Design question about dowels for 3D printing

[mrwhite]

I’m planning some designs of my own of weapons like swords and such for 3D printing, But would like to insert a dowel into the design for strength.

I know you can make a hole in the design with the blender program, But how can you make it appropriate for real dowels to be the exact same size to be inserted thorough it?

[Richard_Marklew]

Make your model to scale and create a correctly sized dowel object for use as a boolean tool to cut corectly sized holes

[mrwhite]

But is the dowel object appropriate to real life one’s?

[JA12]

You’re the one making it the size that corresponds to the real one, and also add the tolerance.

Most file formats you export to don’t include units. It’s the saved vertex coordinates that get exported, and you either have to scale it to the size your slicer program defaults to, or tell the slicer which units it should use.

• Scene units are in scene properties
• 3d view properties has object transforms, including object scale and dimensions
• Always keep the object scale as 1,1,1. If you change the dimensions, scale changes, and you need to apply it. ctrl+A -> scale. It makes the mesh match the object you’re looking at
• Working scale is arbitrary and you can use None unit (default) and decide what the unit means. When the model is ready, you have to switch to real world units and scale the object appropriately
• Working in different scale can be important if your real world scale is too small or too big, which would also mean adjusting the viewport clipping. If you work in millimeters, you can’t view a meter size object comfortably without making adjustments. Smaller than that should be fine, and the slicer is likely to default to mm.
• You can practice with the default cube and export as .stl with ascii enabled. It opens with a text editor and you can see the vertex coordinates. If the values are right and the magnitude corresponds the unit you’re exporting in, you’re doing it right.

[mrwhite]

Thanks for both of you for answering my question. I’ll see what i can do

[mrwhite]

Another question, I’ve learned how to seperate a model into 2 parts, But the thing is, It’s empty from the inside. Is there a way to fill it fully?

[JA12]

Polygonal modeling is a surface type modeling paradigm. You define all surfaces, what’s left between is a solid.

Convert: Hollow Profile - Solid Pofil

We deal with surfaces in polygonal modeling, so to get a hollow model you need to define two surfaces: outside and inside of the model. Surfaces consist of faces which have a direction (normals). [image] Left: model that only has outside surface defined and the surface direction points out. It’s a solid model Right: model that has outside and inside defined and the surface directions points away from the solid part. This is a hollow model. 3D printer prints thin layers on top of each other…

[pauljs75]

If you enable the 3D Print Toolbox add-on, you can perform some checks on the model. The thing you’re looking for in that regard is whether the model is considered manifold. The clean-up options under the plugin tab has one to “make manifold” which should work for most basic meshes.

[mrwhite]

Thanks for the help. Another thing though, I once designed a sword with blender, But when ever i insert the model into the slicer it just became filled with holes and broken all over the place.

Any idea how to fix that problem? Think it was because of too many surfaces from using the subdivision surface modifier

[JA12]

@mrwhite

Any idea how to fix that problem?

Not without a .blend

@mrwhite

Think it was because of too many surfaces from using the subdivision surface modifier

Subdivision surface doesn’t create surfaces, it refines what you already have.

[mrwhite]

I cut this sword model from a video game but wanted to know how to fill the inside for 3D print