I've been a precision obsessed modeler for 30 years and I've only recently started porting my skills over to Blender as well as getting into hi-res 3D printing. I was also a modeling teacher way back in the early 90s. I must say that not only are you a top shelf modeler, you're also very effective at teaching it. Kudos to you sir, and thank you for the new tricks you're teaching this old dog!
thank you! i am just getting into blender and your video is the single best i have come across! you are clear and you take the time to show all of your keyboard shortcuts and process. i spent an entire day trying to understand the directions in other vids and still didnt understand. i know that many of these processes are fairly advanced but you still managed to keep a newbie in the loop.
6:23 my two cents about how I would selecting the threads quickly- I would select the top of faces of the cube first and the press h to hide, then I would hover the threads, and press L to quickly select that part only.
BTW maybe you could use the Alt+S shortcut it does the same as the solidify, is called Shrink/Flatten, while on it you could tap S again to switch between even thickness or not. (You have to be on median for it to work) it just moves faces along normal. Alternatively you could do move individual on Z axis while on face mode and will do the same. Maybe you already know but maybe it will help out :)
Thank you very much for the pointer AirmanCS! I was not aware of this and i'll be sure to add it in to the 2.9 version of the whole series in about a month.
A lot of good stuff here, thanks! But I ran into an issue right away - solidifying one of these add-on bolts results in overlapping inside-out faces at the edge of the thread, even with my 0.1 thickness. Might not have been an issue in the older version of blender, since you don't seem to have Self-Intersection in the bool options, but that's what I had to enable to fix it.
Amazing Tip at the end! Do you just cut away both sides of the bolt with the boolean modifier? Would it make sense to just cut off one side and have a half-round bolt? Do you prefer shrinking your bolts in blender or leave it unchanged and use something like Horizontal Expansion in the slicer to fix the printer's offset?
Thanks for the lesson! Just what I needed! But isn't it easier to make a thread diameter smaller via a Bolt Factory? 1. Create a bolt via Bolt Factory 2. Boolean operation with another object to make a hole 3. Make thread diameter of the bolt a bit smaller in the bolt factory parameters.
I don't know if it would be easer or if there is something i'm not thinking through correctly but I don't see a problem doing it via the bold factory. I guess i'm also thinking how you would resize threads that come in files that are made by others.
Alternative: 1) add 0.2 to Major Dia and Minor Dia when creating the bolt (or whatever other tolerance you need for your printer) 2) move this bolt into the object you want to screw to and add a bool->difference modifier Done (or am I missing some hidden aspect, here? Seems to work fine for me. I simply created such 'holemaker' bolts as presets for each size to the bolt addon)
Hey Peter, Yes by all means that is possible. I have a feeling you might have to change more more number too which is the shank if there is any plus if the size of the bolt head matters those too. By all means from the sounds of it your alternative would work. However, if you needed to change to tolerance once again you would need to make the whole tread once again.
@@Keep-Making Good idea. I hadn't used shanks above 0 before (I'm pretty new to 3D printing and blender...just started out 2 weeks ago..so still a lot to test out and learn in both areas...like *not* setting threaded holes before using a mirror modifier on an object, or you'll have to print left-handed screws :-p ). Setting the shank Dia in the preset to the same +0.2mm does the trick (+0.1mm for all values seems to also work on my Prusa MK3S, but it's a tight fit, so I'm sticking to 0.2 for now). Since the new presets carry over between projects they're really neat. Bolt heads don't seem to require adjustment. I just now did a test print with a counter sink and it got in perfectly flush :-)
Thanks! One issue, When I export the result at 5:45, stl file includes head of bolt. How can we remove the excess bolt head? and make it only female bolt....
When you add the 0.2mm to the diameter, is that because the layer height on your printer settings is 0.2mm. Or did you come to that number by some other means? And if you were to make a really big bolt or a really small bolt, is that 0.2mm going to change or will that apply to every bolt you ever make on that particular printer?
Old question, but the answer is, by .2mm tolerance, he means make a gap between the two pieces of that size, because the printer is imperfect and needs extra wiggle room for these imperfections. If you are using an FDM 3d printer, and you print a plain cylinder 10mm diameter, and a hole of 10mm diameter, they will not slide into each other freely because FDM printers can't produce that level of accuracy, so instead, you might opt to make the hole 9.6mm diameter, aka a .2mm tolerance (.2mm subtracted from each mating surface, so radius -.2mm).
