07/22/2024
In today's world of seemingly CNC everything, it can seem difficult to produce amateur made "things" worthy of comparison to professionally made products for model airplanes, other hobbies, marketing materials, and other things that have often relegated would-be product makers to just not try and compete .. large laser cutting tables products amazing looking model airplane kits .. CNC industrial machining tools can produce incredible looking engines, metal, plastic, or whatever, parts that seem impossible for hobbyists .. many years ago I spent $1100+ for an HP DeskJet printer when I was marketing my music software and Makeover for Windows .. I had to use a print house with offset printing just for a 2 color package for Makeover .. yet I still got Makeover for Windows on the shelves at Egghead Software and CompUSA in the first half of the 1990's.
The "Maker" revolution is in full swing now .. I bought a Creality Ender 3 V2 Upgraded 3D Printer on October 16 of 2021 not long after I got home from the 3-month treatment for the bacterial infection in my back .. I had been watching videos during my treatment, and I saw a lot of limitations and a lot of people working hard to try to produce anything worthwhile .. at the time I had effectively zero 3D modeling skills .. and I didn't want to just print things other people had designed and provided models of .. I had my own ideas, but I had no real way of producing models I could 3D print of those things .. over the past few years, I've created long lists of things I wanted to do with 3D printing .. same goes for 3D machining of metal and plastic parts .. I had access to a nice metal lathe as a kid .. my father first had a Sears lathe, then a 10" Southbend lathe .. I turned heads for model airplane engines, made custom wheel hubs for HO Racing Slot Cars and other projects .. but we didn't have a milling machine .. my Creality Printer never got assembled and my Vevor vinyl cutter has never been plugged in .. but I have those tools and am finally ready to tackle some of the challenges to try to achieve some of my long-time model airplane and musical instrument making dreams.
In today's world, there are now hobbyist grade and hobbyist priced CNC mills, CNC laser engravers and laser cutters, and of course CNC 3D printers .. if you watch the videos, you see some people get good results by putting in significant effort .. in 3D printers, people fight with settings, materials, ornery hardware, and still get marginal results .. in a lot of cases, the results can be acceptable for non-professional production purposes.
I've been watching the videos and learning 3D modeling over the past few years .. I've spent significant time with Autodesk Fusion 360 and Blender for 3D modeling .. I've been using Microsoft Visio since the 1990's for drawing and diagramming, but my AutoCAD 2D skills were lacking and for the most parts, still are.
Some of these CNC tools I'm talking about feel more within my reach of actually producing useful things .. even with my spine issues, I can spend time in a nice gaming chair at my computer watching instructional videos and reading instructional materials on the web.
My pre-pandemic videos were mainly informational .. the pandemic times have people producing what we used to see as professional quality media .. I will never have the entertainment personality for entertainment videos unless information is the entertainment .. but I've been also working to learn to produce multiple camera videos so people can actually see what I'm doing .. I got nice compliments on my videos pre-pandemic, but still people often requested closeup video and still photos to complete the picture if you will.
I'm ready to try making videos on model airplane topics and musical instrument work again .. the surgery on my spine is expected to be in August or early September .. I'm going to be working on my projects including producing edited videos and not just snippets.
I'm also going to try to turn things list this long posting into Substack articles and put them on my web sites .. the only way I can improve and know if it is worthwhile is if I get feedback .. believe it or not, I'm not especially thin skinned .. please have a look and please comment and make suggestions.
You will be seeing tools and techniques I've had for a while and developed over time .. I'm always learning from others even when I'm sharing the things I do.
Here is one hobbyist grade tool I find very interesting .. if you've worked with hobbyist grade laser engravers and laser cutters, I would be very interested in what your experiences have been.
Two Trees TTS-20 Pro is a laser engraver and cutter with very small size of the module which produces one of the sharpest engraving lines with diode lasers o...
