@Clough42 James I found your channel about a month ago and have been working my way through the videos. In my opinion, some of the best content on all of RUclips and very professionally presented. I’m not sure you’ll catch this comment but if I may, I’ll offer an observation with regard to why Fusion would not let you add the sketch dimension to the distance between “Hole 10” and “Hole 1”. I don’t believe it’s a bug. At 14:59 when your over constraint pop-up show up; take a look at the far left of your two circles (outer and offset construction line circle). You’ll notice that Fusion placed a constraint between those two circles when you created the offset. It therefore won’t allow you to creat that “adjusted dimension” between Hole 10 and Hole 1. If you delete that constraint and just add a dimension (webthickness) between the outer circle and the construction circle, I think you’ll then be able to add the dimension (webthickness) between hole 10 and hole 1 without needing the “formula” you created. The outer diameter will then snap to where it needs to be. Hope that makes sense and again, I’m very much enjoying all of your videos!
This is the nicest way to tell a whole bunch of people that they were wrong, and here are the actual reasons why. Perfection! And people thought that the fireworks were going to be the biggest source of burns today. :D
The tool works, and as you say if you wear it out you print out another one, nothing wrong with that. Chances are you'll never wear it out anyway. As for pin gauges, they're on my serious want list but can't justify the cost at the moment with everything else needing to be done here. Someday!
You can use two gauge pins to measure a bore (if you don’t have inside or hole mics). That largest hole could be measured with, say, a 0.300 and 0.213 pin, for example.
I really enjoy learning from your excellent videos. Now, I guess, the next step is for me to buy a 3D printer, mill, metal lathe, a metric ton of tooling and... Okay, the real issue is how many hobbies can I afford? Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us wanna-be machinists. After all my years on the electronics/ software/management side of machine design (robots and industrial automation) I still learn stuff never taught during my engineering degree. It proves again that degree provides a framework, the experience builds a career. What type of engineering do you practice for your profession?
the struggle is real. i have a mini lathe, a micro mill and a 3d printer. now i want a bigger lathe and a cnc mill. i learn more from this channel each week than I've learned in years watching others
Tap guides from plastic are good enough. If you place steel (hardened steel is even worse) on a workpiece from a softer metal you risk scratching your part - less so with plastic blocks as long as you keep them clean. The fit of your guide block, with the tap loosely wobbling a little bit, is perfect. It is just there to guide the tap fairly straight in the hole so it will find its way down. I am not sure Cunningham's law applies here - there is no wrong or right way to draw things in F360, there is just a multitude of ways to do the same thing and it all depends on your needs which ones work in a given case.
You need a metal 3d printer James, have you ordered one yet? :) Like you, I find a 3d printer and fusion one of the best tools for making jigs and aids for my metal and wood working tools. Keep the vids coming, I really learn a lot from you. Thanks!
I was now wondering if the export to STL step in Fusion 360 is too low resolution. The default is 'medium', would the faceting decrease with 'high' and therefore make the circles more round instead of faceted? I may experiment with this since I always use 'medium'.
A chunk of the error in holes is because exporting to STL converts from curves to polygons. The algorithm is going to connect lines on the perimeter while trying to keep the line within some distance of the actual circle. This will always come out slightly undersized for a hole. I wish there was a setting to use line segments that are tangent with the points on the outside within tolerance.
That was some Montgomery Scott level keyboard and mouse work when you started changing things in fusion. Have you thought about trying to design transparent aluminum? Either way, I think Scotty would be proud of ya. And no, I don't know why my mind went there other than it was two things I enjoyed. Keep up thr great work.
Nice work. I come from a Proe/Creo 20 year background, and in that CAD software, you can't exit the sketch unless the sketch is fully constrained. Coming from that software to Fusion, which allows you to leave a sketch without it being fully constrained, I make sure all the lines are black before leaving. (I might have the wrong colors I'm colorblind...). I wonder if you constrain hole #1 to the Right plane if it would solve the over-constraint issue when you dimension the gap between the first and last hole. I know it sound counter-intuitive, but its something that stuck out at me that your whole sketch was blue because it was not fully constrained.
Edit to add, I just made your sketch. Exact same method as this video. Parameters for web and hole diameters, tangency to a construction line, tan to tan hole to hole DIMs, etc. I constrained hole #1 vertically with the center point right away. As soon as I dimensioned the last hole to the first hole (tan to tan), the entire sketch turned black. I did not have any over-constrained warnings. Well, to make sure that was the cause of your issue, I then deleted the vertical constraint of the first hole, and the sketch still worked making the last hole tan to tan DIM. Oh well....
Wait, those sound effects were FREE?!? Man oh man that’s awesome! 🤣 Don’t worry about simplifying your words to save time. Control+C then Control+v is a thing. 😀
I just have a small manual mill and lathe at home but my 3D printer has helped a lot for fixtures. I can print soft jaws to hold odd shaped parts, or jigs to help machine a feature that would be hard to position otherwise. I dream of getting a CNC mill someday, but the printer helps to bridge the gap.
Great educational video! I have a material question on which inexpensive FDM material has mechanical properties to a 1/2" Stauff Polycarbonate Pipe Clamp printed on a Creality CR-10 or similar printer?
Just to add data to your theory about layer height, I honestly never put 2 and 2 together but I do use a 0.2mm to a 0.25mm layer height and I have found that 0.2mm tolerance normally works for a light interference fit. Facepalm on my part.
When dealing with multiple sketches, i usually will go deselect the visibility on said sketches i dont need. (LH side, make the eye logo disappear). this way only the drawing lines are shown. issue is, if they are all on the same sketch, they all go away. So, i usually make new sketches constantly. IDK if its efficient or not, but its what i do thus far.
How about this method: add a constructions line hole to each hole (concentric), dim these construction holes to be the offset value bigger then the holes. Then just make the construction holes tangent to each adjacent construction hole.
