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| Cost - 3D printed enclosure vs Project box? |
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| ChrisLX200:
If you print onto a glass bed you at least get one surface that is smooth (like glass :) ) and that can be useful sometimes if you can orient your print to suit. When using ABS you can also solvent-weld sub-structures together using acetone (or ABS/acetone slurry) which gives a very strong joint. You can use flexible filament to print seals which you can see in this example I designed for an astro all-sky camera: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1371445 (it's the white material). |
| PlainName:
--- Quote ---this example I designed for an astro all-sky camera --- End quote --- That's excellent. I think trims (the white seal, which you can't normally see but..., and red whatever it is) make a big difference in aesthetics. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: sleemanj on October 30, 2017, 07:41:33 am ---Eh, who cares if the layers are visible, it's funvtional apparatus, not a beauty contest. I print at 0.3mm and i find the finish just fine. Obviously print orientation needs to be considered, but for my functional prints i don't do cleanup other than removing support. For more aesthetic stuff to steal a phrase, filler and paint makes it the printer it ain't. --- End quote --- I care. I'm a perfectionist with a strong eye to the aesthetic, so I absolutely care. If I had the skills (I don't) for my projects to come out so perfect that people asked "how the heck did you make this?!?", I'd be happy! :P I won't choose aesthetics over functionality, but that doesn't mean I am willing to ignore aesthetics, either. (I will, though, forego some functionality and definitely aesthetics for usability, though the ideal is to not have to make much in the way of compromises with any of them. It just takes more work.) As for post-printing finishing: of course that's an option, and a good one at that. (Indeed, I don't think many people realize how many of the plastic gadgets we buy are painted.) But that's not what you see a lot. As far as DIY 3D printed enclosures go, we see mostly raggedy things like Mjolinor posted above. --- Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 30, 2017, 07:48:51 am --- --- Quote from: sleemanj on October 30, 2017, 07:41:33 am ---Eh, who cares if the layers are visible, it's funvtional apparatus, not a beauty contest. I print at 0.3mm and i find the finish just fine. Obviously print orientation needs to be considered, but for my functional prints i don't do cleanup other than removing support. For more aesthetic stuff to steal a phrase, filler and paint makes it the printer it ain't. --- End quote --- Sorry, I just like nicely made stuff. --- End quote --- Don't you just hate it when people make it sound as though you have to choose between functionality and quality/aesthetics/fit-and-finish/look-and-feel, as if they were somehow mutually exclusive? If anything, I'm kinda surprised that engineer-y folks don't have higher expectations on quality, given that engineering is all about making good designs. I would expect engineers to appreciate build quality more than the average joe. :-// |
| Mr. Scram:
--- Quote from: tooki on October 30, 2017, 11:06:26 pm ---Don't you just hate it when people make it sound as though you have to choose between functionality and quality/aesthetics/fit-and-finish/look-and-feel, as if they were somehow mutually exclusive? If anything, I'm kinda surprised that engineer-y folks don't have higher expectations on quality, given that engineering is all about making good designs. I would expect engineers to appreciate build quality more than the average joe. :-// --- End quote --- There seems to be an attitude that engineering types don't need nice things. It seems to be partly bravado, and partly the false antithesis you speak of. Sure, technical people are often more than capable enough to deal with clunky designs, and generally wouldn't sacrifice performance for looks, but why not make something more functional and nice to use by designing and constructing it well? |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on October 30, 2017, 11:15:25 pm ---There seems to be an attitude that engineering types don't need nice things. It seems to be partly bravado, and partly the false antithesis you speak of. Sure, technical people are often more than capable enough to deal with clunky designs, and generally wouldn't sacrifice performance for looks, but why not make something more functional and nice to use by designing and constructing it well? --- End quote --- Preach!!! My professional background is in technical writing and usability in the software world, and even there you run into people who think that professional software mustn't be too elegant. It gets dismissed as consumer-y, even if it's just as capable and much easier to use. Every usability person understands that the usability demands of consumer products are very different from those of professional tools (in that the latter situation can tolerate a steeper learning curve in exchange for greater long-term efficiency), but often times, professional software is just needlessly complicated. It really is an attitude of "It's professional software, we don't need to make it user-friendly." Somewhere on this forum, I wrote a long rant about how maddeningly difficult and error-prone Eagle and KiCad are to learn and use, and of course many people just blamed it on me. But I feel that it's eminently possible to make professional software that is literally an order of magnitude easier to use than the incumbent, because I have literally seen it happen.* A similar effect happens in scholarly/scientific writing: simple, clear language is actually often frowned upon!!! :palm: :palm: The old HP Journal, by the way, is a great example of clear scientific writing if you ask me. It makes no illusion of pretending to be for the general public, and it delves deeply technical frequently, but the editors did a great job of making it highly readable. *1. When Apple introduced the original Final Cut Pro, after buying it from Macromedia, it was squarely targeted at pros, and was packed with features. Nonetheless, a n00b video editor could sit down at FCP and learn the basics of editing in 10 minutes. From talking to video pros back then, they said that a novice could learn in a morning or maaaybe full day on FCP what took a week to learn on Avid, the leader of the day. 2. When before-it-turned-evil Adobe introduced InDesign 1.0, it managed to be simultaneously much more powerful and yet far easier to use than Quark XPress, the leading DTP app back then. They really struck a nice balance between learning curve and ongoing efficiency. |
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