Jewelry Tools - Solder Holder
Practical Solder Holder Something that has interested me for a while is 3D
printing. Back in ‘98 I downloaded the first Beta version of
Rhino, a Cad/Cam program.
But the tutorials were very sparse at the time, and when my computer crashed I lost the
program and by then it was a couple of hundred dollars to buy, so I never went back.
Fast forward to now and the tech has gone ahead in leaps and bounds.
So I downloaded a ‘lite’ free version of Sketchup,
a Google based architectural design program that also can do simple CAD.
Anyway, a while ago I had made myself a solder holder with a lid, to stop my birds from
chowing my solder –gets real expensive quickly.
So I thought that would be a cool thing to do as a first project, kind of simple right?
It’s got quite a steep learning curve, and this is a simple program, but any way, after
lots of tutorials and head scratching I got to this stage.
Then I downloaded Meshlab and after more WTF’s I got to a non manifold model.
That tech talk for ‘ It does not leak”.
Then I set up an account with Shapeways, a firm
that specializes in 3d printing. And after their software checked my brave attempt, Viola! it could be printed.
Next I am going to do the lid.
It’s really cool because if another goldsmith wanted to have a thingi like this, I
could just send them the STL file and presto, they go to a print shop and print it out.
Ok, so Safeway charges $55 but I am sure you could get it printed for far less than
that.
And I would of course not charge for the digital file, just do it for fun really.
Nice tech, this.
Mark my words, eventually the printers will be completely affordable to the layman.
They cost about $2500 for an entry level one now, which is not bad considering.
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