Interesting! I think there could be a relation between the layer height and the hole shrinkage, I print with a 0.8mm nozzle at 0.6mm layer heights and use a diameter offset of 0.65mm
Simplify3d has a horizontal size compensation parameter, I printed some test cubes took dimensions and using that feature sizes across printers have been pretty good... Great vídeo!
@@Clough42 Cura recently introduced Hole Horizontal Expansion. To my mind it's better fixed in the slicer than in the model especially since, as your data shows, it's fairly constant across hole sizes.
I use Repetier server as a print server. Worked well even for my delta printers. It's not as feature packed as octoprint, but I like it much more, it seems to do a much smoother job, you can also run multiple printers off it. Used it on two delta printers and two Cartesian style printers all at the same time with no ill effects on a pi3.
I'm interested to know which Raspberry PI model you were using for install of OctoPi? I'm asking as you said that you'd overloaded it with plugins which was causing the print quality issue. I'm setting up my 3d Printer, using OctoPI on a Raspberry PI 4 (4GB) and am wondering if the issue that you encounted was because of using an older PI which doesn't have as much processing power?
Could you have calculated the diameter of each hole from a single value? I noticed that each hole size is about 0.0625 smaller than its larger neighboring hole. It might be possible to use a starting hole size, number of holes, then use calculated values for the rest (with a dash of the circular pattern tool).
Hey - thanks for doing this video - I have made 1000's of parts with CorelDraw (Plasma CNC) and have been learning Fusion 360 for 3d printing. This seemed like and easy project and it was pretty easy - the "=" constraint was a pain - but the rest went well. I decided to put text sizes on the outside and have the letters stick out 1/8". I used the emboss tool on tangent planes to each hole. Worked well!
I love your channel. We are sort of like minded (besides I am not as closely skilled as you are). But your attention to detail and taking the right conclusions is great. Watch your videos because I can always learn something new.
Great video Buddy! Funny I always like watching you Fusion and think to myself huh I would not do it like that. Here is just another simple way to get your hole spacing equal..... Just draw a large construction line circle that will be your tangent constraint for all of the holes Then draw all your holes. Now offset all guide hole circles with 50% of what your would like to see for the clear dimension between them, make them construction. Then simply tangent these newly created offsets to one another. Finally tangent constrain the offset circles to the first large circle you drew. Now you can change any of the guide hole circle dimensions and everything will auto adjust, no perimeters needed. Keep up the great work Buddy! Happy 4th!
Hi Werner Just tried this and it works great except the holes show blue which means they are not fully constrained, tried moving them and they don't so ok but strictly not correct yet? Great thought provoking problem what!!
@@wernerberry7800 Had another look at this today and I find I can rotate all the holes whilst in the large circle that is why it is not constrained. made certain the large circle centre was coincidence with the origin, this turned black, new line from origin to centre of largest hole, made construction and constrained either horizontally or vertically all black so got there in the end. I will remember your method for future designs, Cheers
I look forward to your videos. I redid your tap guide on my system. Same issue with over constraining the last distance between circles. Instead of using your formula to get around that problem I disengaged the tangent on the last circle constraint then set the distance and reinstated the tangent constraint on the last circle. The tap guide came out perfect using the .013 adjustment using my creator pro 3d printer, .4 nozzle and using PLA.
By any chance are you using an older version of a RaspberryPi? Maybe the CPU isn't able to handle plugins + OctoPi? If you are using an old "1" version maybe stepping up to a 3 or a 4 would fix your issue for you.
Hey James! You were explaining how circles are just a lot of straight lines instead of arcs, and you also mentioned you're running Octoprint anyway. There's a (relatively new) plugin for Octoprint called "Arc Welder". It extrapolates arcs from gcode as a preprocessing step. So it vastly reduces gcode filesize (and therefore streaming size) by replacing a lot of G0/G1 with just a few G2/G3 (for me the reduction is usually ~60-80%). Obviously this requires arc support to be enabled in the printer firmware. I don't know what exact printer you're using (I'm assuming it got an 8bit board, on 32bit boards gcode-streaming is usually not a problem anymore), but it's not unlikely you'll have to upload a firmwarer with enabled arc support. If you're using Marlin, there's been some recent improvements to the handling of arcs, so make sure you grab a very recent version (preferably just the latest stable version). The setting you're looking for is ARC_SUPPORT in Configuration_adv.h. That's all you need.
I have an old version of Marlin that had the false THERMAL RUNAWAY bug. I keep meaning to update it, but I only think about it when I have a bunch of stuff I need to print.
@@Clough42 Well if it's old (Marlin 1.x), an upgrade surely wouldn't be a bad idea, but things have changed a bit for Marlin 2.0 (do not stay with 1.x). You'll likely have to manually copy over the configuration changes line by line to the new config.h. Compiling/uploading isn't a massive task, but if you haven't done it, it will require some guide reading (or watching). Since I would assume you're familiar with programming microcontrollers from watching the "Electronic Leadscrew" series, you might even have everything needed installed anyway. Preferably your printer is common enough that you can find a working/complete configuration someone else did that you can just use, that'll make it much faster. I would still recommend reading through the config files anyway (it's just two of them) to get familiar with what you can/could configure and how it's all working. In any case, if you ever get around to updating it, just remember to enable arc support while you're in there (and if theres enough memory for it on your controller). Opens up some nice possibilities after all.
Good printers can do arcs (G2 & G3), a bunch of slicers can actually use arc welder to post process the gcode to replace some of the G1s. Also helps with the amount of orders the processor has to deal with.
Had similar problems with the Ramps controller on a delta printer...marlin had become to slow for the calculations needed for a delta printer... movin to klipper on the pi solved my issues...
