It makes me sad that material thickness isnāt constant everywhere. Itās a real shame. If everything was 6, 12, and 18mm plywood, these designs would be a lot more useful. Right now, you pretty much have to pull them into CAD to make it work with your material.
I hate it when designs have the dogbones in the CAD too. The CAM software supports adding overcuts while doing the CAM. It would be nice if there was also a way to define these 3 sides as a slot, and have CAM adjust for small variations in material thickness. Iām not hoping it would take a 6mm design and make it work with 18mm, but it would be nice if you could just click a āslotā button in EstlCAM, and then click on all the slots and make them all 17.5mm or 18.5mm, or something. Depending on the geometry, that would get increasingly complicated, but maybe some of the issues could be fixed that way. It sure would be nice /daydream . Maybe I should just cut a bunch of shims.
Back on topic though, I really appreciate when people share a bunch of work like this. I hope she/he is making enough on donations to keep the lights on, and keep it interesting for him/her.
I have been putting a lot of thought into this issue. Since trying to design a cool LowRider table. I came to the conclusion that just putting a center line on any material thick specific cuts should work the best. So instead of a slot put a center line the correct length than it is easy to add the right size square in CAD or even inkscape/illustrator. I figure this is more work than most would want to do so I didnāt spend too much time developing the idea.
That is exactly what sucks about those sorts of designs though. When I made the MP3DP I had to make all parts only reference one side of the material and make sure the thickness could vary by more than an inch if necessary.
Youāre onto something here. If EstlCAM could expand that for you, how great would that be? Especially if it could just be on a different layer in the DXF or something. That would be something. It sure would be nice if thingiverse was as easy for CNC as it is for 3DP. I bet it wouldnāt be too hard to write a plugin to do that in OnShape or fusion, but at that point, youāre already in the CAD program.
Things like 3 layer joints, where the spacing of the slots is dependent on the thickness would be tougher, but maybe donāt solve all the problems at onceā¦
This is where something like OpenSCAD is nice. Since you can set values to items dynamically. Unfortunately, that requires the designer to learn it and us it.
The customizer in thingiverse working with openscad is nice, but itās a little slow, and the previews sometimes just freeze the whole thing. Iām also not sure you can export dxf files from customizer.
If you are talking going all the way to me having openscad installed, then that would work too, but I donāt have it installed, ATM. Also, I find openscad to be a pretty hard way to draw most things. CAD is to tactile, that text is just not a good mind meld, IMO. Iām a software engineer, so I thought I would really like it. Most CAD programs have some kind of parameters or variables you can drive your design with. Thatās a good workaround, but I just wish I didnāt have to open any CAD programs. I want to just download the thing from TV, open it in EstlCAM, and cut it. Just like I do with 3D printers (s/EstlCAM/Slic3r/g).
True. Iāve had a few issues with the customizer on thingiverse too.
I guess openscad didnāt scare me quite as much. I had a lot of experience with povray when in college⦠to the point I wrote my own C-based wrapper for sending rendering jobs to a mosix cluster I built. Something oddly satisfying about using floppies and netbooting 32 desktops at night to run large povray renderings in the lab I managed on campusā¦
Iāll admit Iāve only glanced at openscad so far.
If I understand your problem is actually that the TV design is for 7mm material and yours is thicker, or you canāt find the exact width he usedā¦
Just write a blanket CAM that faces your material to the thickness of the design
Itās not an issue with these specific designs. Iām spoiled by 3D printing, I guess. I can take 90% of the STLs and just slice them with default settings, but it seems like every time I want to make something in CAM, I have to get my calipers out, and fire up the CAD. I just want it to be easier. Maybe if manufacturers had the same specs in Europe as they did here it would be possible to just use them as is.
We didnāt allow mp3s to be saved on the labās systems, so we ran a nightly cron to find them and āremoveā them to a central system⦠you know⦠in case the end user asked where their file went we could restore it from backup. God only knows how many ābackupsā we had of that central system.
I hear ya on the CAM stuff. I think the big problem comes down to the material being used. 3D printers donāt care what material it is as the slicer deals with the logistics. With CAM, your material is a huge concern. With a CAM design, you donāt know if the end user will use wood, metal, foam⦠like you said⦠what thickness⦠etc etc⦠Itās just too variable.