So you have a 3D printer as well as requirement to print something of your own design. That’s a issue if you don’t understand exactly how to produce as well as edit 3D objects. In this post, we’re continuing our previous misadventures with Blender by making a ‘thing’ split from a extremely old book on drafting.
Previously, we’ve made the exact same part in other 3D style packages. Here’s some links to those other ‘Making a Thing’ posts:
OpenSCAD
AutoCAD part I
AutoCAD part II
Blender part I
We’ve already done half the work to make a ‘thing’ in Blender, so now it’s time to surface the job. inspect out the rest of the tutorial below.
Our Thing
To the ideal is the ‘thing’ we’re making for all these 3D Printering tutorials. It’s taken out of the 4th edition of Engineering drawing (French, 1929, p. 105). Yep, it’s an 85-year-old drawing with fractional inches. It serves our purpose, though: a theme with which to make something with a 3D CAD package.
By the way, if any individual available has a 1st edition of Engineering Drawing, I’d like to see if this item really goes all the method back to the 1911 volume.
The Curse of Blender & What We’ve Done So Far
In the very first part of this tutorial, I stated utilizing Blender to produce a basic mechanical item like our ‘thing’ is akin to utilizing a bulldozer to develop a sandcastle. I’m still standing by that assessment. If you want to make exact mechanical parts, don’t utilize Blender. Blender is a tool for organic as well as sculptural forms. want to print out a plastic tree? Blender is a fantastic tool. want to design some Greek as well as Roman statuaries? Blender is a fantastic tool. requirement a part for a mechanical device? Don’t utilize Blender. It’s not the ideal tool for the job.
In the very first part of this tutorial, we took a look at the concept behind Blender – fit together editing – as well as exactly how to interact with vertices, edges, as well as faces to make a thing. With all the introductory stuff out of the way, it’s time to surface the job.
More building Of A Thing
To the ideal is where we left off with the last part of this tutorial. It’s generally just a washer, however the dimensions are right for the thing we’re making. There are a few things we requirement to do before this ‘thing’ is done though:
Add the 3/8″ slot on this washer
Add the 2 3/4″ large flange thingy
Add the 1 1/2″ large flange
Build the installing bracket with the countersunk hole
Not as well bad, as well as we can do these piecemeal.
Adding the 3/8″ Slot
The very first buy of service is going into object mode as well as producing a cube with add -> fit together -> Cube on the top menu. With the rotate as well as scale commands on the ideal hand toolbar, manually set your cube to be 3/8″ in the X as well as Y axes, as well as 7/16″ in the Z axis. then rotate it 45 degrees around the Z axis. You must end up with something like the photo to the left.
Using the extrude command (hotkey ‘E’), pull one deal with of the cube with our washer/cylinder. It doesn’t truly matter exactly how far, since now we’re going to do something amazing: Boolean operations.
By this point you must have two objects in your top ideal hand toolbar: A cube as well as a cylinder. now we’re going to subtract the cube from the cylinder utilizing a modifier.
Click on the bit wrench icon seen above as well as choose add Modifier. choose Boolean as well as you’ll see something that appears like the photo to the right.
In Blender, you can do Boolean operations like Union, Subtract, as well as Intersect. There are, however, a few limitations. Each Boolean operation only divides up faces as well as edges, indicating you requirement to go in as well as manually delete all the extraneous edges after the operation. Also, the Subtract operation doesn’t put in the missing faces we’ll see when we subtract out the cube.
Subtract the cube from our cylinder. After deleting a whole lot of faces as well as edges, as well as producing the ‘inside’ of our 3/8″ slot, we get something that appears like this:
It’s not perfect, however there it is. There are still a few holes in this mesh, however we can repair those later.
Adding The Flanges
Our thing has two flanges coming off the ‘washer with the slot’ we just made. To produce the flange that’s 2 3/4″ wide, add a cube fit together in object mode as well as play around with the scale (hotkey ‘S’) as well as equate tools. The left hand toolbar will enable you to step as well as scale this cube into something looking like the larger flange on our ‘thing’. after that it’s a basic matter of doing one more Boolean operation (this time ‘Union’) as well as making something that looks something like this:
That looks just about ideal for the very first flange, however we’re missing the radii on a few corners. That’s not a problem, though, since the Bevel tool exists.
In edit mode, choose one of theoutside corners of our new flange. hit CTRL-B as well as you’ll be able to set the radius of the bevel with your mouse as well as the number of segments of the bevel with the scroll wheel. No, you can’t specify a radius, which is just a small part of what makes Blender horrible for mechanical design.
Now, extrude two faces of our cylinder out (we’ve totally provided up on dimensional accuracy, if you haven’t noticed), as well as bevel two edges on your new extrusion. In the end you must have something that appears like this:
That’s close sufficient to the orthographic drawing of our ‘thing’. Yes, there are holes in the fit together however we can repair those later.
The other flange is quickly built in the exact same way as the first.
Putting that dome as well as counterbore in
The last bit of our ‘thing’ to develop is the odd rounded part with the hole as well as counterbore up top. begin by extruding our second flange up the needed amount. Next, produce a cylinder in object mode as well as Boolean-ing the two together. After deleting the faces on the cylinder, you’ll end up with something like this:
There’s one thing delegated do: put a 7/16″ hole with the faces we just deleted, as well as put a 7/8″ counterbore on that hole. Basically, we’re making one more torus/washer-type object. inspect out the very first part of this Blender tutorial for directions on exactly how to do that.
Finishing off the second cylinder/counterbore, we might phone call this part somewhat complete. Here’s what we ended up with:
This isn’t to state this part is prepared to head over to a printer, though: there are still a few holes in our fit together which will accident any type of slicing program. This can be fixed with MeshLab, however that’s a tutorial for one more time.
Well that’s over with.
That’s exactly how you make a ‘thing’ in Blender. It’s not pretty, however you can do it. Once again, I requirement to reiterate that Blender was the wrong tool for this job. If you’re making objects to put in a video game, Blender is a fantastic tool. If you’re doing something that might be thought about digital sculpture, Blender is a fantastic tool. If you’re making something with directly lines, dimensional parts, as well as exact angles, you can do far much better with one of a hundred different CAD packages.
Concerning next week’s tutorial, it’s a tossup between Solidworks or Sketchup. If you have a preference one method or one more (or even a third option), leave a note in the comments.