You've only considered adjustments for the segment size effect. What about combining this with what you learnt in your ELS test jig with plastic shrinkage? Could you not use the overall diameter of the jig to indicate how much of the change is due to shrinkage AND how much is due to segment size? ...oh and look into ArdWelder plugin for Octoprint - tons of comments here saying slicers generating old school Gcode and not using arc paths - not so with this plugin and it makes your gcode MUCH kinder to the buffer oh and further, there's klipper which throws away the gcode buffer completely by using the pi as a construct for a much more efficient "machine steps only" style protocol to the control board ....this does replace Marlin (or equivalent) though so it is a firmware type change
I didn't cover it in the video, but I'm still applying the 0.5% scale increase to compensate for ABS shrinkage, and the outside dimension is just about perfect.
@@Clough42 That's good to know James - I've took some of what you demonstrated on that scale increase video and adopted it myself so I appreciate you sharing your findings
Fantastic video! You addressed many of my unsaid/uncommented thoughts about your last video. Suggestion regarding your final thoughts in this video: procure a small furnace to cast some 3d prints in easy metals. If you find you do use a tool more often, it’s a way to make something close to an heirloom tool whiteout much effort. Veg Oil Guy on YT has some short informative videos on casting with 3d prints. Alternatively, tough castable ceramics are pretty cheap and available on McMaster, and 3d printing a mold for such tools could be pretty simple. I haven’t seen anyone try this out in earnest on RUclips, so that could be an interesting series. Thanks for the great content!
I've thought about it. Though what I really want is to cast large parts in ductile iron. I also haven't picked up a cheap welder, because what I really want to weld is Aluminum. :)
@@Clough42 Well here's a welder to consider: PRIMEWELD TIG225X 225 Amp IGBT AC DC Tig/Stick Welder with Pulse CK17 Flex Torch and Cable 3 Year Warranty. It's on AMAZON or direct from PRIMEWELD in NJ for $799. It sells out and then you wait a few wks for the next batch to arrive, which also sells out. I got on their list and ordered when they posted availability. It's good for stick and especially TIG including AC for aluminum. Comes with a decent TIG torch, stinger for stick, pedal to modulate TIG amperage. Checkout the video reviews and they've replaced the original foot pedal with an improved one. This unit has multiple discrete dials for key parameters.
"glassy smooth"; camera shows a row of very nice parallel small layers. Not sure what type of glass you're used to, but my glass is definitely smoother. 🤪
Using your initial method with the construction line and then solid lines, is there a way to build a selection set as you're drawing the solid lines vs going back and selecting? I'm still pretty new at F360, but that seems like the next most intuitive step to me.
there a setting in cura slicer to compensate for hole size and outside part deviation so you dont have to change your drawing with variables to each drawing
Hello James Love playing with Fusion 360 and thought I would give your sketch a go. My findings are if you create all of your holes first then do tangent to tangent dimension for all, one to another they move to equal spacing. Then create a circle over all of them, do a tangent to tangent coincidence for all individual holes to large circle all is good. Make the large circle construction then create an offset circle for the outer surface. Only problem then it is all still blue but does not move. I found by creating a horizontal constructional line from one side of outer circle coincidental to the edge to other side coincidental to the edge, going through origin and making it horizontal and coincidental to the largest hole centre it all turned black. Very thought provoking Thanks
Yeah...I had been thinking about the fact that it wasn't locked rotationally, and I was wondering if anchoring it might help the solver. It's a difficult software problem in general. I'm actually impressed with how well it does work.
First off, I greatly enjoy watching your videos! Are you printing these at 100% infill? Your sides look great, but the top surface is a bit lacking (no offense), and I usually see this on 100% infill parts as it amplifies over-extrusion defects. Hard to tell without a close-up. I will usually pick my temperature range, measure my filament, then print a plate of 20x20x5mm pucks elevated off the bed 5mm with supports - I will vary the extrusion multiplier 0.90 to 1.10, usually by 0.02 increments using per model settings in Cura or multiple processes in Simplify3d. I print them with a brim locking on the supports together and I can pull it off in one sheet after writing the multiplier on each part with a Sharpie in case one falls off. I can use a magnifier to quickly inspect the grid of pucks to determine my multiplier.
No. The infill is 30%, I think. I have this printer tuned for slightly under-extrude, for exactly the reason you mention. I don't want to overfill the top layer, because I'm usually printing mechanical parts and I want the height to be precise. The terrible surface finish on the top of this part is the result of three things: 1) I put text on the top layer, so the slicer generated all kinds of crazy geometry with some gaps, even in the preview, 2) I printed this with .334mm layer height with a .4mm nozzle, so I didn't get a good smoothing effect on the top, and 3) I printed at 100mm/s, which makes it very difficult for the printer to manage the varying nozzle pressure with all the short extrusions and rapid turnarounds.
Simplify3D removed these a while back because they were causing issues with some RepRap firmware. The other challenge is that the STL file generated by Fusion 360 doesn't have any arcs in it, since it's all triangular facets.
If every printer out there had a nice, fast CPU (like the common ARM Cortex) or full-featured control software like LinuxCNC, arcs would be no problem. Unfortunately, there are plenty of printers that run on little 8-bit Atmels (Arduinos and clones), which just don't have the oomph to deal with arcs. Slicers often output G-code for the lowest common denominator and don't bother with fancy stuff (including arcs) that are only supported on advanced platforms. A good example of firmware that DOES support arcs is Smoothieware: forum.smoothieware.org/supported-g-codes ... If you find a slicer that takes advantage of them - let us know!
For relatively simple models, controlling geometry with dimensions is a non-issue. However, dimension solving imposes a significant performance cost. It is a good habit to control sketch geometry with constraints/relations first and strive for a minimum of dimensions. In Solidworks, sketching a construction line from hole center to hole center (as in your first video) and then trimming those lines from the circle interiors leaves the remaining line related to the hole centers. Does the F360 trim have the same behavior? If so, create lines, trim lines, select lines, set equal, dimension one...
