Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Square holes on aluminum.... how do you do it?
Bassman59:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 14, 2019, 06:21:28 pm ---Sanding first?
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Tried that, wasn't much good. And the surface wasn't all that smooth prior to sanding, either, but I thought that scuffing it might help.
SiliconWizard:
Well, I suppose the right adhesive to use also depends on the type of plastics you used. Is that PLA or ABS?
max_torque:
As soon as you have to include any of your own time as a "cost" then just farming the whole thing out to your local Laser/Waterjet cutter suddenly looks like very good value indeed, especially if you value accuracy and repeatability...
They tend to have minimum order quantities, but once over that value the cost is trivial.
EEEnthusiast:
I have a suggestion for the front and the back panels if you are doing prototypes. Instead of cutting on the metal plates or 3D printing, you could use black acrylic sheets (2mm thick) and cut the shaped into them using a laser cutter. I have a low power laser CNC and use that to cut the acrylic panels. They come out very well and it is much faster to cut.
coppercone2:
--- Quote from: Bassman59 on October 14, 2019, 05:59:19 pm ---
--- Quote from: beanflying on October 13, 2019, 12:20:41 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on October 12, 2019, 11:16:40 pm ---I still struggle to find an example of something that is 3D printed (on a hobby level machine) that doesn't look like crap. Milling out of acrylic can be ok but laser cut ABS is even nicer for panels IMO. I tend to build a fair number of one-offs though so hand machining aluminum panels is something I do fairly often. In the time it would take to draw it up in CAD I could just make the panel and when I only need one there's no advantage to having the CAD file.
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Surface finish on 3D Printing can be very good! This box picked at random came off my CR-10S over a year ago if I had needed holes added in the lid then a tweak to the Cad file and print another. Maybe not quite up to injection molded plastics but given the customization available for a low cost it is the most affordable prototyping or small production run option available.
Time you had another look at 3D printing and where it now is not where it was 3+ years ago!
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For a recent project built into one of the Hammond extrusions, I 3D printed the front and back panels using the Makerbot 2 we have in the office. The print quality is "meh."
Then there's the issue of labeling the jacks and buttons and such. For my first go-round I thought: decals! I took DXFs of the panels and added text to them and printed them out on a variety of sticker material, like all-weather shipping labels and such. It turns out that cutting out the holes with an X-Acto knife is no fun. So I bought a Cricut machine, which (despite the shitty software) does a pretty great job of printing the text and cutting out the holes on vinyl or sticky paper.
Then I discovered that nothing sticks to the 3D printer plastic. I tried prepping the surface with spray-paint primer and that helped but it's not as permanent as I'd like. I tried the 3M "90" spray adhesive and wow, that stuff is aggressive and not really easily controlled. Next up was another spray adhesive, E6000, which when combined with weighted clamping seems to be almost reasonable.
If anyone has any ideas about adhesives that stick to 3D printed plastic and that are relatively easy to handle (such as a roll-on instead of a spray), I'm all ears!
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sexycyborg on youtube has a video about gluing 3d printed parts + strength testing. none are very strong
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