I would like to make the YZ plates out o MDF, but I can’t seem to print a full scale template on my regular printer and I can’t find any documentation that has the dimensions so I can use Fusion 360 to make a printable sketch. How are some of you able to make those plates? Thanks in advance.
Ken
How are you intending to make them?
if you open the dxf file in Fusion 360 it should be to scale.
I like to 3d print templates for hand cutting so that they can be accurately trimmed with a router and the holes drilled in exactly the correct place. I’ll update this when I get going on the LR3 but this should explain it. (I make the cutouts to save print time and plastic, but they aren’t necessary.)
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Thank you Peter. Figured I would make them out of 1/4 inch aluminum plate I have. I have a small milling machine. I can’t seem to figured out to get Fusion 360 to print. I would 3D print the template with my 3D printer but my bed is too small. I suppose I could cut it in half in fusion and then print each half and glue them together to make the whole template. That might be better than using paper templates. I have already printed out several of the other parts for the V3 including the core which took 36 hours! Glad it did not mess up. lol
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DXFs are unitless, but the ones Ryan makes are in mm. The DXF contains 2D information only, and it knows the coordinates of a hole, and the size of it, etc.
Most CAD programs can open DXF in a sketch (because a lot of them are focused on 3D, not 2D).
One option for just this one thing is to use librecad. It is free, and you can open it, and then there are measurement tools you can use to measure from one side to another, or the angle between two lines, or the radius of a corner, or the diameter of a hole. Those are going to be more accurate than printing and measuring from a print.
You might really like librecad (it is like autocad from the 90s, all 2D). But newer CAD programs like fusion360, onshape, solidworks; they all have a way to make a 2D sketch, and then you extrude 2D shapes to make 3D objects, which is really going to serve you a lot more in the long run. You can do the same 2D measurements of the DXF file, but if you google for tutorials for onshape or fusion, you’re going to find a lot of people doing 3D.
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Thank you Jeff,
I loaded the file into fusion 360 and spit it into three parts and am printing them at about 4mm thickness. Hope this works well.
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Another way to do this without fusion 360 is with OpenSCAD (free CAD programming language). Here is the code to generate a 4mm thick YZ Plate:
linear_extrude(height = 4, center = false, convexity = 1)
import (file = “YZ plate DXF v1.dxf”);
Paste that into the OpenSCAD editor, press F5 to see the model rendered, F6 to compile it, then File/Export/Export as STL… to save the STL file. I tried to attach it here but the forum didn’t like the file type.
Note: this will generate the STL for the full size plate. To split it into separate smaller parts, you can use difference and intersection with a rectangular prism shape. For example:
// Left side
difference() {
linear_extrude(height = 4, center = false, convexity = 1)
import (file = “YZ plate DXF v1.dxf”);
translate([-60,-200, 0])
cube([145, 250, 4]);
}
// Right side
intersection() {
linear_extrude(height = 4, center = false, convexity = 1)
import (file = “YZ plate DXF v1.dxf”);
translate([-60,-200, 0])
cube([145, 250, 4]);
}
OpenSCAD is a really useful tool! It’s free and open source and available on most PC platforms.
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Thank you George! I suppose there is someway to do that in Fusion 360, too, but I am just learning it.
Ken
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Just a heads up. Be sure to compare the model to the 3mf version. I just printed mine and for some reason the cutouts for the bearing mounts are not there! I wonder if there’s a problem in the dxf file or OpenSCAD that is causing that detail to be missed.