In fusion, once you break the line, it's no longer constrained by the hole center. You can add coincident constraints to the line after breaking, but this is more steps.
@@Clough42 I saw when you "broke" the line that you lost relationships. I wasn't sure if "trim" had similar behavior. FYI, my Solidworks models typically consist of 5000+ unique parts & assemblies. So I am a bit of a zealot when it comes to the efficiencies of various modeling approaches.
As i mentioned about the nozzle diameter in previous video, when you push stuff through a hole, metal/plastic its actual size is slightly smaller than the hole so a .4mm/.0157 hole will not extrude at .4mm it will most likely be .01/.0004-.06mm/.0024 undersized, which would put you in the .4mm range to hole size as this is half the radius/nozzle offset on both sides of the hole. So if you made your hole 1/2 your nozzle diameter bigger on the radius(or nozzle diameter on the hole diameter) it would come in much closer on your first print, maybe .01-.03mm, if you require tighter tolerance fits. There was a comment below mine regarding that there is a setting in the slicing software that allows you to adjust this setting for the differing nozzle dimensions around holes which i didn't know at the time. I still havn't look for this yet. I only found this out by printing a solid servo coupler but the hole was too small to fit the 5mm/8mm shaft, making the hole 5.4/8.4allowed a tight fit that wasn't loose but required a little hand force to make it slide on, due to the nozzle following the path of the circle it applied .1mm either side (.2mm nozzle) of the path making the hole closer to 5.2/8.2 as the .1mm becomes doubled when measured. To save time when sizing holes I made a washer up just to test fit sizes, to save time/printing the entire part. think of it as the opposite of a spinning cutter, your offset is half the cutter diameter and has to stay within the hole, the nozzle has to stay within the work piece or the hole gets filled in. .35 is as close to.4, a part that needs very tight tolerance would need to be tightened up but for all intents and purpose a hole you make with .2 to the radius or.4 to the diameter would come in on size or slightly over, for a .4mm nozzle, allowing for slide fits and tapping, which is better than a part that the hole is too small, then requiring you to take wall thickness away. Hope this makes sense.
I think an interior round hole offset setting in the software would be great. All I see in Simplify3D is an offset that applies to all surfaces--inside and outisde. My outside dimensions are dead on. Same for straight inside walls. The thing about the nozzle size being a factor is that the software accounts for the expansion. It doesn't run the nozzle right down the wall; it accounts for the volume of the material, the height of the layer, and the width of trace it's laying down. I'm honestly not sure why the small hole compensation isn't easier to solve.
@@Clough42 the height of the layer isn't factored in either, if your layer height is .35mm you can only print in those increments so at 3 layers high you would be .05 over 1mm and the part comes out oversize, 2mm would be .10 over and so on, there is also a slight expansion in dimension on the adhesion layer dependent on your homed z height, so if you home your mc then gap the nozzle with/level the bed with anything other than a .35mm gauge, your fist layer is off by that amount, your layer height is directly related to nozzle size + a bit of squish for adhesion. All of this is fine if things don't need to be dimensional accurate. I'm currently using freecad and cura due to costs, only done a hand full of prints due to learning the cad software, followed your example thou, so thanks
Had another think about this and your holes are not defined as holes they are a part/not-a-feature on the base part sketch padded, so it will follow the defined line not knowing its a hole using the center of the nozzle, if you take the sketch and make the circles construction lines before you have padded then select the hole feature this should make them holes with the correct offset, as the software will then realise its a defined hole. Not 100% this will work as i havn't tried it yet!
@@chris-tg6ki Fusion 360 outputs an STL file, so it doesn't matter what kind of feature is used for the geometry. Simplify3D still just gets a pile of triangles.
@@Clough42 cura 4.2 has added a horizontal hole compensation for expansion, allows you to add the half thickness of extruded material to your hole radius if it has the (build class=hole) tags! Within CAD a circle is a wall-circle untill you give it the build class HOLE, has to be switched on in the settings to be visable in the slicing gui, i would imagine octo-print has something similar, maybe? I just found this while playing around with fusion and cura, just thought you might like to know
Dude perfect, people need to understand that we do things for the “project” not for the perfection, and we move on. Great work I love the channel.
Awesome, I can never get enough of you explaining ways to do things in Fusion360.
@Clough42 James I found your channel about a month ago and have been working my way through the videos. In my opinion, some of the best content on all of RUclips and very professionally presented. I’m not sure you’ll catch this comment but if I may, I’ll offer an observation with regard to why Fusion would not let you add the sketch dimension to the distance between “Hole 10” and “Hole 1”. I don’t believe it’s a bug. At 14:59 when your over constraint pop-up show up; take a look at the far left of your two circles (outer and offset construction line circle). You’ll notice that Fusion placed a constraint between those two circles when you created the offset. It therefore won’t allow you to creat that “adjusted dimension” between Hole 10 and Hole 1. If you delete that constraint and just add a dimension (webthickness) between the outer circle and the construction circle, I think you’ll then be able to add the dimension (webthickness) between hole 10 and hole 1 without needing the “formula” you created. The outer diameter will then snap to where it needs to be. Hope that makes sense and again, I’m very much enjoying all of your videos!
This is the nicest way to tell a whole bunch of people that they were wrong, and here are the actual reasons why. Perfection! And people thought that the fireworks were going to be the biggest source of burns today. :D
The tool works, and as you say if you wear it out you print out another one, nothing wrong with that. Chances are you'll never wear it out anyway. As for pin gauges, they're on my serious want list but can't justify the cost at the moment with everything else needing to be done here. Someday!
You can use two gauge pins to measure a bore (if you don’t have inside or hole mics). That largest hole could be measured with, say, a 0.300 and 0.213 pin, for example.
Good slicers also have the ability to do hole adjustment, so you can CAD without tolerances.
