|
Angled likes to highlight some of our favorite designers to show you the possibilities of 3D printing. These featured designers not only make great products, but they also know how to design for 3D printing. This week’s featured designer is Clockspring 3D!
Creating designs with moving parts can be hard to do in 3D printing if you don’t know what you are doing. Luckily Clockspring understands how to optimize a design for 3D printers. From the orientation of the part to the logistics of creating moving parts, Clockspring is able to create designs that are able to be sold directly off the printer without any post processing. No assembly required.  Clockspring Dice Roller If you are interested in creating designs like Clockspring we recommend looking into “print-in-place mechanisms” and checking out Clockspring's designs on our website. Clockspring also has a YouTube channel where you can find a couple tutorials on how you can create designs like hinges and screw closures in your designs. Make sure to tell him that we sent you! Stay tuned for more designer spotlights throughout the month as we introduce some of our other favorite designers we have on our team. If you would like to become an Angled Designer, check out our product submission page where you can submit your designs to us. Once you are approved you can start selling your prints just like Clockspring.
0 Comments
So how do you go about making money with the STL models that you created in your 3D printing journey? If you are working with a 3D printer you no doubt have a number of STL files. You may have collected them by downloading them from Thingiverse or you have actually created them. If you have created some original 3D models, we are going to break down the best places to sell your files to get a little extra cash. The question that a lot of 3D designers have is how do you monetize your 3D designs? Many 3D designers want their hobby to generate some sort of income to support the expense costs of filament and the 3D printer itself.
Another, more consistent option, is Patreon. Patreon is best for designers that are consistently producing content monthly. Creating a Patreon is a good way for creators with a little bit of a following. By paying you a monthly subscription fee, your followers get access to your models and any new models you choose to upload to the platform. You can create different tiers varying in price and can upload models whenever you would like. As you produce new STL files, the stipend you receive is your monthly subscription fee multiplied by however many members you have. The more members you have, the higher your income is each month. This is more consistent pay and can be better for people who set aside dedicated time to create.
To solve this problem, we recommend selling your physical prints instead of selling your STL files and you don’t have to build a 3D printing farm in your home to do this. Using a service like Angled or Shapeways, you can submit your STL files to these platforms and sell your 3D prints to anyone in the world. For example on Angled.io when a customer makes a purchase on our website, we print the product using the STL file the designer gave us and then ship it out within days. Once a designer sells one of their prints, they receive royalties from Angled for each product they sell. If you create a rockstar product you can easily make consistent money each month similar to Patreon; all without having to distribute your STL files. Creators have full control of their designs at all times, and STL files are securely stored within the Angled database. Sites like Angled are perfect for the designer who wants to make money but keep control of their original art without the pain of running a business. Those are a few sites and ways you can make money with your STL files you are creating. If you are prolific, go on Patreon, if you have a few files you can use the standard 3D model repositories, or if you want to maintain control of your files you can use a print-on-demand service like Angled or Shapeways.
 Angled is releasing a new line of fidget toys! From a cat to godzilla, we now have a variety of fidgetable, flexible toys. The current line-up includes: a T-Rex, Lizard, Cat, Turtle, Dolphin, Kangaroo, Bear, Godzilla, Octopus, and Dinosaur with a Top Hat. At Angled, we take great product ideas and bring them to life, so we can make a fun fidget toy out of any animal of your choosing!  Fidget toys provide great benefits for adults and children alike. For adults, fidget toys not only can improve focus but also aid in reducing anxiety and stress. It has been shown that casual fidgeting, such as fiddling with paper clips during meetings for example, can significantly improve attention in adults. Fidget toys provide a great alternative to bending the office’s paper clip supply. For children, fidget toys can have numerous additional benefits such as improved learning, enhanced dexterity and motor skills, and advanced muscle development in small hands. Fidget toys are great for any age! Check out our Fidget Friends at Angled.io or Submit Your Fidget Ideas
Welcome to our crash course on how to 3D print with PETG. PETG is one of the more popular materials that is used in 3D printing, mainly because it's relatively low cost. It is also almost as easy to print with as PLA but not quite. It has its own challenges attached to it that we are going to troubleshoot and share our solutions with you. The first thing to know about PETG is, it is as mechanically durable as ABS and it is more thermally resistant than PLA. It will not melt inside of a hot car but it may possibly start to get soft a little bit inside of a super hot car in Arizona. You can make most cup holders and phone stands and that kind of thing out of PETG and have it be reliable. However if it's going to be in a super hot ambient temperature it doesn't always hold up perfectly.  One of the most common concerns that people have with PETG is that it has a lot of stringing inside of overhangs and moving from tower to tower. An overhang in 3D printing is when a piece of the design juts out over the side of the main part of the print. An example of this can be found with our Bubonic Plague Doctor design; the brim of his hat would be an overhang. A tower in 3D printing is when there is a small vertical part of the print that towers over a print. This can be seen in our Batman Headphone Stand with the two Batman ears. Maneuvering these types of prints can be hard when printing with PETG. Most of the time this is because either your PETG is wet or you don't have your retraction settings tuned just right. Make sure that your temperature is high, between about 235° to 245° is optimal. Also make sure that your traction moves are quick around 90 millimeters per second minimum and make sure that your retraction is well equivalent to your printer, depending on what you're using (a bowden or a direct drive). Those are the main kinds of settings to help eliminate strain.
