope will be my own (Kossel / Delta style) printer.
Anyway, and re that end, I've downloaded from Thingiverse a case that sits on top of a std ATX PC PSU and holds the electronics (Arduino Mega + RAMPS)
... but the aperture in the front panel didn't quite line up with my particular LCD. I've opened it up in SketchUp and should have now resized the window but I'm not having much luck re-sizing the hole that takes the 'Stop' button (printed) extension or making the hole for the rotary encoder knob bigger (not much of the encoder spindle sticks through the panel so I was going to allow the knob through).
However, the main thing is I can't (well, atm and with my levels of frustration with such things and I'm not alone it seems) I can't re-orientate the object in SketchUp so that it would sit square on the bed. I can lay it flat with the output program, Repetier-Host but can't square it up. Whilst that shouldn't be an issue re actually getting the printer to work, I'm guessing it would be easier for the printer if it was aligned with the natural X and Y axis?
So, if anyone is familiar with SketchUp and wouldn't mind lending a hand please ... (the email address works) this should be the file with the corrected aperture position ...
(I'm Prin_Ter on Thingiverse and did ask there but nothing forthcoming so far.)
If whilst you are there and could open up the middle round hole to
16mm (to accept the knob through the panel), and the stop button hole to 4.5 and 8mm diameters (it could even do to move the stop button hole / tube towards the encoder spindle hole and away from the mounting leg a couple of mm) I would be very grateful. ;-)Unless I can find some other more intuitive 3d drawing program (intuitive to this hardware guy that doesn't use *any* graphics / layup application atm) and do want to modify or even create my own 3d objects, I will need to get a bigger screen, better glasses and a good supply of Valium (or Special Brew) ... ;-)
Cheers, T i m
p.s. I know of at least one person on here has been involved in 3d printing but I wondered if any others have any experience?