I really enjoy learning from your excellent videos. Now, I guess, the next step is for me to buy a 3D printer, mill, metal lathe, a metric ton of tooling and... Okay, the real issue is how many hobbies can I afford?
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us wanna-be machinists. After all my years on the electronics/ software/management side of machine design (robots and industrial automation) I still learn stuff never taught during my engineering degree. It proves again that degree provides a framework, the experience builds a career. What type of engineering do you practice for your profession?
the struggle is real. i have a mini lathe, a micro mill and a 3d printer. now i want a bigger lathe and a cnc mill. i learn more from this channel each week than I've learned in years watching others
Sound effects were GREAT!
AND free. whoo hoo
He has many talents 👍
Tap guides from plastic are good enough. If you place steel (hardened steel is even worse) on a workpiece from a softer metal you risk scratching your part - less so with plastic blocks as long as you keep them clean.
The fit of your guide block, with the tap loosely wobbling a little bit, is perfect. It is just there to guide the tap fairly straight in the hole so it will find its way down.
I am not sure Cunningham's law applies here - there is no wrong or right way to draw things in F360, there is just a multitude of ways to do the same thing and it all depends on your needs which ones work in a given case.
You need a metal 3d printer James, have you ordered one yet? :) Like you, I find a 3d printer and fusion one of the best tools for making jigs and aids for my metal and wood working tools. Keep the vids coming, I really learn a lot from you. Thanks!
I was now wondering if the export to STL step in Fusion 360 is too low resolution. The default is 'medium', would the faceting decrease with 'high' and therefore make the circles more round instead of faceted? I may experiment with this since I always use 'medium'.
at first i was dubious but when i heard the sound effect, it was proof beyond a shadow of a doubt
Although I’m a SolidWorks user, I still learned some tips. Design methodology overarches the CAD tool in practice.
a good video . I love this channel you do great job on the teaching so well . thank you for taking the time to do these videos they have me so much.
A chunk of the error in holes is because exporting to STL converts from curves to polygons. The algorithm is going to connect lines on the perimeter while trying to keep the line within some distance of the actual circle. This will always come out slightly undersized for a hole. I wish there was a setting to use line segments that are tangent with the points on the outside within tolerance.
That was some Montgomery Scott level keyboard and mouse work when you started changing things in fusion. Have you thought about trying to design transparent aluminum? Either way, I think Scotty would be proud of ya.
And no, I don't know why my mind went there other than it was two things I enjoyed. Keep up thr great work.
Nice work. I come from a Proe/Creo 20 year background, and in that CAD software, you can't exit the sketch unless the sketch is fully constrained. Coming from that software to Fusion, which allows you to leave a sketch without it being fully constrained, I make sure all the lines are black before leaving. (I might have the wrong colors I'm colorblind...). I wonder if you constrain hole #1 to the Right plane if it would solve the over-constraint issue when you dimension the gap between the first and last hole. I know it sound counter-intuitive, but its something that stuck out at me that your whole sketch was blue because it was not fully constrained.
Edit to add, I just made your sketch. Exact same method as this video. Parameters for web and hole diameters, tangency to a construction line, tan to tan hole to hole DIMs, etc. I constrained hole #1 vertically with the center point right away. As soon as I dimensioned the last hole to the first hole (tan to tan), the entire sketch turned black. I did not have any over-constrained warnings. Well, to make sure that was the cause of your issue, I then deleted the vertical constraint of the first hole, and the sketch still worked making the last hole tan to tan DIM. Oh well....
Wait, those sound effects were FREE?!? Man oh man that’s awesome! 🤣 Don’t worry about simplifying your words to save time. Control+C then Control+v is a thing. 😀
I just have a small manual mill and lathe at home but my 3D printer has helped a lot for fixtures. I can print soft jaws to hold odd shaped parts, or jigs to help machine a feature that would be hard to position otherwise. I dream of getting a CNC mill someday, but the printer helps to bridge the gap.
Why didn't you put the larger hole in the sorta center, to give more spacing (web thickness) between the other holes?
Liked-Subscribed-Notified. Do you put your Fusion models out for others to download?
I wish I knew 360 as well as you do. Any suggestions for training resources?
I picked up what i know here on RUclips.
Great educational video! I have a material question on which inexpensive FDM material has mechanical properties to a 1/2" Stauff Polycarbonate Pipe Clamp printed on a Creality CR-10 or similar printer?
Just to add data to your theory about layer height, I honestly never put 2 and 2 together but I do use a 0.2mm to a 0.25mm layer height and I have found that 0.2mm tolerance normally works for a light interference fit. Facepalm on my part.
When dealing with multiple sketches, i usually will go deselect the visibility on said sketches i dont need. (LH side, make the eye logo disappear). this way only the drawing lines are shown. issue is, if they are all on the same sketch, they all go away. So, i usually make new sketches constantly. IDK if its efficient or not, but its what i do thus far.
Thanks for sharing!
I need to buy some money first.
Money only goes on sale if you're already rich. Very, Very hard to find a bargain on money in small quantities.
Simply add a construction circle tangent between each pair of holes, constrain them equal and dimension one as "WebThickness".
Great tool! I actually really need a couple of these. Can I trick you into sharing the STL?
Thank you for the Fusion 360 lesson, I learned something.
Enjoyed…
How about this method: add a constructions line hole to each hole (concentric), dim these construction holes to be the offset value bigger then the holes. Then just make the construction holes tangent to each adjacent construction hole.
i use Cura. there is a plugin for hole offset. my ender 3 needs .18 set in this paremeter, which then puts the holes very close.
Hi James, it's a credit to you and your channel that the comments section is so informative. Love your work, thanks for making the time, cheers.
"I need a tool right quick" so I re-drew it twice and printed it six times. Because 3D printers!
Interesting! I think there could be a relation between the layer height and the hole shrinkage, I print with a 0.8mm nozzle at 0.6mm layer heights and use a diameter offset of 0.65mm
great F360 info, thanks
but :)
why in plastic instead of metal?
