Making things is my primary activity. Not just making them but the design from scratch making of things. It\u2019s the process of visualizing a tangible item, then bringing that idea into reality.<\/p>\n
I have used a great many materials in my lifetime to make tangible things. Wood, metal, fabric and today mostly plastic extrusions. AKA 3D printing of plastic.<\/p>\n
There are several methods of 3D printing plastic which include melting and extruding solid filaments and also light curing liquid resins. I use both methods of 3D printing.<\/p>\n
I cover all my creative process in many other blogs. Listing for all of them can be found on the main page of this blog.<\/p>\n
So no need to get into how-to details here.<\/p>\n
I got into the hobby of building and using personal computers<\/strong> back in the days of the Altair 8800 and Imsai 8080 machines. Year 1975. Both were hobbyist kit machines. I owned the <\/span>Imsai 8080.<\/p>\n Since their beginning there was always a question of, \u201cNice, but what are they good for?\u201d from family and friends. Little did they suspect what they would become. But many hobbyist like myself, could see the handwriting on the wall.<\/p>\n That was 50 years ago and personal computers have totally changed the world. <\/span><\/p>\n A big attraction for me is using computers that control movement and cause things to perform in response to programming and sensors. I always wanted more than a text screen interacting with the keyboard operator.<\/p>\n Programable software automation logic is the big advantage of computers. Early automation was non-programable fixed logic hardware<\/strong>. Build a circuit board with fixed logic and it could only do the task for which it was designed. The “program” was how the logic was soldered together.<\/p>\n Programable Computers that can help make things<\/strong><\/em> were wonderful to me. Computer Numeric Control (CNC) was my dream come true. <\/span><\/p>\n 3D printing is almost pure CNC operation. It\u2019s uses the same type gcode as almost all other forms of CNC use. Of course there are job specific variations.<\/p>\n The big event for 3D printing was the refinement of \u201cslicer\u201d software that reads the structure of a 3D solid object from a graphic file format. The object is \u201csliced\u201d into may thin layers, then the slicer software creates CNC instructions (gcode) to direct machinery to follow the shapes in every layer. Then stack the layers in sequence one above the other.<\/p>\n All CNC requires superior hardware and superior software. Second rate in either and the results are not worth the effort.<\/p>\n CAD (Computer Assisted Design) is the design hardware. It can be used for both machine tools operation with CAM (Computer Assisted Machining) or a Slicer Program for 3D Printing. <\/span><\/p>\n Many other combinations exist. 3D art graphics like Blender and Z-Brush can substitute for a Mechanical CAD application.<\/p>\n None of the software is \u201ceasy\u201d. Once the design instructions are mastered is does help to make the \u201cmaking\u201d process a bit easier by automation of of tool movement and timing. Human muscle memory is no longer used. <\/span><\/p>\n But the human mind must still conceive and set up the controls and variables. Experience is still a valuable part of obtaining desired results. <\/span><\/p>\n AI (Artificial Intelligence) may gain a foothold in a production environment of CNC and 3D printing. But I think the human personal desire to design and make will never be eliminated by an artificial brain. It may be HARD to be a real human, and think through a complete process. But it is so much FUN! \ud83d\ude42 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Making things is my primary activity. Not just making them but the design from scratch making of things. It\u2019s the process of visualizing a tangible item, then bringing that idea into reality. I have used a great many materials in my lifetime to make tangible things. Wood, metal, fabric and today mostly plastic extrusions. AKA 3D printing of plastic. There are several methods of 3D printing plastic which include melting and extruding solid filaments and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hobbies","category-musing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Computers that control<\/h3>\n