I'm new on this forum and I'd like to introduce myself.
I have been using FreeCAD off and on for about 1 year now mostly to create 3D printed parts while at home during lockdowns.
Projects so far include parts for my 1928 Willys Overland Whippet vintage car, camper trailer and general household items.
During this time, I have been amazed at how far FreeCAD has come since I first installed 0.8 out of curiosity many years ago.
Congratulations to all the contributors and developers.
In the spirit of giving back I have attached an animated miniature oscillating steam engine model that I used to learn the A2Plus and the Exploded Assembly workbenches.
This steam engine design is relatively simple, but it has served me well over the years as my go to project when learning new tools.
(See my next post for more background)
The engine components are modelled using Part Design except the bolt and nut which are created using the Fasteners workbench. A2Plus was then used for assembly.
- Some parts like the piston have an additional hidden body for the 3D print support structure.
- The bolt (aka screw) occasionally had/has invalid geometry (unthreaded shaft would be missing a face) when created by the workbench. This caused issues when exporting a .amf file for 3D printing. A boolean fuse between the screw and a Cylinder was used to force the export to produce the expected solid as a workaround.
Exploded Assembly workbench was then used to create the following GIF using a screen grabber.
From here I exported all the components (with the relevant custom supports enabled) as .amf files for importing into prusaSlicer to print.
My goal was to design a fully 3D printed model that snapped together and included a functional bolt, nut and spring.
The bolt, nut, piston and cylinder head needed some post processing to smooth the surfaces but otherwise it assembled and ran (using compressed air) as printed.
Printing the spring was the most challenging aspect requiring a strategically placed support and a lot of patience to remove it after printing.
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OS: Windows 10 Version 1909
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.24291 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-19
Hash: 7b5e18a0759de778b74d3a5c17eba9cb815035ac
Python version: 3.8.6+
Qt version: 5.15.2
Coin version: 4.0.1
OCC version: 7.5.0
Locale: English/Australia (en_AU)