What do you mostly use 3D Printing For?

[Eddie]

I've always been curious as to what most of our members and viewers of 3dprintboard use 3D printing for. Are the majority of you guys at-home users, doing it as a hobby or do you do it for industry related purposes?

Please share!

[threedee4me]

just got into it and have been transforming every area of my home I can print stuff for lol. but i love it so much my mission is to get involved from a career standpoint in sales. just need to figure out how to now.

[ssayer]

Mainly to design and print stuff for my RC addiction. After that, to design and print various yard things. Whatever gets my attention after that...

[printbus]

I'm an at-home user, doing it as a hobby. I find it offers a fascinating and fairly unique combination of mechanics, electronics, microcontrollers, software/firmware, and materials science. There's almost always a backlog of things on the "hey, could you print something to do this" wish list. Time permitting, there's also always something I can futz with as far as a setting adjustment or upgrade on the printer.

[awerby]

I sometimes make practical sorts of things, but mostly I use it to make sculpture, either complete pieces or components of larger things. Also I make jewelry patterns, burning them out so I can cast them in metal.

[djprinter]

So far:

custom models (characters, spaceships, etc.)
replica movie props
vintage camera parts
robotic/animatronic mechanisms
replacement toy parts for my kids
custom storage solutions for tools

[curious aardvark]

Combination of:
things that I cannot buy.
things that come under the: 'hey Alex can you make me: a thing to do this, one of these, copy this etc
Thing round the house that have broken
stuff for my dad's: shooting, motorhome, fishing
Things that i have invented
very occasionally ornaments - but probably 99% practical items

Looking to make more stuff to sell and get into the rapid prototyping & design sector on a more professional basis

Also looking towards selling a fairly unique device that I can hopefully patent as well.
We'll see - got to get the bugger working first :-)
If it works it'll be worth good money to a lot of people - if it doesn't work - it won't be. lol
And yes it's meant to be cryptic. First thing that's said on all the patent sites I've looked at: Do Not Tell Anyone What It Is.
So I'm not going to :-)

[Alibert]

For my customers needing special parts, of course at-home (repairs, mods, hobbies, sculptures, etc) and at-work (my regular job). For the latter I design and print parts for R&D test rigs which are one-off.

Continuously moving towards more technical plastics. ABS is the main workhorse. Poly-carbonate (PC-MAX is a dream to work with) is well under control now, and getting to grips with PEI filament (need special parts for 160 C working temperature and organic solvent resistance). For the latter I am modifying a printer to reach 360 C hot end temp, and a temp-controlled heated chamber (ceramic heater+fan) up to 60 C.

[curious aardvark]

(PC-MAX is a dream to work with)

How ? Even polymaker, the guys who make it, couldn't tell me how to print with it reliably. what do you print it on ?
Sorry for the thread hijack eddie - but I have two rolls of the stuff and no clue as to how to make it stick to something or let go once it's stuck :-)

[Alibert]

Hi aardvark, no problem.

You get sheets of buildtak with it, but I don't use them. Far too finnicky to get right and always tearing them apart when prying loose parts.

I found that a sheet of ULTEM PEI (the plain amber stuff) works perfectly. Stick it to the build plate with high-temp double sided adhesive, and roughen up the surface with some fine steel wool. Then it a matter of getting the z-zero right. Too far and the part will warp, too close and it takes a lot of effort to tear the part loose. However, the PEI sheet can take an enormous amount of abuse (I have a 3mm thick PEI sheet stuck directly to the 8mm alu build plate), so try pretty close and gradually increase the Z-zero to get them tight, but easier to remove.

Print at 250-260 C with 30-40 mm/s. Take into account about 0.2-0.4 % shrinkage when slicing. Heatbed starts at 100 C for first layer, then 99 C for layer 3 and 98 C for layer 5+ (S3D settings)

Parts are very strong and can withstand higher temperatures than ABS.

I do have a heated chamber. I put a compact electric heating element+fan inside the enclosed printer, and control the temp with a cheap chinese temp controller (10 euro). The fan I put on the mains permanently, so that it keeps running when the heating element is off. Otherwise the fan will turn on/off with the heating element and the latter will dissipate more heat to the fan when off. The temp controller regulates the temp inside the printer, the fan moves the air around to

I also have a micro-swiss full metal MK10 style hotend in my replicator clone for polycarbonate (and PEI). Works very well, have two more in the mail now.