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Reasons to own a 3D printer - Guitar Practice

I designed and printed this part of the guitar neck for a person starting to learn how to play guitar. This is used practice changing cords without having to pick up a whole guitar. This was particularly useful as a beginner as it was quick and easy to pick up and practice with and also helped strengthen my fingertips. I was able to design and print this within a couple of hours of thinking it would be something cool to make. This goes to show the power of owning a 3D printer and if owned a printer you too could do countless things like this.

Example of an item to print - simpson's tv

By Brandon Withrow https://www.thingiverse.com/buba447/designs , https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3681512 is licensed under (CC BY 4.0)

How to print something on your printer

Go to Thingiverse.com and search for something cool to print (there are thousands of cool things to look for). Download the model to a selected folder on your computer and extract the zip file. In the extracted file you will find an ".stl" file, this is the model of the item you will be printing. You will need to download some slicing software such as cura if you have not already done so(available from https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura). Next you will have to open the model in your slicing software and select a profile for your printer and type of plastic, once this is done you will need to click on the slice button and your stl file will be 'sliced' into commands that your 3D printer can understand. Copy this file to a SD card or connect to your printer over wifi if it has the option to do so. Push print and your item will start to print, this will take a while so go grab a cup of coffe and come back a couple hours later. Your item should now be printed and ready to go!

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Upcoming challenge

Design and print a useful kitchen item

Design an every day item that can be printed by anybody with a 3D printer. The item should be no bigger than 200 * 200 * 200 mm and should take less than 20 hours to print.

Please note if you are using any of the following plastics your item will need to be coated in a food safe resin!

  • ABS Filament
  • PLA Filament
  • Nylon Filament
  • Metal Filament
  • Carbon Fiber Filament

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