You’ll note this is in the chat forum, so not a bike, but a Curta mechanical calculator. And the files and instructions are available. Brilliant. [video]https://youtu.be/zh2Z11miQ0w[/video]

Why is it double sized?

That is amazing.

So… help a muggle out. If I bought a 3D Printer, could I download the instructions for that and just print out the kit?

you’d think he would be able to print a spanner! 🙄

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta#cite_ref-:0_2-2

(I only found that as I was trying to find out what a Curta calculator was)

Here’s what to use your 3D printer for!

Really?
I already have a calculator in my phone/PC/drawer. I’d have thought he’d have spent the time and effort on something a bit more ‘current’.

P-Jay – Member

That is amazing.

So… help a muggle out. If I bought a 3D Printer, could I download the instructions for that and just print out the kit?

Pretty much. There’d be a bit of learning to do, to get reliable prints from your machine initially and you need to make sure that the machine can print to the size of the required parts.

I think in the comments, he mentions that most of the threads are made once the parts have been produced; i.e. using taps & dies, rather than printing the threads – although I think he said there was one large thread that could be printed.

P-Jay – Member

So… help a muggle out. If I bought a 3D Printer, could I download the instructions for that and just print out the kit?

Not on day one- you could go through the motions but you’d not get a usable print, some of that’s reasonably demanding. But once you got to know it a bit and got it all working right, then it’s totally doable.

Not on day one- you could go through the motions but you’d not get a usable print, some of that’s reasonably demanding. But once you got to know it a bit and got it all working right, then it’s totally doable.

Depends on the printer, just for shits and giggle because this was mentioned in another thread I printed a test cube on my ultimaker which is still running as it was straight out the box. X and Y are 9.99mm in the XY plane, 10.02 in the YZ/XZ planes as there’s a slight lip at the bottom, Z is 10.00 bang on, and no slope in any axis or plane.

So the caveat to your statement should be, “depending on how good the printer is.”

thisisnotaspoon – Member

Depends on the printer, just for shits and giggle because this was mentioned in another thread I printed a test cube on my ultimaker which is still running as it was straight out the box. X and Y are 9.99mm in the XY plane, 10.02 in the YZ/XZ planes as there’s a slight lip at the bottom, Z is 10.00 bang on, and no slope in any axis or plane.

Is there not a period of learning related to the printer settings though, as much as anything to do with how good the printer is?
From what I have been reading up on, filament temperature, bed temp, feed rate, bed adhesion etc. all have to be learnt? And then this changes for a different material…

Most decent, printers come with the settings pre-configured. Select material type PLA or ABS, select print quality.. Print!

You can get better prints by fine tuning the settings, wall thickness/top bottom layers, temperature, overhangs/retraction, coasting, movement speed, bridging, etc. The untrained eye probably won’t be able to tell the difference between the default setting and the settings that have taken hours of fine tuning.

Milkie – Member

Most decent, printers come with the settings pre-configured. Select material type PLA or ABS, select print quality.. Print!

Cool – yeah, I did wonder if this was the case.

I saw something earlier on today about PLA filament impregnated with wood! Any experience of printing with this?!

Milkie – Member

Most decent, printers come with the settings pre-configured. Select material type PLA or ABS, select print quality.. Print!

Discover your filament doesn’t like the stock temps, or the bed needs levelled, or run into adhesion issues, or any number of other things. With any domestic printer, even an expensive one, trying to jump right into parts like this is optimistic.

What Milkie said, the defaults work first time. My predecessor apparently had a knack for trying to re-invent the square wheel, which is why the printer was sat in a box abandoned. I just booted it up and used the defaults and everything comes out fine.

The more kit built or custom built printers obviously aren’t going to be quite so plug and play.

ABS can be a PITA to print with regardless of settings as it tends to want to warp though. So I just use PLA.

That wood stuff will never look like wood. It might be useful for making parts to repair something that is wood, but I suspect anything made out of it will just look like something 3D printed from wood coloured plastic.

Discover your filament doesn’t like the stock temps, or the bed needs levelled, or run into adhesion issues, or any number of other things. With any domestic printer, even an expensive one, trying to jump right into parts like this is optimistic.

It’s a bit like saying everyone should learn to MTB on a rigid singlespeed with flat pedals.

I don’t dispute there’s still plenty of stuff that can go wrong using the defaults, but equally I have more issue when trying to be clever than when I just stick to the defaults and leave every box ticked.

thisisnotaspoon – Member

I just booted it up and used the defaults and everything comes out fine.

<snip>

ABS can be a PITA to print with regardless of settings as it tends to want to warp though. So I just use PLA.

And that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about really.