3D change gear Questions

[HoboMachinist77]

Just talked work into getting a bigger 3d printer...heh. 15x15 inch build plate.

 

[mac1911]

Well tell ya what. Get fusion360 from autocad. It can run on a potato. You can get a used laptop or pc cheap these days that will blow your old PC away. The pandemic saw a surge of laptop and pc buying...work from home...now people are trying to unload them.

Also fusion 360 is very easy to learn and play with..also countless videos on YouTube. I design tooling at work with it right next to the engineers...and I never got a degree in engineering...just YouTube.

im not at that level to pay $500 a year

 

[HoboMachinist77]

im not at that level to pay $500 a year

Oh no they have a personal/ hobbyist version! It's free. I'm sorry left that part out. You can still model and 3d print..also make technical drawings. You just can't print them or save them as a pdf without a subscription.......I just screen shot them.

 

[mac1911]

Oh no they have a personal/ hobbyist version! It's free. I'm sorry left that part out. You can still model and 3d print..also make technical drawings. You just can't print them or save them as a pdf without a subscription.......I just screen shot them.

Winter is setting in and I will look into all this stuff and learn some more. Need a new PC or lap top
I spent 3 hours last night deleting files to free up space

 

[WobblyHand]

Another option is FreeCAD. Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It's free to download and use No licensing for use - forever. While not quite as spiffy as the commercial offerings, it's more than adequate for hobbyist use. I've used it to model my lathe to design parts for my own Electronic Lead Screw system, design and build lathe back plates, back flow prevention valves, kitchen cabinet brackets, and lots of other things. It also creates stl files for 3d printers. There's a whole series of videos of learning the SW. Last but not least, there's really good FreeCAD forum support, which has provided me rather quick responses to my questions. I had an issue yesterday about a model that was difficult to open, and I got answers from the forum that told me one of my settings in Preferences was ridiculously set, within 20 minutes. Changed the setting and all was good again.

If you are new to 3d CAD it will take a bit before the rush of information sinks in. It took me about 3 weeks before I could get around enough to make things easily. Absorbing the basic concepts so you can use them, at least for me, was what took the time.

 

[mac1911]

Another option is FreeCAD. Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. It's free to download and use No licensing for use - forever. While not quite as spiffy as the commercial offerings, it's more than adequate for hobbyist use. I've used it to model my lathe to design parts for my own Electronic Lead Screw system, design and build lathe back plates, back flow prevention valves, kitchen cabinet brackets, and lots of other things. It also creates stl files for 3d printers. There's a whole series of videos of learning the SW. Last but not least, there's really good FreeCAD forum support, which has provided me rather quick responses to my questions. I had an issue yesterday about a model that was difficult to open, and I got answers from the forum that told me one of my settings in Preferences was ridiculously set, within 20 minutes. Changed the setting and all was good again.

If you are new to 3d CAD it will take a bit before the rush of information sinks in. It took me about 3 weeks before I could get around enough to make things easily. Absorbing the basic concepts so you can use them, at least for me, was what took the time.

All new, it will be a slow process probably wont get a new computer or lap top till after the holidays.

 

[pdentrem]

Can you add memory to your computer? If not than look at refurbs. I have not bought new in over a decade. The last one I bought is a HP Z800 workstation which on the used market are cheap and very fast.
Pierre

 

[mac1911]

Can you add memory to your computer? If not than look at refurbs. I have not bought new in over a decade. The last one I bought is a HP Z800 workstation which on the used market are cheap and very fast.
Pierre

At this point its old enough to retire it. It wont even do a windows 10 update from window 7?
I plan on getting all the pictures coppied to thumb drives and CDs
Then move on.

 

[great white]

At this point its old enough to retire it. It wont even do a windows 10 update from window 7?
I plan on getting all the pictures coppied to thumb drives and CDs
Then move on.

Be aware that thumb drives are subject to failure without notice.

I would recommend you go out and buy a stand alone 500gb or 1 tb ssd and use that to backup things you don’t want to loose like pictures, documents, etc.

Failures aren’t as common as they used to be, but they still happen. Nothing worse than having family photos saved in one spot and have a a hardware failure and loose them.

Something else to consider is that older laptops/desktops can be made much much faster by maxing out the ram and then dropping a ssd in it. You can often take a 3-5 year old laptop (which is REALLY old in the it arena), drop in a ssd and gain near new like speeds. Especially if you just use it for internet and email.

I’ve got a couple laptops and an older destop that I dropped max ram and ssd in to and am still using them today.

my oldest is an HP mpc8277c from roughly 2000. Dropped in a quad core (was an option when new), bigger power supply, 1 tb ssd, gtx 660 graphics card and maxed out the ram and its damned near as fast as my brand new gaming laptop. It has its limitations (like under HW specs for newer games), but it does everything I need it to (like 3d modeling and video editing).

Good hunting.

 

[mac1911]

I print gears in ABS, but pla or PETG would also work fine. As important (or more important) is the orientation in which it is printed. In a nutshell, you don't want layer lines parallel to the load path or the load can split teeth off. Print flat and at a high infill and no worries other than possible warping when printing.

I'd recommend searching 3d sites like "thingiverse" for change gear STL files. If you find something that works for tooth count, changing the center bore to match your smithy is a doodle on a site like "tinkercad" or similar....

Friend of mine came through with some 3d gears . I will try to get them on and test run . If so he said we can move on to better material