Simplify3d has a horizontal size compensation parameter, I printed some test cubes took dimensions and using that feature sizes across printers have been pretty good...
Great vídeo!
This feature adjusts all outside walls. In this case, the outside dimension is correct.
@@Clough42 Cura recently introduced Hole Horizontal Expansion. To my mind it's better fixed in the slicer than in the model especially since, as your data shows, it's fairly constant across hole sizes.
a gauge pin is pretty much the worst way to measure something on a budget, wtf r u talking about?
I use Repetier server as a print server. Worked well even for my delta printers. It's not as feature packed as octoprint, but I like it much more, it seems to do a much smoother job, you can also run multiple printers off it. Used it on two delta printers and two Cartesian style printers all at the same time with no ill effects on a pi3.
I'm interested to know which Raspberry PI model you were using for install of OctoPi? I'm asking as you said that you'd overloaded it with plugins which was causing the print quality issue. I'm setting up my 3d Printer, using OctoPI on a Raspberry PI 4 (4GB) and am wondering if the issue that you encounted was because of using an older PI which doesn't have as much processing power?
I'm using a 3B+.
They want it made from metal because they want to watch you machine it (video idea :-) )
Where can we download the tap guide and print one of our own?
Could you have calculated the diameter of each hole from a single value? I noticed that each hole size is about 0.0625 smaller than its larger neighboring hole. It might be possible to use a starting hole size, number of holes, then use calculated values for the rest (with a dash of the circular pattern tool).
Maybe. They're standard screw sizes. I suppose there's some kind of pattern to the standard.
Awsome I look forward to your videos !
Hey - thanks for doing this video - I have made 1000's of parts with CorelDraw (Plasma CNC) and have been learning Fusion 360 for 3d printing. This seemed like and easy project and it was pretty easy - the "=" constraint was a pain - but the rest went well. I decided to put text sizes on the outside and have the letters stick out 1/8". I used the emboss tool on tangent planes to each hole. Worked well!
I love your channel. We are sort of like minded (besides I am not as closely skilled as you are). But your attention to detail and taking the right conclusions is great. Watch your videos because I can always learn something new.
Great video Buddy! Funny I always like watching you Fusion and think to myself huh I would not do it like that. Here is just another simple way to get your hole spacing equal..... Just draw a large construction line circle that will be your tangent constraint for all of the holes Then draw all your holes. Now offset all guide hole circles with 50% of what your would like to see for the clear dimension between them, make them construction. Then simply tangent these newly created offsets to one another. Finally tangent constrain the offset circles to the first large circle you drew. Now you can change any of the guide hole circle dimensions and everything will auto adjust, no perimeters needed. Keep up the great work Buddy! Happy 4th!
Hi Werner Just tried this and it works great except the holes show blue which means they are not fully constrained, tried moving them and they don't so ok but strictly not correct yet? Great thought provoking problem what!!
That's a nice technique, and it seems pretty fast. More than one way to skin a CAD :-)
ROGER KIRBY l
For a part like this totally ok to leave unconstrained Buddy!! Thanks for the reply!
@@wernerberry7800 Had another look at this today and I find I can rotate all the holes whilst in the large circle that is why it is not constrained. made certain the large circle centre was coincidence with the origin, this turned black, new line from origin to centre of largest hole, made construction and constrained either horizontally or vertically all black so got there in the end. I will remember your method for future designs, Cheers
I look forward to your videos. I redid your tap guide on my system. Same issue with over constraining the last distance between circles. Instead of using your formula to get around that problem I disengaged the tangent on the last circle constraint then set the distance and reinstated the tangent constraint on the last circle. The tap guide came out perfect using the .013 adjustment using my creator pro 3d printer, .4 nozzle and using PLA.
By any chance are you using an older version of a RaspberryPi? Maybe the CPU isn't able to handle plugins + OctoPi? If you are using an old "1" version maybe stepping up to a 3 or a 4 would fix your issue for you.
3B+
@@Clough42 Curses!
Hey James! You were explaining how circles are just a lot of straight lines instead of arcs, and you also mentioned you're running Octoprint anyway. There's a (relatively new) plugin for Octoprint called "Arc Welder". It extrapolates arcs from gcode as a preprocessing step. So it vastly reduces gcode filesize (and therefore streaming size) by replacing a lot of G0/G1 with just a few G2/G3 (for me the reduction is usually ~60-80%). Obviously this requires arc support to be enabled in the printer firmware. I don't know what exact printer you're using (I'm assuming it got an 8bit board, on 32bit boards gcode-streaming is usually not a problem anymore), but it's not unlikely you'll have to upload a firmwarer with enabled arc support. If you're using Marlin, there's been some recent improvements to the handling of arcs, so make sure you grab a very recent version (preferably just the latest stable version). The setting you're looking for is ARC_SUPPORT in Configuration_adv.h. That's all you need.
I have an old version of Marlin that had the false THERMAL RUNAWAY bug. I keep meaning to update it, but I only think about it when I have a bunch of stuff I need to print.
@@Clough42 Well if it's old (Marlin 1.x), an upgrade surely wouldn't be a bad idea, but things have changed a bit for Marlin 2.0 (do not stay with 1.x). You'll likely have to manually copy over the configuration changes line by line to the new config.h. Compiling/uploading isn't a massive task, but if you haven't done it, it will require some guide reading (or watching). Since I would assume you're familiar with programming microcontrollers from watching the "Electronic Leadscrew" series, you might even have everything needed installed anyway.
Preferably your printer is common enough that you can find a working/complete configuration someone else did that you can just use, that'll make it much faster. I would still recommend reading through the config files anyway (it's just two of them) to get familiar with what you can/could configure and how it's all working.