@@honkbeforeitstoolate587 Thanks for the clarification. This reply prompted me to mess with my printer again. Still haven't been able to print a compatible bolt and nut. But I did print some blocks of size varying in .2mm increments along with holes to match. I decided to try an easier project. Appreciate the feedback though.
@@Corafus No problem. Funny enough I actually just made my first design a week ago that incorporates printed nuts/bolts, courtesy of boltfactory in Blender. The bigger it is, the easier it is. I opted to make my bolt have a 14mm major diameter and 12.2mm minor diameter, with almost zero flat area on the root or crest of the threads, and that helps because it makes the threads be less steep of an overhang. I also realized I can even print the female threads horizontally by borrowing a technique I saw, the "teardrop" technique for when you have a hole being printed sideways, and you don't want to have to use supports on it, you can make the hole teardrop shaped so there is no overhang, only 45 degree slopes inclining towards each other. So I made a teardrop cut out of the top of my female threads, and now I can even print them sidways with PETG and no supports, and petg sucks at bridging compared to PLA. The only hard part was Blender's solidify modifier keeps throwing me for a loop by messing up the complex thread geometry, creating intersecting faces, etc, so i ended up just creating a second boltfactory preset that is .2mm larger, but that isn't perfect either.
Do you know if it's now possible to do the thread changes (increase /decrease size to 0.2,0.3,...) in geometry nodes accurately? I know they have an extrude, scale, boolean mesh node but how would you control it correctly. This would make things easier to control if this was possible.
How do you know (and how do you do) how much smaller to make an object, when you make 2 objects and one has to fit exactly (tightly) into the other? Or when you are making an object, and already have an external object you want to fit into it exactly (tightly)?
I'm using a 14mm custom bolt factory bolt, and the solidify modifier always botches the geometry by introducing intersecting faces. Anyone have a tip for that? You can remesh afterwards to clean up the intersecting faces, but unless you use an insanely high voxel count, that also hurts the geometry.
Ctrl + - zooms out, it doesn't create a boolean Additionally, when I create the boolean, the tool (bolt) doesn't disappear like yours. It remains, but does make the cut in the cylinder. Then when I try to use solidify to create the offset, it no longer cuts into the cylinder.
Hey AymiGamin, sounds to me like it might be the bolt is not manifold... If you have no idea what that means check this video out here: ruclips.net/video/0rgrLWFUjlk/видео.html In a nutshell Bolt Factory does not make "good" bolts but fret not I'm currently working on a solution for this 😉
This addon cool, but this produces a gigantic bolt. Like it's so big.. Meters size bolt... I haven't tried to click m6 presets, will try later. But before that, is there any good way to get it scale 1:1?like I want 4mm bolt (M4)
edit : i just did the presets, still produces huge huge gigantic scale bolt. so i had to divide by 1000 once it's done adding. at dimensions tab (N key)
CTZN, I have a feeling your scene unites are not set correctly for precision modelling. Here is a link to a video to change that and then all will be fine. It might be useful to go through the whole course if you are new to blender. ruclips.net/video/VihRvil3138/видео.html
@@Keep-Making nope... Set the scene to millimeters, and the bolt is still made in meters. However set the scale in XYZ to 0.001 and you get the right result...
@@Keep-Making hmm, no they are seperate objects and the screw is making the boolean cut but as soon as i turn up the solidify mod thickness they become one mesh..its very weird.
@@Keep-Making Ah youre too kind. you dont need to waste time on fumbling me. i THINK my problem was that i was bringing in the screw mesh in "edit mode" which can combine 2 meshes into one. Thanks though!
@@Keep-Making like, I really appreciate your tutorial, and it is great. But mention stuff like this in the video please (or at least in description)... Boolean is a regular modifier as well... Spent hours trying to figure this out myself. Only to finally scroll far enough down on this comment section...
