Hi, I want to remix some parts for the machine and I was wondering if the actual cad files are available anywhere. Playing with STL files in most cad programs is a nightmare.
Sorry I have not released any CAD files other than the tool holder.
Do you plan on releasing any more of the cad files at any time?
The reason I am asking is because there is a chance that I will get a research grant through my college to get to design and build something cool. I was planning on redesigning every part from scratch and adding a few unique twists to this project. I am not saying that your parts are bad (I am about half way through printing my mpcnc and the parts are coming out great!), but it would just be too easy to print another set of parts and put one together. The grant lasts a year, and even with redesigning every part I probably wouldn’t be able to use up all of that time. I just wanted the cad files to get measurements off of them because I still can’t seem to get the tolerances correct when I design parts that are going to be 3D printed. I can still just run the parts through autodesk mesh enabler and that will let me get measurements off of them, but it would suck and take a while.
I do plan on fully crediting you for you inspirational design and work in getting the software settings figured out. That will be included in my proposal and in any documentation throughout the project. Also, in the end I would release everything I have on thingiverse, also crediting you for the design and probably suggesting to people to stick to the tried and known good design.
I am willing to give you some help.
If I make a version 2 I will release all of the version 1 (right now I am just updating some of my quickly designed parts). This is just to help keep bad designs from thingiverse. There are a ton of remixes that are great, but If someone had the cad files they could easily inadvertently change a dimension and make the whole thing not work right. I have released enough bad parts myself. I wouldn’t want to lose anyone to someones mistakes.
I would double check with the grant, my professor would have never let me rebuild a previous product without significant differences.
If you do release files please follow the license I have used on thingiverse.
I don’t want to steal any of your work. I want to give credit where it is due. I have talked to my professor about my plans and I plan on heavily modifying your design. Once he heard I was 3D printing a cnc machine/3d printer he actually approached me about the idea of applying for the research award. I did raise my concerns with not wanting to just print your design and put it together like I am for my personal machine. I want to find a good way to have dual independent z axis, one with the router and one with the extruder. They would move in x and y together as one, but each part could be raised and lowered on its own. This would make it easy to print a part large, securely attach the print and then machine it to be dimensionally accurate. I often have to print parts at work and then hand them off to our machinist to make it accurate (usually in the holes). I don’t really get it in that case because it would be faster to just make the part in the mill (a Hass VF1). But for a hobbyist it is much cheaper to do it this way and leaves behind minimal wasted material. With the funding I would have, I am thinking about looking into using extrusion or something else for the rails. Getting the dimensions from your parts would just be handy and most of them might not even get used. I am second guessing making the files easily available on thingiverse. I might publish it as a remake, but not put the files up, just describe what I did and how it worked out.
This isn’t really a project for the public, it is something cool I might be able to do for our college. I was just thinking about making it open to make it more appealing to the people deciding if I get the money or not. We don’t have fancy cnc machines like a lot of other engineering colleges do. Everyone (interested) learns to manually mill parts and we have an old bridgeport cnc lathe that is pretty old and showing its age. I told my professors about the mostly printed cnc machine and they figured if I was to do something similar I would probably get the money. If I get the money and make the machine it would belong to the college of engineering and would be open for the design teams to use and students once trained on how to use it.
Edit: just looked at the thingiverse page and didn’t see the license info. Where can I find that?
Edit 2: Also, they have not published anything about the grant/award for next year yet. Since I just found out about the opportunity the soonest I can apply is for the 2016-2017 award. I am pretty early on trying to figure this out, I probably can’t even apply until the end of December or beginning of February. So I have plenty of time to figure this out. Maybe by then I will have a different project or an entirely new design in my head.