A Simple Start

It's been too darned cold in the unheated conservatory to consider 3D printing until today.
I have a small collection of business cards which usually end up in an untidy pile on the desk.
Then I keep knocking and scattering them on the floor.
I had been looking for a simple idea for my first 'from scratch' 3D design.
Previously I had only used designs downloaded from various sites.
A little box to keep the cards tidy seemed like a good place to start.

First task was to come to terms with v0.18 of FreeCAD to design the box.
Essentially it is made starting with two solid cubes.
One is enlarged to make the outside walls of the box.
The second is made slightly smaller to make the inside walls.
The small one is fitted inside the larger one and the program told to cut out the smaller one.
This makes the hollow box to hold the cards.



The idea was to save that as a .stl file for the next process but FreeCAD refused to do that.
Fortunately there are lots of export choices so I tried saving it as a .obj file.
That worked.

Next I loaded the .obj file in Ultimaker Cura and told it to slice the design to make the instructions needed by the 3D printer. It will instruct the printer what to do on each 0.2mm layer.

 

That was saved as a .gcode file and transferred to the 3D printer on an SD card.
Reel of grey PLA filament loaded.
Finally the long wait as the printer strutted its stuff to create the box.






It took 3 hrs 16 minutes to print.

 

 

Job done.