Thank you for amazing videos on precision modelling in Blender, I'm wondering if you can help me with a problem, How do we make just a simple threaded rod in Blender no bot bit? I thought it would just be a simple case of mirroring the Z-axis of the bolt but sadly NO! I have also just tried to copy-paste a duplicate piece of the end of the threaded end top of the bolt but that doesn't work Eva, is there any chance you could help with my dilemma? As am sure I will not be the only one, with this need just for a threaded rod in blender.
Very good question Crypto..... Short answer it's tricky LOL. But here is a link to a decent post that explains how to make your own threads blender.stackexchange.com/questions/50102/how-to-model-the-bottle-threads I will 100% cover this in the future but It might be a little while till that point. Also thank you! I'm so glad you have enjoyed the series.
I've been a precision obsessed modeler for 30 years and I've only recently started porting my skills over to Blender as well as getting into hi-res 3D printing. I was also a modeling teacher way back in the early 90s. I must say that not only are you a top shelf modeler, you're also very effective at teaching it. Kudos to you sir, and thank you for the new tricks you're teaching this old dog!
I'm honored Marco!
I'm so glad i've been able to provide you with a valuable learning experience. Happy making!
thank you! i am just getting into blender and your video is the single best i have come across! you are clear and you take the time to show all of your keyboard shortcuts and process. i spent an entire day trying to understand the directions in other vids and still didnt understand. i know that many of these processes are fairly advanced but you still managed to keep a newbie in the loop.
The tip at the end of the video was gold!
glad you liked it 😉
THE BEST TUTORIAL for precision modeling !
6:23 my two cents about how I would selecting the threads quickly-
I would select the top of faces of the cube first and the press h to hide, then I would hover the threads, and press L to quickly select that part only.
Awesome! Great tips, Jonathan. Gotta love the Solidify Modifier. :) Definitely will add these tips to the Bolt Factory course.
Ya it's great fun!
I have to say that I love playing around with my 3D Printed Bolts and nuts 😂
BTW maybe you could use the Alt+S shortcut it does the same as the solidify, is called Shrink/Flatten, while on it you could tap S again to switch between even thickness or not. (You have to be on median for it to work) it just moves faces along normal. Alternatively you could do move individual on Z axis while on face mode and will do the same. Maybe you already know but maybe it will help out :)
Thank you very much for the pointer AirmanCS!
I was not aware of this and i'll be sure to add it in to the 2.9 version of the whole series in about a month.
Exactly what I needed. Thank you, sir!
Thanks. This is a great add on to your other video's. I did a vice ages ago in Blender I might go back and replace a look like to an actual thread.
A lot of good stuff here, thanks! But I ran into an issue right away - solidifying one of these add-on bolts results in overlapping inside-out faces at the edge of the thread, even with my 0.1 thickness. Might not have been an issue in the older version of blender, since you don't seem to have Self-Intersection in the bool options, but that's what I had to enable to fix it.
Wow I had no idea it was that easy to work with relatively complex objects. I wish I didn't have to remember all the shortcuts :D
Dear god, why havent I found you earlier! THANK YOU!!!!!!!
I'm glad I've been able to help =).
Just you wait and see what is about to come out in a few weeks time 😉
Amazing Tip at the end! Do you just cut away both sides of the bolt with the boolean modifier? Would it make sense to just cut off one side and have a half-round bolt?
Do you prefer shrinking your bolts in blender or leave it unchanged and use something like Horizontal Expansion in the slicer to fix the printer's offset?
Hey Chartle, I do all my sizing in blender. and ya you can do just a half bolt if you really wanted.
Thanks for the lesson! Just what I needed! But isn't it easier to make a thread diameter smaller via a Bolt Factory?
1. Create a bolt via Bolt Factory
2. Boolean operation with another object to make a hole
3. Make thread diameter of the bolt a bit smaller in the bolt factory parameters.
I don't know if it would be easer or if there is something i'm not thinking through correctly but I don't see a problem doing it via the bold factory. I guess i'm also thinking how you would resize threads that come in files that are made by others.
