Member postings for Peter Edwards 5

Further to my doubts about 3D printing and spoiling the party, I would like to add that I do believe the method can be very useful, and I would really like to believe I can have one on my desktop so I can print parts out from Solidworks. At the moment the machines don't produce sufficient accuracy - they will improve in the future I am sure.

Claims that 3D printing is the manufacturing of the future are a bit far fetched - mass production??

It seems the heat has gone out of the 3D printing enthusiasm as people realise that most items are better produced by more traditional means. The definition is quite poor, material choice strictly limited, time to produce and size limitation all count against it, quite apart from the necessity of being able to solid model the part in the first place to produce the STL file. I speak as a Solidworks user. I have often thought of buying a 3D printer, but for acceptable results the cost would be excessive and but for a very few instances you can use other means. Sorry to spoil the party!

Andrew. I have PM'd you on your latest post.

Moderator - thanks for suspecting me of 'Trolling' . Andrew says his surface finish is '10 times worse' than machining. I would go along with this. For some applications the results he shows will be OK, but for small parts for modelling would that be true?. I am sincerely trying to establish the practicality of the present range of relatively cheap desktop 3D printers in the absence of a practical demonstration.

I have long experience of solidworks and stereolithography (which produces excellent results). I also have 40 years experience in engineering and university lecturing in the subject, so moderator perhaps you should think before you go in for your accusations.

Andrew. Thanks for the photos and Ra values for your 3D printed cubes. They confirm that the surface finish (and dimensional accuracy) are really not too good!. I suppose it depends what you want the part for. I wonder how you got the Ra values - the equipment I used isn't the sort of thing most people have in the house.

Using stereolithography produces a very satisfactoy result, but at the moment it is very expensive.

I have visited PCWorld and Maplin, both offering 3D printers for sale on their web pages. At Maplin they said it was online sale only and they didn't have one in the store to show me, and at PC World I had to explain to one of the senior staff what a 3D printer was - and, no, they didn't have one!

I have looked in vain for somewhere to see one working on display - I'm beginning to think it's because the results would not persuade a lot of people to buy one!. Correct me if I'm wrong!

In connection with 3D printing, I think it is worth emphasising that unless you find an off the shelf 3D model file you are faced with producing your own. Unfortunately Solidworks and the like are not easy packages to use and cannot be made simpler - they must be quite involved in order to have all the facilities required. If you attempt 3D modelling of even a quite simple model you would rapidly discover the difficulties, and probably be strongly tempted to throw your computer out of the window!

The idea that you will be able to download a file and print your part off is possible but plain daft; if it,s a standard part it would be ridiculous to have thousands of people all making their own on individual 3D printers!

At the moment the quality of 3D printed parts is very poor, but I would guess that in about 20 yrs they will be much improved, but still only used by modellers and enthusiasts.

Blowlamp - such as?!!!

I use Solidworks which is a full 3D modelling package. I have been using it for many years in my job and now for my own entertainment. I can produce 3Dmodels on request for any part or mechanism.

I have some experience of 3D modelling (solidworks) and stereolithography which is producing the solid object from the screen model by use of a laser - a bit like 3D printing but far superior (and very much more expensive). The 3D printers like 'cube' and 'up' give very poor resolution and it is far better to produce your part by conventional means. This will probably always be the case because they melt plastic material in successive layers - never likely to produce an accurate part.

I would support John Stevenson above in pointing out that unless you can do 3D modelling on screen using Solidworks, Solidedge, AutoCAD Inventor, etc, a 3D printer is no use to you anyway!!