this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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[–] wjrii@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Most of the Air Assist nozzles for the Comgrow Z1 are specifically for the 10w focal length, not my little 5w, so I stole some concepts but designed my own. Press fit some magnets and hooked it up to an Aquarium air pump.

3D model
https://ibb.co/yPCZHdh

Pulled off the laser for a better angle
https://ibb.co/4sHL1bC

Printed on my Voxelab Aquila in PLA. Designed in my 20-Euro copy of BeckerCAD 14 3D Pro (aka Caddy++ Basic, which they at least attempt to sell for 800 EUR), because I'm a cheap weirdo who wants a clear commercial-use license to maybe sell something someday, but FreeCAD hates joy.

I gotta say though, as niche as BeckerCAD is, the vendor (who seems to have bought the bankrupt husk of a German company that made a 2D CAD package in the 90s) was very quick to send me an (unevenly translated) English manual and sent my question about crashes straight to the Caddy++ Support dude, whose first idea fixed my problem. Not bad for 22 bucks.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

FreeCAD hates joy.

I don't get it. FreeCAD does not have any kind of licensing restriction on commercial use. Is there something I'm missing?

The models and other files produced with FreeCAD are not subject to any license stated above, nor bound to any kind of restriction or ownership. Your files are truly yours. You can set the owner of the file and specify your own license terms for the files you produce inside FreeCAD, via menu File → Project Information.

Or do you just not like how the program itself or interface works (which is perfectly valid)?

[–] wjrii@kbin.social 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm mostly joking about the interface. FreeCAD is the obvious solution for someone who wants no-restrictions on usable 3D CAD software. It's one of the most impressive FLOSS projects out there, bar none. It's awesome.

It's also deeply committed to parametric principles, and I think the code to go the "final mile" to make an intuitive interface that doesn't violate that paradigm is one of the more jealously guarded parts of the commercial packages. I've successfully made a few parts in FreeCAD, but it's always felt like pulling teeth, turning my hobby into work.

I'm just an oddly tech-leaning English major with fairly simple needs, so the direct modelers and the hybrids where maybe the individual 2D sketches are parametric but the 3D model definitely is not, they still work for me.

[–] callcc@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Why was your copy of BeckerCAD only 20€? It's 140€ now it seems :(.

[–] wjrii@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I got it here. It’s still showing as on sale for me. Oddly, only the top “3D Pro” version was on sale.

If you can’t get the sale, don’t buy it. At 20eur , it’s an interesting experiment. At full price, just get Alibre Atom if you want something with a perpetual license.

[–] callcc@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Welp, guess I'll stay with FreeCAD. Not too bad either.