OK look.....

[LGB333]

Hi 3D Printer Experts - I've thought about buying a 3D printer which would be very helpful for making replacement parts for LGB locomotives that are no longer available. However, I understand that drawings must be made of the part using CAD software which sounds very complicated to use. Please provide your thoughts about this requirement for using a 3D printer.
Thanks!

 

[3 minutes of fame]

Many parts have already been drawn by other people and can be downloaded for free from Thingiverse, My Mini Factory and others. Otherwise, yes, it's a learning exercise to draw up a part in Tinkercad, Microsoft 3D builder or one of the more advanced paid for packages.

I didn't design anything for the first few years of my 3D printer use, but I did modify existing designs and took files from other 3D sources such as 3D warehouse and then turned them into usable STL files to print from.

Whether you print in resin or filament, the design process is similar. You need to think about dimensions, required strength, position of screw holes etc. but with filament printing in particular, how easy will the final part be to print? In some cases it's better to split a part into multiple parts and glue it back together afterwards. Otherwise you can end up with a lot of support material and the potential for poor surface finish.

 

[ge_rik]

TinkerCAD is by far the easiest 3D drawing package to use. Fairly shallow initial learning curve and then after a while you can draw quite complicated objects. Eg


I've put together a tutorial which you might find useful I either reassuring you or putting you off

How I drew a Southwold open wagon with TinkerCAD

Narrow gauge large scale model garden railway. Battery powered, radio controlled locomotives, some Bluetooth. Set in Cheshire UK in 1930s

riksrailway.blogspot.com

Rik

 

[justme igor]

Try 3d builder from windows itself, it is a stupid program but once you got the hang of it you can do more with it than with Rhino...
It works like this:
you have 3 altering options for one object.
Every option has three other options...
BUT those each single options have 3 more options.....
I am not going to write this 120x more.

That is a little bit what you can do with 3d builder.

A big plus:
Your drawing board is a minimum of 1 x 1 meter.
If you have a good graphic processor you can go to ? 5x5 meters and cut this up to printable pieces.

Always store your work in progress under a "3fm" file, this is very important.
before printing, store it in what ever your printer likes best....
Good luck with your endeavours, i personally recommend(and prefure) 3d builder from windows above tinker-cad and even Rhino.
But there is a learning curve!

With best regards Igor

PS also very good to do some scaling(from pic to model) and print this in 2d on your dot-matrix printer if you like......

 

[AndyG1955]

I have a flashforge adventure 3 - nice machine. I've printed lots of bits - gears, bogies and, recently, 160 LGB copy link and pin couplings. No complaints.

Geoff

Yep, That is what go me started Adventurer 3.. Easy to use, seems reliable so far.

Then decided I could do with being able to do PVA supports, o now I have a Flashforge Creator Pro as well