Alternative:
1) add 0.2 to Major Dia and Minor Dia when creating the bolt (or whatever other tolerance you need for your printer)
2) move this bolt into the object you want to screw to and add a bool->difference modifier
Done
(or am I missing some hidden aspect, here? Seems to work fine for me. I simply created such 'holemaker' bolts as presets for each size to the bolt addon)
Hey Peter,
Yes by all means that is possible. I have a feeling you might have to change more more number too which is the shank if there is any plus if the size of the bolt head matters those too. By all means from the sounds of it your alternative would work. However, if you needed to change to tolerance once again you would need to make the whole tread once again.
@@Keep-Making Good idea. I hadn't used shanks above 0 before (I'm pretty new to 3D printing and blender...just started out 2 weeks ago..so still a lot to test out and learn in both areas...like *not* setting threaded holes before using a mirror modifier on an object, or you'll have to print left-handed screws :-p ).
Setting the shank Dia in the preset to the same +0.2mm does the trick (+0.1mm for all values seems to also work on my Prusa MK3S, but it's a tight fit, so I'm sticking to 0.2 for now). Since the new presets carry over between projects they're really neat.
Bolt heads don't seem to require adjustment. I just now did a test print with a counter sink and it got in perfectly flush :-)
Excellent, extremely useful!
Thank you David S,
Glad to hear it!
You are brilliant!
Thank you!
You too!
Super helpful man! 😃👍
Glad you found it useful MightyQuinn!
I never used blender before, is there a tutorial video or something on how to slice the screw like that in the end ?
with "my 3dprinter's 0.2mm offset" do you mean the z offset? or the nozzle diameter? im pretty new to 3dprinting..
Thanks! One issue, When I export the result at 5:45, stl file includes head of bolt. How can we remove the excess bolt head? and make it only female bolt....
When you add the 0.2mm to the diameter, is that because the layer height on your printer settings is 0.2mm. Or did you come to that number by some other means? And if you were to make a really big bolt or a really small bolt, is that 0.2mm going to change or will that apply to every bolt you ever make on that particular printer?
Old question, but the answer is, by .2mm tolerance, he means make a gap between the two pieces of that size, because the printer is imperfect and needs extra wiggle room for these imperfections. If you are using an FDM 3d printer, and you print a plain cylinder 10mm diameter, and a hole of 10mm diameter, they will not slide into each other freely because FDM printers can't produce that level of accuracy, so instead, you might opt to make the hole 9.6mm diameter, aka a .2mm tolerance (.2mm subtracted from each mating surface, so radius -.2mm).
@@honkbeforeitstoolate587 Thanks for the clarification. This reply prompted me to mess with my printer again. Still haven't been able to print a compatible bolt and nut. But I did print some blocks of size varying in .2mm increments along with holes to match. I decided to try an easier project. Appreciate the feedback though.
@@Corafus No problem. Funny enough I actually just made my first design a week ago that incorporates printed nuts/bolts, courtesy of boltfactory in Blender. The bigger it is, the easier it is. I opted to make my bolt have a 14mm major diameter and 12.2mm minor diameter, with almost zero flat area on the root or crest of the threads, and that helps because it makes the threads be less steep of an overhang. I also realized I can even print the female threads horizontally by borrowing a technique I saw, the "teardrop" technique for when you have a hole being printed sideways, and you don't want to have to use supports on it, you can make the hole teardrop shaped so there is no overhang, only 45 degree slopes inclining towards each other. So I made a teardrop cut out of the top of my female threads, and now I can even print them sidways with PETG and no supports, and petg sucks at bridging compared to PLA. The only hard part was Blender's solidify modifier keeps throwing me for a loop by messing up the complex thread geometry, creating intersecting faces, etc, so i ended up just creating a second boltfactory preset that is .2mm larger, but that isn't perfect either.
you are a rockstar
Thank you very much ExPatAviator 😀
Do you know if it's now possible to do the thread changes (increase /decrease size to 0.2,0.3,...) in geometry nodes accurately? I know they have an extrude, scale, boolean mesh node but how would you control it correctly. This would make things easier to control if this was possible.
How do you know (and how do you do) how much smaller to make an object, when you make 2 objects and one has to fit exactly (tightly) into the other?
Or when you are making an object, and already have an external object you want to fit into it exactly (tightly)?
Great channel. I have one question though. Is Thunderfoot your dad?
Hey Sam, Thank you!
😂... I wish! That man is a legend!
How do I find out my own printers tolerances so I know what to set it to?