In any case, if you ever get around to updating it, just remember to enable arc support while you're in there (and if theres enough memory for it on your controller). Opens up some nice possibilities after all.
happy 4th of July James - another great informative video. I could enjoyably listen to you explain anything all day. Joel.....
3:35 I'm recording it to play it back while printing :P
Good printers can do arcs (G2 & G3), a bunch of slicers can actually use arc welder to post process the gcode to replace some of the G1s. Also helps with the amount of orders the processor has to deal with.
Had similar problems with the Ramps controller on a delta printer...marlin had become to slow for the calculations needed for a delta printer... movin to klipper on the pi solved my issues...
You've only considered adjustments for the segment size effect.
What about combining this with what you learnt in your ELS test jig with plastic shrinkage?
Could you not use the overall diameter of the jig to indicate how much of the change is due to shrinkage AND how much is due to segment size?
...oh and look into ArdWelder plugin for Octoprint - tons of comments here saying slicers generating old school Gcode and not using arc paths - not so with this plugin and it makes your gcode MUCH kinder to the buffer
oh and further, there's klipper which throws away the gcode buffer completely by using the pi as a construct for a much more efficient "machine steps only" style protocol to the control board
....this does replace Marlin (or equivalent) though so it is a firmware type change
I didn't cover it in the video, but I'm still applying the 0.5% scale increase to compensate for ABS shrinkage, and the outside dimension is just about perfect.
@@Clough42 That's good to know James - I've took some of what you demonstrated on that scale increase video and adopted it myself so I appreciate you sharing your findings
Fantastic video! You addressed many of my unsaid/uncommented thoughts about your last video.
Suggestion regarding your final thoughts in this video: procure a small furnace to cast some 3d prints in easy metals. If you find you do use a tool more often, it’s a way to make something close to an heirloom tool whiteout much effort. Veg Oil Guy on YT has some short informative videos on casting with 3d prints.
Alternatively, tough castable ceramics are pretty cheap and available on McMaster, and 3d printing a mold for such tools could be pretty simple. I haven’t seen anyone try this out in earnest on RUclips, so that could be an interesting series.
Thanks for the great content!
I've thought about it. Though what I really want is to cast large parts in ductile iron. I also haven't picked up a cheap welder, because what I really want to weld is Aluminum. :)
@@Clough42 Well here's a welder to consider: PRIMEWELD TIG225X 225 Amp IGBT AC DC Tig/Stick Welder with Pulse CK17 Flex Torch and Cable 3 Year Warranty. It's on AMAZON or direct from PRIMEWELD in NJ for $799. It sells out and then you wait a few wks for the next batch to arrive, which also sells out. I got on their list and ordered when they posted availability. It's good for stick and especially TIG including AC for aluminum. Comes with a decent TIG torch, stinger for stick, pedal to modulate TIG amperage. Checkout the video reviews and they've replaced the original foot pedal with an improved one. This unit has multiple discrete dials for key parameters.
"glassy smooth"; camera shows a row of very nice parallel small layers.
Not sure what type of glass you're used to, but my glass is definitely smoother. 🤪
Using your initial method with the construction line and then solid lines, is there a way to build a selection set as you're drawing the solid lines vs going back and selecting? I'm still pretty new at F360, but that seems like the next most intuitive step to me.
have you tried the new 32 bit boards for 3d Printer?
An excellent video in so many different ways. Thanks again James.
Thanks yet again. I always learn something from your videos. They are appreciated and please keep them coming.
Some really good tips there James... Thanks for sharing. Always good to learn.
Your technique is excellent and inspiring . I love your videos.
Useful.
Two questions: 1. What did you use for a wall thickness? 2. What was your layer height?
there a setting in cura slicer to compensate for hole size and outside part deviation so you dont have to change your drawing with variables to each drawing
Take account the shrinkage of the plastic to make accurate part, like in your needle jig
Can you provide a link to the step, stl or f3d file so we can print the part?
Loved the free sound effects! Very informative, as always.
Thanks for all your effort. I always learn something.
Spindle mount part 6?
Hey, I'm editing that video right now!
Hello James Love playing with Fusion 360 and thought I would give your sketch a go. My findings are if you create all of your holes first then do tangent to tangent dimension for all, one to another they move to equal spacing. Then create a circle over all of them, do a tangent to tangent coincidence for all individual holes to large circle all is good.
Make the large circle construction then create an offset circle for the outer surface. Only problem then it is all still blue but does not move.
I found by creating a horizontal constructional line from one side of outer circle coincidental to the edge to other side coincidental to the edge, going through origin and making it horizontal and coincidental to the largest hole centre it all turned black. Very thought provoking Thanks
Yeah...I had been thinking about the fact that it wasn't locked rotationally, and I was wondering if anchoring it might help the solver. It's a difficult software problem in general. I'm actually impressed with how well it does work.
First off, I greatly enjoy watching your videos! Are you printing these at 100% infill? Your sides look great, but the top surface is a bit lacking (no offense), and I usually see this on 100% infill parts as it amplifies over-extrusion defects. Hard to tell without a close-up. I will usually pick my temperature range, measure my filament, then print a plate of 20x20x5mm pucks elevated off the bed 5mm with supports - I will vary the extrusion multiplier 0.90 to 1.10, usually by 0.02 increments using per model settings in Cura or multiple processes in Simplify3d. I print them with a brim locking on the supports together and I can pull it off in one sheet after writing the multiplier on each part with a Sharpie in case one falls off. I can use a magnifier to quickly inspect the grid of pucks to determine my multiplier.
No. The infill is 30%, I think. I have this printer tuned for slightly under-extrude, for exactly the reason you mention. I don't want to overfill the top layer, because I'm usually printing mechanical parts and I want the height to be precise. The terrible surface finish on the top of this part is the result of three things: 1) I put text on the top layer, so the slicer generated all kinds of crazy geometry with some gaps, even in the preview, 2) I printed this with .334mm layer height with a .4mm nozzle, so I didn't get a good smoothing effect on the top, and 3) I printed at 100mm/s, which makes it very difficult for the printer to manage the varying nozzle pressure with all the short extrusions and rapid turnarounds.
