I don’t have a 3d printer yet. But the possibility of applications sparks my curiosity. What are some of the coolest, practical, useless, complicated prints some of you folks have done?
The easiest and most useful was a replacement disk for the water pump on a friends car. 18 months later still going strong.
The only useful thing I made with my printer was another printer.
That depends on your definition of useful. I’ve made a bit of wargaming terrain, which I use sometimes. I’ve printed some wargaming bits, which came out alright at 54mm scale (it’s a scale where a six foot tall person is scaled down to 54mm, for those unfamiliar with wargaming scales). The most useful thing I’ve printed have been various ideally sized boxes. Deck boxes for card games, primarily. The coolest impractical thing I’ve printed was the loggerhead sea turtle on Thingiverse. I printed it to see how well in-situ ball joints would print.
This was one of my earlier “practical” designs: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:107432
But it’s such an awesome technology that you can literally make almost anything you want, hence the @BotBQ ! http://BotBQ.org
Honestly you end up finding a lot of little items that can be useful. I have made spice rack holders, coffee cup hooks, a unique washer to fix my screen door, a lot more…
I’ve always said, basically nobody buys a 3D printer because they need one. They find a use for it.
@Michael_Vaughan just today I told my gf that I want to get one in 2014 and she said “what would you do with one of those?” I didn’t have a difinative answer. I basically said " i don’t know. I’ll find a reason."
@Stephen_Hazlett Try sitting her in front of Thingiverse and having a browse. My printer denying wife was surprisingly inspired by all the art and craft stuff you can find there. Incidentally, she’s a denyer because I’m completely obsessed with the technology and a lot of my spare time and efforts go into building printers. This makes me a bit of a printer bore apparently :).
@Tim_Rastall I’m right there with you. I can’t find much else to talk about and when I start in with people with little knowledge of printing she rolls her eyes.
When I was travelling earlier this year and was short on space in my bags, I printed a thin comb, so I didnt have to pack a hairbrush 
The only other ‘usefull’ thing was probably a couple of IPad-stands and door-stops - and ofcourse a million small thingies that I gave to everyone I know - people love those small home-printed objects - easy street-credit points there 
Once upon a time, there was absolutely no reason to own a “horseless buggy.” People found reasons to buy one then, too.
One of the first things I designed and printed from scratch was a replacement door pull for my shower door. The original plastic pull broke years ago. The new ceramic replacement required a few tries to work out the scale and shrinkage factors to get a perfect fit.
Since then, I’ve mostly been printing plaster molds for ceramic slip casting to replace the traditional create a master model then cast a mold from the master workflow. The printed plaster mold lacks the tight smooth surface finish of cast plaster, but for the ceramics I do the texture adds interest / character.
@Danny_Thorpe have you tried Acetone vapour smoothing ABS? Removes most layer based artefacts at the expense of some minor surface detail.
I’m also very interested in the process you describe for ceramic casting, what ceramic slip are you using? I assume it must be fairly tough to be used as a door pull.
A birdhouse… http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:119078. Buying one would have been quicker but less cool.
@Tim_Rastall I print in hydroperm plaster on an ancient zcorp 406 powder printer. The porosity of the printed mold surface is an artifact of air entrainment inherent in handling dry powder. What makes hydroperm work well for 3d printing is its very low water requirement, and low agitation/slake requirement compared to traditional plaster.
Acetone vapor has no effect on plaster or clay. Glazing the ceramic body hides 3d layer artifacts to a similar degree.
I use normal clay slip for casting, usually a cone 6 stoneware. As with all clay material, parts don’t reach full strength until fired to vitrification. Once fired, they’re hard as glass and as strong as concrete and will never rust or melt.
I have photos of a few bowls I made from a printed mold on my web site (http://DannyThorpe.com)
See also Mark Ganter at U of Washington.
Can anyone recommend a good 3d printer? I’ve just started looking into it. So I’m starting with zero knowledge. Thanks for all of the feedback guys. This should help talk the woman in to it in the near future.
That’s a whole different topic and the first question is do you want to start printing right away or do you want to take the time to build one and learn as you go? I can only say I started with a Solidoodle 3 to print right away and I’ve been learning as I go as well by making mods to make it print better. Eventually it will be nearly a complete rebuild but it’s cheap and you can start printing immediately. Some prefer to start from the ground up but it can be awhile before you start printing.