Noah B Woodworks

I folded like a lawn chair and purchased a 3D printer as they went on sale for black Friday. I plan to use the printer in the following ways: to model and test mechanisms for puzzle boxes, to print little toys for my daughter, and to print organizers for my wife and myself. I was playing around with having AI model things for me, and that was somewhat interesting. Basically I could say something like “make me a hammer” and it would spit some code out that I could paste into another program. The program would render what the AI had made, and it was usually whack. I wasn’t able to get anything good out of it, sort of like when an AI draws a picture there’s just something off and wrong about it.

I did think it was cool that it could model things and iterating through codes was interesting. I might ask it for more ideas at some point. As of yesterday, documented in my last blog post, I’ve been toying around with Fusion 360 and it is a very legitimate program. I can see why so many people use it. For gears and mechanical engineered mechanisms it is really useful. I’ll most likely follow some tutorials on how to model a mechanism, and then try to print that mechanism.

It is also winter time, and being out in the barn feels somewhat like a chore when it is 15 degrees out. I’ll still go out there at least once a weekend, but I might wait for it to warm up first. My work schedule happens very early in the morning so I’ll inevitably be up early on the weekends. The question is what to do with the time. The 3D printer can fill that early morning time, I can do computer work from the comfort of my home office and test mechanisms to be made out in the shop. Running the CNC can be done from inside as well, I’ve got a camera set up and the work holding is usually very reliable.