@@Clough42 Ahhh, yes. That explains it!
Please more sound effects :D
Do 3D printers not understand G02 and G03? since they are rotational moves and wouldn't need much buffer.
Simplify3D removed these a while back because they were causing issues with some RepRap firmware. The other challenge is that the STL file generated by Fusion 360 doesn't have any arcs in it, since it's all triangular facets.
If every printer out there had a nice, fast CPU (like the common ARM Cortex) or full-featured control software like LinuxCNC, arcs would be no problem. Unfortunately, there are plenty of printers that run on little 8-bit Atmels (Arduinos and clones), which just don't have the oomph to deal with arcs. Slicers often output G-code for the lowest common denominator and don't bother with fancy stuff (including arcs) that are only supported on advanced platforms. A good example of firmware that DOES support arcs is Smoothieware: forum.smoothieware.org/supported-g-codes ... If you find a slicer that takes advantage of them - let us know!
Can you share your Fusion 360 file?
For relatively simple models, controlling geometry with dimensions is a non-issue. However, dimension solving imposes a significant performance cost. It is a good habit to control sketch geometry with constraints/relations first and strive for a minimum of dimensions. In Solidworks, sketching a construction line from hole center to hole center (as in your first video) and then trimming those lines from the circle interiors leaves the remaining line related to the hole centers. Does the F360 trim have the same behavior? If so, create lines, trim lines, select lines, set equal, dimension one...
In fusion, once you break the line, it's no longer constrained by the hole center. You can add coincident constraints to the line after breaking, but this is more steps.
@@Clough42 I saw when you "broke" the line that you lost relationships. I wasn't sure if "trim" had similar behavior. FYI, my Solidworks models typically consist of 5000+ unique parts & assemblies. So I am a bit of a zealot when it comes to the efficiencies of various modeling approaches.
2:03 ... Kills a bug haha
Great video
I am impressed with the sound effects... ;-)
Your top layer looks awful, maybe your holes are undersize because of this over extrusion.
As i mentioned about the nozzle diameter in previous video, when you push stuff through a hole, metal/plastic its actual size is slightly smaller than the hole so a .4mm/.0157 hole will not extrude at .4mm it will most likely be .01/.0004-.06mm/.0024 undersized, which would put you in the .4mm range to hole size as this is half the radius/nozzle offset on both sides of the hole. So if you made your hole 1/2 your nozzle diameter bigger on the radius(or nozzle diameter on the hole diameter) it would come in much closer on your first print, maybe .01-.03mm, if you require tighter tolerance fits.
There was a comment below mine regarding that there is a setting in the slicing software that allows you to adjust this setting for the differing nozzle dimensions around holes which i didn't know at the time. I still havn't look for this yet.
I only found this out by printing a solid servo coupler but the hole was too small to fit the 5mm/8mm shaft, making the hole 5.4/8.4allowed a tight fit that wasn't loose but required a little hand force to make it slide on, due to the nozzle following the path of the circle it applied .1mm either side (.2mm nozzle) of the path making the hole closer to 5.2/8.2 as the .1mm becomes doubled when measured. To save time when sizing holes I made a washer up just to test fit sizes, to save time/printing the entire part. think of it as the opposite of a spinning cutter, your offset is half the cutter diameter and has to stay within the hole, the nozzle has to stay within the work piece or the hole gets filled in. .35 is as close to.4, a part that needs very tight tolerance would need to be tightened up but for all intents and purpose a hole you make with .2 to the radius or.4 to the diameter would come in on size or slightly over, for a .4mm nozzle, allowing for slide fits and tapping, which is better than a part that the hole is too small, then requiring you to take wall thickness away. Hope this makes sense.
I think an interior round hole offset setting in the software would be great. All I see in Simplify3D is an offset that applies to all surfaces--inside and outisde. My outside dimensions are dead on. Same for straight inside walls. The thing about the nozzle size being a factor is that the software accounts for the expansion. It doesn't run the nozzle right down the wall; it accounts for the volume of the material, the height of the layer, and the width of trace it's laying down. I'm honestly not sure why the small hole compensation isn't easier to solve.
@@Clough42 the height of the layer isn't factored in either, if your layer height is .35mm you can only print in those increments so at 3 layers high you would be .05 over 1mm and the part comes out oversize, 2mm would be .10 over and so on, there is also a slight expansion in dimension on the adhesion layer dependent on your homed z height, so if you home your mc then gap the nozzle with/level the bed with anything other than a .35mm gauge, your fist layer is off by that amount, your layer height is directly related to nozzle size + a bit of squish for adhesion. All of this is fine if things don't need to be dimensional accurate. I'm currently using freecad and cura due to costs, only done a hand full of prints due to learning the cad software, followed your example thou, so thanks
Had another think about this and your holes are not defined as holes they are a part/not-a-feature on the base part sketch padded, so it will follow the defined line not knowing its a hole using the center of the nozzle, if you take the sketch and make the circles construction lines before you have padded then select the hole feature this should make them holes with the correct offset, as the software will then realise its a defined hole. Not 100% this will work as i havn't tried it yet!
@@chris-tg6ki Fusion 360 outputs an STL file, so it doesn't matter what kind of feature is used for the geometry. Simplify3D still just gets a pile of triangles.
@@Clough42 cura 4.2 has added a horizontal hole compensation for expansion, allows you to add the half thickness of extruded material to your hole radius if it has the (build class=hole) tags! Within CAD a circle is a wall-circle untill you give it the build class HOLE, has to be switched on in the settings to be visable in the slicing gui, i would imagine octo-print has something similar, maybe? I just found this while playing around with fusion and cura, just thought you might like to know