Save Money on your 3D Printing! - 2014 Video Lecture | What is 3D Printing: Basic Knowledge - IT & Software

how's it going guys angers here from
makers Muse it's late Thursday night
I can't sleep so I thought it's a great
opportunity to do another video and this
one's all about how to save your
precious hard-earned monies when you go
to do your 3d printing
so understand how you can save your
precious money on 3d printing you need
to understand how these engines work so
basically if you're uploading for SLS
usually it's priced on the bounding box
so if you design something that's really
Airy like a big lattice structure that
takes up lots of space it's going to be
really expensive because all of that
powder and space that you're taking up
fills up the bed and therefore they can
put other stuff in it definitely going
to charge you for that privilege
so one awesome way you can save money
straight off the bat is to invest parts
nesting parts means you pretty much get
lots of different parts and put them
together in the same uploaded STL file
for printing this saves you money on
various fronts one it makes them all
into the same tightly nested area
so therefore the bounding box is much
smaller and - you only get hit with one
setup fee most places will have you know
maybe thirty five dollars setup fee so
if you upload one file then another file
you're getting hit again again again and
setup you just want to do it once for
the nested STL file so you can do it
with mesh mix are very easily just grab
the files you need from a folder drag
them in to mesh mixer and then use the
transform tool just move them where you
want near each other not touching be
very careful that not intersecting each
other rhythm closely and then combine
them again export that STL file and then
upload that file very simple and will
save you a lot of money straight off the
bat the next trick is if you have a very
large printer you need to do especially
in SLS and this trick is called
hollowing I've explained it before in my
other mesh mix of videos but essentially
what you're doing is getting a shape and
giving it a thick skin or shell removing
the insides if you poke some holes in it
then when they do the SLS print they can
pull the powder that they didn't Center
out of the print you get a print that's
for a start much lighter so you don't
need it to be strong all the time
so it's much lighter over therefore it
uses less powder and cost you less money
so definitely worth doing it's very easy
to do in mesh mixer and great to do if
you're doing something very artistic it
doesn't need much strength to it there's
no point it being solid something else
to watch out for when uploading part is
part orientation so this isn't such a
big deal for engineering parts often
they'll be on the flat you know X Y Z
plane but if you're doing organic free
hand modeling sometimes you'll design
something out of weird
like a diagonal and when you upload it
to an engine some quoting engines won't
orientate parts for the lowest price and
most economical print so they'll give
you a bounding box for example if it's a
weird diagram able that's huge what a
really a bounding box should be really
small and that's one thing that can
really increase your quote costs for no
real reason and the big one for saving
money is to fix your files before
uploading often companies just won't
accept bad STL files for printing but if
they do accept bad STL files they're no
doubt charge you money big bucks to fix
your files
that's because fixing STL files is a
real pain they ask no 3d printing
company wants to do it so highly
recommend checking files with netfabb
either their cloud service or uploading
to cloud net for comp or download the
free netfabb version please note that
the free version netfabb does not
combine shells so it doesn't fully fix
files to do that you need to use that
cloud service or buy their premium
version for like $300 designing from
that cloud private which they wouldn't
sell me so work that's really pretty
company so thanks net there anyway
that's one thing picture file for
uploading otherwise you'll be get with a
massive fee then finally for those power
users out there there's ways to combine
these methods so what you can do is
essentially make your own custom Airfix
kit and you can get the files that you
want to hollow combine them in with
files that may be very small then use
little struts to join them together so
when you receive the parts they're all
suspended with each other the little you
know the rods you just break away and
then assemble so that helps you a lot
because often these 3d printing places
it sometimes lose very small parts
they'll try their best not to but um it
can happen so if you join them all
together little rods it's like your own
a hair fix kit and it works very well
for very small prints and that's
basically it nice and simple for this
one I'm going to get a bit now cuz I got
this off my chest they can use your
harder and extra monies that you saved
to go buy some Cheetos or Arduino x' or
whatever you would spend it on I don't
know and yeah thanks for watching guys
really appreciate it
subscribe here and already and I'll see
you again here soon on makers
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