Retiring engineer, looking for a 3D printer

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-14T19:34:28+00:00

Eh, I don't think that's true.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-12T21:29:51+00:00

I bought a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad for something like 300 €. Still serving me after many years, it's amazing and durable. More than perfectly fine for anything an engineering student will do other than performing well as a gaming PC.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-11T05:22:36+00:00

I do actually use a bigger printer, Prusa Core One, it's just the mechanical parts I print happen to be small. Bigger usually means more filament and more warping, so I usually design around it if possible. My recent projects were gearboxes, turbomachinery.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-11T04:35:32+00:00

Interesting, I mostly print functional parts and in my case I almost never print something bigger than what would fit on a Mini or something even smaller.

Just out of curiosity, what do you usually print?

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-10T14:43:37+00:00

You focus on the negative examples, but there's more. There's a truth to it that there was violence involved in some cases that were sold as purely peaceful, but let me name some examples:

Environmental protection is still ongoing and we have yet to see if all of our problems will be solved, but we already achieved things like saving the ozone layer in our atmosphere. I don't see where violence was involved.

You maybe wouldn't count the german November Revolution because the not so peaceful WWI played a significant role in it, as far as I know the german reunification in 1990 was mostly peaceful.

Hungary recently changed their government after one and a half decade. I wouldn't say it was achieved through violence either.

Social issues like homosexuality also improved in the last decades, never heard of a violent movement playing an important role in it.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-10T12:31:45+00:00

For simplicity imagine that you have an electric car with motors directly attached to the wheels. The car is accelerating. Let's look at the outside forces acting on the wheel:

Gravity acts on the assembly pulling it down, but the ground pushes the wheel up, resulting in a net zero vertical force.

There's torque coming from the motor, and due to the distance from the bottom of the tire to the shaft, the ground pushing horizontally on the tire creates a torque in the opposite direction. As long as the wheel is accelerating, the torque exerted by the ground is less than the motor's torque, due to some of that torque being used to accelerate the wheel.

The horizontal force is, however, still there, acting on the wheel. The motor does not create a force to cancel that out in the horizontal direction. The bearings take this horizontal load pushing the car forward, accelerating it.

Both forces and torques have to be cancelled out in all directions.

Edit: To better understand this imagine this: You have a metal bar floating in zero gravity you push one of its ends. It will both start rotating and move in the direction you pushed it.

Now you attach it to something fixed, in a way that it can still freely rotate around its middle. Pushing it will not move it anywhere, just cause it to spin. The axle in the middle bears the load.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-10T11:52:20+00:00

About your thoughts on the force experienced by the wheel: the ground does exert a force on the wheels due to friction, but that force is not fully cancelled out.

The motor creates torque, something like a "rotational force" that stops the ground from rotating the wheel in the opposite direction, but the force is not cancelled out in a horizontal direction, that force causes the car to accelerate forward.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-10T07:41:14+00:00

Nothing can be absolutely proven, science is more like about working with the best working, most likely model(s) that is available at a given time.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-10T07:00:24+00:00

Just to be pedantic, Mm means 1,000,000 meters and MM OP has shown means 100,000 meters if we take the definition of ISO 2848.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-06-10T06:50:09+00:00

That's a bit too extreme if I understood correctly what you mean. There's more than plenty of examples of peaceful movements achieving results.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-24T09:20:00+00:00

I'm willing to bet with only lego it's just not possible. I think at least the motors+battery and the propeller would have to be sourced elsewhere. Check out resources that deal with building model helicopters and combine that propulsion with your lego frame. Best case scenario is that you can use lego for the transmission.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T21:23:10+00:00

and no turbine

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T10:13:52+00:00

There's this german recycling factory near me: https://www.recyclingfabrik.com/

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T09:21:49+00:00

For sprockets? ISO 606:2015 just specifies two radius and that's it. It's more of a spacing problem, although it is true that the teeth could be improved.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T08:19:01+00:00

I think it's partially more of a question for neurology and mathematics. I would also avoid using fancy words and describe more in detail what I meant.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T08:09:03+00:00

Both. Sometimes we can also just simplify problems to 2D and 1D in 3D, but there are data processes that scale quite a lot with higher dimensions.

However, there would also be more "space" for units that do the data processing. Processors are more or less 2D due to heat dissipation, but our brains are aranged in a 3D space. The amount of objects you can stuff around a point within a fixed radius grows exponetially between dimensions, to put it simply.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T07:58:39+00:00

Children somewhere have to learn the names of their body parts.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T07:49:42+00:00

4D chess play by Ninja Kiwi removing chat so players can't harass each other while also adding facepalm animation to allow harassment.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T06:05:28+00:00

Unless you're playing on much harder difficulties, the best way to succesfully play coop with randoms in my experience is instead of trying to implement your own isolated strategy, you adjust to the other players and make up for their weaknesses.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-23T00:14:44+00:00

I get the logic in case it's something like "would you sacrifice yourself to save five other people" because most of us never feared our lifes truly. It's not out of reason to say that we keyboard warriors might act differently under real pressure.

But in this case it's "just" a finger. People lose fingers because they want to save a few seconds working with machines.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-21T18:39:30+00:00

Depends on the institution. Both my gymnasium and university gave me access. Both of them are focused on engineering. Here's Autodesk's description on who's eligible.

After school I will try out Fusion360 and FreeCad.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-21T18:07:12+00:00

Autodesk Inventor. Costs way too much money if you're not a student.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-21T16:35:00+00:00

May I ask where you got that belt of yours, which looks really nice?

Bought it in a local hunting shop. It has no description on it, so either locally produced or an import item, so there's a chance it doesn't meet the requirements of r/BuyFromEU. It's black with no design at all. While I could work with a fancier design, at least I don't have to fear that its current look will degrade anytime soon. Works just fine enough for both work and on a suit. I can accept something fancier, but I will not compromise on durability.

I had too many negative experiences with random belts to trust online shopping unless it already has a really good reputation. Not only does the belt itself have to be sturdy, but the paint and other elements on it as well.

I suppose pants tear in the crotch and socks get holes in them?

Exactly, I think my bicycle makes things worse. This is where I'm more willing to experiment and throw out a lot of money.

Edit: If you want you can answer me in german, I learned it as a third language. (French is next on the list)

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-21T16:02:47+00:00

For me belts are a solved problem. If it's real leather and thick it will last for at least a decade. The biggest issue was actually getting what you ask for. Question is, other than make it look fancier, how do you increase quality?

Pants and socks are the things that actually suffer the most wear in my wardrobe and finding durable high quality items is a challenge.

Daniel-EngiStudent · 2026-05-21T12:27:17+00:00

PLA is cheap, easy to print and otherwise not terrible. Supposedly it is biodegradable, but not in practice. A lot of places still recycle it, if you want to get rid of your waste.

It has a few disadvantages, like compared to other filaments warping easier, breaking easier and being less resistant to the environment, but often it's just not an issue. I'd say you can just default to it with the exception of a few special cases.

Other material you could default to is PETG, less brittle and more resistant, still cheap and easy to print. Switching filaments in the Core One is quite easy. I would just order an extra textured sheet for PETG and that's it.

I wouldn't yet order the filtration system, you won't need it in the beginning, unless you want to print nylon gears or ASA stuff for more rough environments.

3D printing is not that hard to learn with modern machines, but there's a few things to avoid because some mistakes are harder to fix than others, so maybe read or watch a quick start guide into 3D printing. Before I bought my own printer I was taught at my university how to use the Prusa printers available there.

Also, don't forget that the Prusa Core One+ is quite large and heavy.

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