My bolt factory limits every perameter to .25. The bolts are extremely small. What could be wrong? Using Blender 4.2
Legend!
I'm using a 14mm custom bolt factory bolt, and the solidify modifier always botches the geometry by introducing intersecting faces. Anyone have a tip for that? You can remesh afterwards to clean up the intersecting faces, but unless you use an insanely high voxel count, that also hurts the geometry.
Ctrl + - zooms out, it doesn't create a boolean
Additionally, when I create the boolean, the tool (bolt) doesn't disappear like yours. It remains, but does make the cut in the cylinder. Then when I try to use solidify to create the offset, it no longer cuts into the cylinder.
Hey AymiGamin, sounds to me like it might be the bolt is not manifold... If you have no idea what that means check this video out here: ruclips.net/video/0rgrLWFUjlk/видео.html
In a nutshell Bolt Factory does not make "good" bolts but fret not I'm currently working on a solution for this 😉
@@Keep-Making I mean, created it the exact same way you did in a fresh file. I'll check this out today
what is the actual size of the object before printing? the blender says 1m for example, is it in millimeters?
Depends how your unit scale is set up. one blender unit is 1m but 0.001 of a blender unit is 1mm. Take a look at my blender mm setup video for 2.91
This addon cool, but this produces a gigantic bolt. Like it's so big.. Meters size bolt... I haven't tried to click m6 presets, will try later.
But before that, is there any good way to get it scale 1:1?like I want 4mm bolt (M4)
edit : i just did the presets, still produces huge huge gigantic scale bolt. so i had to divide by 1000 once it's done adding. at dimensions tab (N key)
CTZN, I have a feeling your scene unites are not set correctly for precision modelling. Here is a link to a video to change that and then all will be fine. It might be useful to go through the whole course if you are new to blender. ruclips.net/video/VihRvil3138/видео.html
@@Keep-Making nope... Set the scene to millimeters, and the bolt is still made in meters.
However set the scale in XYZ to 0.001 and you get the right result...
Nice but now how about a real world object? who would you start?
How come when I add the solidify modifier to the bolt it becomes solid and one with the block im trying to add the thread to?
Sounds to me that both of you meshes are the same object... Maybe
@@Keep-Making hmm, no they are seperate objects and the screw is making the boolean cut but as soon as i turn up the solidify mod thickness they become one mesh..its very weird.
I just don't see how that is possible.... If you want you can send me the file on discord and we can investigate the solution
@@Keep-Making Ah youre too kind. you dont need to waste time on fumbling me. i THINK my problem was that i was bringing in the screw mesh in "edit mode" which can combine 2 meshes into one. Thanks though!
3:01 it wont take away the screw dont know y. Nothing happens when i press ctrl - . i have both selected not sure if im missing something
Hey there Cracked, Have you got the addon Bool tool installed and when you do Ctrl and - the "-" is numpad -
@@Keep-Making like, I really appreciate your tutorial, and it is great. But mention stuff like this in the video please (or at least in description)... Boolean is a regular modifier as well... Spent hours trying to figure this out myself. Only to finally scroll far enough down on this comment section...
@@Wareitar agreed! i was about to be in your shoes dealing with the wrong modifier
youtube chapter is dope
I'm glad you like the feature 9 words.
Really makes navigating a video more easyer.
Thank you for amazing videos on precision modelling in Blender, I'm wondering if you can help me with a problem, How do we make just a simple threaded rod in Blender no bot bit? I thought it would just be a simple case of mirroring the Z-axis of the bolt but sadly NO! I have also just tried to copy-paste a duplicate piece of the end of the threaded end top of the bolt but that doesn't work Eva, is there any chance you could help with my dilemma? As am sure I will not be the only one, with this need just for a threaded rod in blender.
Very good question Crypto..... Short answer it's tricky LOL. But here is a link to a decent post that explains how to make your own threads blender.stackexchange.com/questions/50102/how-to-model-the-bottle-threads
I will 100% cover this in the future but It might be a little while till that point.
Also thank you! I'm so glad you have enjoyed the series.
@@Keep-Making Nice one buddy, thank you
How did you get on?
This method flat out does not work. Did you actually try it yourself?