10 Tips for AWESOME 3D Printed Assemblies !

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
0:50 Start with graph paper
1:31 The "three prototype" rule
3:30 Add clearance (at the end)
5:12 Threaded inserts are awesome
7:29 Wires exist and they break easily
9:43 If it's hidden, keep it rough
10:38 Consider your material choice
12:56 Consider the assembly process
13:43 Screws are not locating features
15:27 Hot glue, our naughty little secret :P

[MakersMuse]

Random comment, it's pretty fascinating how the YT compression totally removed the square grid from my graph paper footage. Definitely use graph paper as it makes transferring dimensions and alignments WAY easier than blank paper. 😂

[nickmartin]

A prototyping tip I like is to just print a small part of a model to check if it fits a real-world part. Just printing 3 or 4 layers to see if a hole pattern matches with reality saves a heap of time and filament.

[BigC]

You nailed it. I've been building complex electro mechanical prototypes for the toy industry for nearly 40 years. Everything you lay out in the video is absolutely key to making a complex thing work well and work reliably. This video is must watch for hobbyists and professionals alike. Nice job!

[devnol]

As a self-taught student who does primarily electromechanical designs with my printer your videos are absolutely essential! I see lots of mistakes I've made in the past in here and from now on I'm gonna do my best to follow these (admittedly obvious-sounding but rather forgettable) pieces of advice for my future projects. Many thanks from Greece!

[mxskelly]

One cool thing I see james bruton specifically use in a lot of his assemblies is when printing larger parts that need other parts put through them (rods, bearings, etc.) he prints the larger part and then a bushing sort of part that fits into the large part, that the bearing/rod/whatever goes into. That way if the hole for the inserted bearing/rod/etc. is the wrong size, you don't have to reprint the entire large part. Really cool way of doing it

[NickDClements]

15:28 And, if you ever need to remove hot glue, a little bit of denatured alcohol and it will completely and cleanly release from whatever it is attached to almost instantly! It's truly amazing, one of my favorite tips, and i like to share it every chance I get. (Other solvents work as well, but I find denatured alcohol to work the best. I keep some loaded in a syringe, and whenever I need to remove some hot glue, grab the syringe, douse it with a little alcohol and it peels off in seconds.)

[leiflindqvist]

If someone like me has worked with design & engineering for a few decades, your tips are standard procedure. So, what you say are absolutely top tips for 3D printing people who are not engineers, excellent! The first part about sketches on paper, absolutely. We say PAD/MAD before CAD/CAM. What PAD/MAD? Pen Aided Design/Model Aided Design. That is the way to go…..and as said in the video, prototypes are important, even the best engineers don't usually get it right….or best possible on the first try. Very good video! 👍

[nobodyimportant]

So great to have all of these tips in one place. Thank you! I wish I knew these things when I got started instead of figuring them out through the frustration of scrapping a build and starting over. All because I didn't consider how my parts would come together. It took a while to get the hang of keying and proper screw placement. I tend to use screws and nuts instead of inserts. I just design the part to hold the nut and it works pretty well.
Hot glue is great as strain relief.
Keeping things rough inside is great for long-lived builds. Easier for maintenance and upgrades or replacement parts. "Design for maintenance" could probably be a whole video. So many little things that make life easier.
Thank you so much for that graph paper idea! I can't believe I didn't think of that. I used to do that for other things a million years ago.

[USFsFinest]

I’ve been tinkering and 3d printing for the last 8 months and I swear you nailed every issues and frustration I’ve been having

[wackychimp]

Wow this is EXACTLY the video I needed to see today. I could watch another 10 minutes on each of these techniques (especially indexing your models to fit together). Thank you so much!

[ETG]

Im gonna need to design an enclosure for a project as soon as i get the insides working, so this video came in at the perfect time for me

[HALO-]

Your tip about finding fasteners you can get is a HUGE one. I've designed a bunch of things that require fasteners, and I learned the hard way to design around the actual fasteners you can get and don't rely on preexisting CAD models or dimensions of what they should be.

[FryGuy]

Threaded inserts and silicone wire were such a game-changer for me in my antweight combat robots.

[punishedprops]

This is really great advice, thanks Angus!

[icefox]

So THAT's why I have around 120 different types of nuts, bolts and washers!

Nice video, I really liked it :)


Concerning material choice, one thing to note with PLA is that it tends to deform permanently under pressure. So any screw you put in, will become loose over time. I had that happen with many things i printed for my workshop in the olden days. With PETG (my by far most used material), you don't have that problem. But print quality and stringing/oozing is something to be taken care of.
I can confirm the heat issue with PLA, I printed some sun filter mount for my telescope and in the summer heat in the car it got soft and deformed just by touching it. Another print held up surprisingly well, a cup holder in my car. I guess it automatically annealed it in the heat when changing seasons.

Lastly, it may be different in your area, I found the screw selection in my hardware store comparatively expensive and quite lacking. Ordering online (on ebay or shops specialized for screws) for me is way cheaper. Most of the times, the price for 10 screws is only marginally lower than for 50 or 100, so I tend to get the bigger package just to have a few ready in the future.

[buildersmark]

100% everything spot on. Great video.
Side note McMaster-Carr has cad files to pull in and help in your designing. Lots of fasteners available.

[danielbender]

With regards to fastener choice: not only do you need to make sure you design around fasteners you can actually get, it behooves you to design around the same diameters and lengths for the whole project if you can, especially if you expect to disassemble and reassemble it at some point (and if you think you’re not going to do that, think again). This is often overlooked in “real” products where the cost savings can be meaningful when dealing with production runs of thousands of units, but for the home hobbyist the difference in a project’s cost will be at most a few dollars.

[frollard]

Excellent tips! Bonus ltt hoodie and screwdriver :D...thanks for sharing.

[JamieFord-jz]

Excellent video, with some great tips. A few of those are already a part of my process, but not nearly enough of them. Especially appreciate your approach to indexing features, going to start using that.

[MarkSummersCAD]

Many of your 3D printing tips apply to electro-mechanical design in general. Thanks for sharing...