Does anyone know of a company that would do a smal custom 3D print project? I have a design I want to do. The problem is it is too small to build with styrene. (.125" square by .05" tall.) I would need 25 of them. I can describe exactly what I want but I don’t have the ability to draw it electronically. Any suggestions would be most welcomed.
Edit:
Robert) [(-D] your right, i shoulda converted back. I reread that and it totally was NOT what I intended. Thanks for catching me!
I like your assessment better - doable - but the only detail youll get is a blob! Resin printers make prettier blobs than FDMs.
OP) if you have an original, have you thought about resin casting the part?
-PMR
Might want to check the conversion from mm to inches . . .
The thing OP describes is about 3mm by 1.2mm. Doable in either filament or resin. Gonna be not much more than a blob either way, but doable.
Hi FRRYKid,
May I ask exactly what the item is that you want to model?
Dave
I’m with Dave on this one…the dimensions of the “blob” don’t tell us much. I could easily mail you 25 pieces of styrene matching those dimensions, without having any clue of what I just built.
Wayne
What I’m looking at is a base for a street light loosely based on the lights here in town. The dimensions of the light base based on measurements I took scale out to the bottom being .125" square x .010" thick (thickness is flexible as I can bury any extra base in my sidewalks as the prototype did that in spots as well.) The corners have equilateral triangles at .040" on each corner at .040" thick. They are connected on the diagonals with .040" beams. As stated, I’m looking at needed 25 of them. Given the small size and quantity, I don’t think I could build them to any precision.
Hope that description helps.
Yeah, the description helps. It gives me some vague ideas, but I still cannot work out the details. A photograph would be a thousand times better . . . or so they say.
Robert
I agree.
You could easily clarify things by taking a photo (or several photos) of those real ones in your town, although you’d need to find somewhere that they could be hosted and then shared here.
Wayne
This would be a resin print. FDM would not look good.
The OP did not provide photos . . . so, naturally, I went rogue and freelanced something. I used Google Earth Street View to noodle around downtown Miles City looking at lamp posts and came up with this:
Not a great photo, and not a great fabrication for that matter, but it shows kinda what I thought the OP described. Two bases with a stub of the lamp post and two bare naked bases that should fit the bottom of a very thin tube (in case OP wants to run wires up to a grain-of-rice LED light. With equilateral triangle corners and with vertically elongated triangle corners.
Printed on my Qidi X-Max filament printer. So kinda rough. Resin prints would be much smoother, but I don’t have any resin printing projects currently on the docket and my AnyCubic resin printer tray is empty, cleaned out, and sitting idle. So, if the OP wants to see what some resin prints look like I’d have to fill it up and maybe bring some other projects to the forefront to make it worthwhile.
Anyhow . . . just something to look at.
Robert
That’s some nicely accomplished sleuthing, Robert. The picture is worth at least a thousand words. [bow][bow]
I think that a NWSL “Chopper”, along with some strip and sheet styrene and some styrene rod and solvent-type cement could whack those out pretty easily.
If lighting is to be included, styrene tubing might be a better option than the rod.
Wayne
Start here: It’s simple!
Learn how to use Tinkercad | Tinkercad
I taught classes of this at work. We can take our engineering data and build a 3D Model of our product and put it in the customers hands in any scale they want completely automated. It helps architects and engineers to build physical models for testing/presentation/visualization.
Then go here to print your creation: Resin 3D Stereo Lithography is the way to go if you demand a high resolution print.
It’s free and comes with a tutorial. Rapid prototyping is a high in demand skill.
The bare base is the inspiration yes. I have some commercial street lights that have everything but t bases. I contacted Shapeways and the design costs were prohibitively expensive. I will be going back to my original idea of keeping it simple with styrene strip, square and triangle rod.
Thank you for all the assistance.
Hey Kid-
Are you stuck on the design costs? Or the production costs?
The design is the easy part. I can send you a 3D CAD model and/or an .STL file gratis for free. Then just about anybody with a 3D printer (resin or filament) can produce 25 prints of the base. Even Shapeways.
All I need is a clear, concise image or description of exactly what you’re looking for.
Let me know.
Robert
That’'s awefully nice of you Robert. Why do I see you getting inunudated with request now? lol
That said your own PLA/ABS printer can be had for $300 or less these days. Resolution down to 0.1mm is common.
I recently started a project to create full 3D interiors for the Milwaukee station and Merchants row kits using Cura. I have blueprints and pictures for the former.
Design costs. I was told by Shapeways that design costs were usually $100. The dimensions are as mentioned earlier in the post. The inspiration picture is here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Gfow27YcLsvfksNN6. As this is my first attempt at hosting photos this way, if it doesn’t works, let me know.
If you’re feeling ambious a center hole of .057 would also be handy to allow for the poles I have to insert directly.
A #54 drill bit can get you pretty close (.055") to the needed size, and a round needle file could finish the job, if drilling the holes yourself would make the printing job more affordable…just a suggestion.
Wayne
Okay, this is good. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Here’s a sketch. 0.125" by 0.125" by 0.050" high with rounded corners and a center hole 0.057" diameter. Ignore the chartreuse colors; those are only for ease of viewing on the computer screen. Notice that the aspect ratios of the dimensions you gave are a little different from the real-life photo. Not a big deal because these things are so tiny that the difference will be hardly noticed by the naked eye from normal layout viewing distance (or even when viewing with a 2.5X Optivisor in good light 8 inches in front of your nose). Also ignore the apparent sharp edges of the sketches. See previous sentence.
The image on the left is the base and ribs. The anchor bolt fairing covers were added to the image on the right.
Robert
Good work Robert.
Following up to previous . . .
We cannot post .STL files here for viewing and we cannot attach files to PMs. Plus, I don’t think we can PM at all since I haven’t heard anything in over a year. No matter.
I have been pondering lately about signing up at Thingiverse, and today I have done so. I will upload the .STL for this project so that others can look at the design and (more importantly) run the design through their own slicing software for 3D printing.
There are several issues and concerns with my model (all relating to the small size of the lamp post base and the proper printer settings to fabricate this particular detailed design). It would be very easy for this discussion to get hijacked with minute and esoteric discussions about 3D printing and philosophical aspects of the nature of design itself. I absolutely do not want to overwhelm the OP with such discussions. Not that they’re not worthwhile to discuss, but maybe another thread would be the place for that.
Right now, I just want to get some input from the more knowledgeable and experienced 3D printers who are participants in this forum. Plus, I’m not entirely sure if the forum regulators even allow links to Thingiverse. And also plus, I’d like to hear advice and info from members of this forum who participate in the Thingiverse thing.
Thanks.
Robert