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Design for 3D-Printing

(blog.rahix.de)
837 points q3k | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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darkteflon ◴[] No.43890650[source]
This looks so good. I’ve gotten into 3D printing in the past six months with an A1 Mini. I initially bought it intending solely to do creative projects with my kid, but I’ve been surprised to find myself getting deeper into printing functional parts. I recently printed a 6” server rack for a GLi.net Beryl and Apple TV for travel, from a combination of pre-designed and self-designed parts.

3D printing as a pursuit can be time-consuming - there’s always a risk with these things that you take them on as a dilettante and they end up gathering dust in a corner. I initially scraped by with some middling Blender skills (leaning into non-destructive operations where possible), but that is far from ideal - you really do need CAD. But to anyone considering jumping in, I would say: if you get an A1 (get the full size, not the Mini) and use Claude to write your parametric OpenSCAD scripts, the time commitment is such that you can _just about_ indulge in this hobby as a dilettante - eg, as a project for your kids. Without LLMs, I think it would be too much of a commitment unless you’re really dedicated, or already have CAD skills.

Anyway, gonna go read this in full.

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0_____0 ◴[] No.43890859[source]
Side bar... There are a lot of people who are going to use LLMs to try to do 3D modeling stuff and who are going to hit a wall with it really, really fast. Mechanical design really is a completely different discipline that is very poorly abstractable in the particular way that software engineers are used to.
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1. darkteflon ◴[] No.43921560[source]
Yes, it’s a reasonable comment. Hopefully my original use of the term “functional” was sufficiently qualified by the word “dilettante”, but just in case: no, LLMs won’t turn you into a proper engineer or designer - or even be as good as actual CAD skills - but if it’s server rack bits n bobs, or a Steam Deck dock you’re after, this can work and is a lot of fun. It can also be an on-ramp to learning actual CAD by lowering the activation energy - especially for kids.