As far as bed materials, PETG works well with PEI sheets, and with glass beds. Make sure that your glass bed is very clean. A lot of people like to wash with alcohol, we recommend just underneath tap water. You can rub it with your hand until you feel the glass start to get a little bit tacky. That will create a good stick. You can even wash your bed in a dishwasher and that will work pretty well also. To summarize, PETG is a good durable material with pretty good thermal resistance. Just make sure that your cooling fan isn't turned on so the layers stick together well and make sure that your retraction moves are all tuned and quick so that you don't have much strain. What are some of the challenges of working with a printer that has a bowden cable? A bowden cable machine is a machine that has the drive motor at one end but then the nozzle and the extruder at the other. Printers with bowden cables are very common. Most Ultimaker printers use this and a number of Ender printers use bowden cables. The reason they are used is because a bowden cable keeps your extruder head light and doesn’t cause vibration at the printer head as it moves around while printing. This means that these machines are good for high resolution, high surface quality, parts. The problem with bowden cables is they aren’t good with very many materials. With bowden cables, you are pressing filament through a tube backwards. The machine pushes the filament from the front to the back while going through all the friction of the tube. Because of this, they're very tough to control and tune which is why they are only used by very heavily controlled machines that have really defined print profiles. Knowing this, bowden cables can give great print quality if you've got the settings tuned appropriately. However there are things to be concerned about if you are tuning a machine or you're working with bowden cables. 1.) Retraction Legs
2.) Soft Materials When printing with exceptionally soft materials like TPUs (thermoplastic polyurethane) you must be extra careful when working with bowden cables. Bowden cables are very difficult to work with because the filament material compresses inside the tube. Because it's rubber, the filament expands inside the tube and tends to stick to the inside of the tube. Even though PTFE tubes are very frictionless, they still have a lot of compression inside of the tube. The way to print TPU with bowden extruders is to go very slow. Think of it like a compressed spring. It needs time to compress and release otherwise you'll end up with inconsistent flow and jams.
3.) Abrasive Materials
If you have a bowden extruder machine those are the basic things to control. Remember to make sure that you're dealing with the extra retraction distance to take out the slack, if you're working with TPU go really slow to give it lots of time, and if you're working with abrasive materials make sure to replace the tube every once in a while. Be sure to check out our YouTube video on this topic on our YouTube Channel. Over there we have more tutorials and how-tos for 3D designers and makers of all levels.  TPU, or thermoplastic polyurethane, is a really great 3D printing material to work with. TPU allows you to create an almost rubbery product can move and be squeezed and squashed and crushed in all kinds of different ways. There are, however, a few challenges with TPU. Since it's a soft material, it can be very difficult for 3D printers to work with it, because as the machines push filament back and forth, the material naturally bends and moves around. The first thing to do if you're working with TPU is try to use a Direct Drive extruder. Direct Drive machines have a lot less chance for the filament to jam or bow or bend or compress in such a way that it jams up the machine. Very often, Bowden extruder machines end up jamming. In that long Bowden tube, the filament has to be compressed like a spring being squashed and going out sideways, so it grabs onto that tube and is really difficult to control. Therefore, if you can get a direct drive machine, use the direct drive machine.  The second thing to do is run your machine slowly. Again, since the filament is soft and squashes like a spring, you should give your machine time to extrude very slowly. If it extrudes too quickly, the TPU won’t come out smoothly. The first step is to slow down your print speed. Then, if you're using retractions, have a fast retraction. Lastly, if your slicer permits it, have a really slow prime as well. That way, you’ll have time to reload the nozzle, and the filament is able to recompress and reach stasis again. If you go fast, then you're going to end up with gaps in your print. The last thing to be concerned about is the connectivity between layers. When using TPU, especially when slowing down print speeds, it sometimes has difficulty connecting in between layers. If you want your TPU parts to be a little bit stronger through the layers, turn off the cooling fan and that will allow those layers to adhere to each other much better.  TPU is a great material with its very high temperature resistance and its superior rubbery flexibility. If you accommodate for the material by using a direct drive extruder, slowing down your prints, and turning off your cooling fan, it can be a very useful material. Upgrade your gaming setup with Angled game room decor. Find the best headphone stands, video game art, and novelty items in our store to show your personality while leveling up in your favorite game. These items are great, unique gifts for anyone who spends their time on their computer all day long. Today we are breaking down our top picks that we personally have in our game room to liven things up.
Here at Angled we are masters at 3D printing. We know everything from working with different types of filament to how to fix your machine if something goes wrong with your print. We have built 500+ of our own machines and we are continuing to expand everyday. Since we know everything there is know about 3D printing, we thought it was only right to share our knowledge with the community. Hence the Angled YouTube Channel.
Makers Making Change is an initiative of the Neil Squire Society, a Canadian non-profit that helps people with disabilities. Using our Slant 3D printing farm, Makers Making Change is able to make affordable and accessible products while assisting people with everyday tasks.
The best part is that Angled is just like The Neil Squire Society. Anyone can upload their gadget to our website and provide more tools for the disabled. Simply submit your design to our product submission page to start selling on Angled. If you aren't a designer and would like to submit an idea for someone at Angled to make head on over to our contact page where you can submit a product request. At Angled, headphone stands are our specialty. We have a wide range of characters, celebrities, and statues. However, we have been lacking in the music department. Last week Angled released two new headphone stands Elton John and Stevie Wonder, both rocking their iconic glasses. Now Angled has around five musical icons in our Hall of Fame and we are adding new people every week.
These celebrity headphone stands are only some of our favorites! To see the full collection of headphone stands check out the headphone stand page to see all of our music icons as well as our other people and characters. If you don't see your favorite artist let us know! Submit a product request on our contact page and maybe you will see your request come to life in the next month or so.
|
RSS Feed
Store |
Company |
|