Hello friends,

Since I was so graciously gifted the 3D printer, I haven't really done much with it besides just print the basic cat.gcode you're supposed to test it out with. Today, that changes.

What'd I Make?

In my current journey to making my own servo motor, I spent the last few days picking out some matching gears to try and slow down the output of my motor. But after picking them all out I was left with a bunch of random gears, a motor, an encoder, and no way of connecting it all. AKA, the perfect excuse to learn 3D modeling.

Now I don't want to dive down this rabbit hole just yet. I just want something simple, quick, and capable of what I'm trying to achieve. That's where TinkerCAD comes into play.

The website that I've used in the past to design circuits, also has a beginner friendly 3D modeling program. I didn't have many requirements, the main one being that I could design to the millimeter or ideally, even smaller. Another perk is that I could generate specific shapes, like gears. Which saves me the headache of making all the teeth.

All in all it wasn't too hard to use, the main struggle especially coming from a Photoshop and Illustrator background was to move around the design in 3D space, a skill I'm sure will improve with time.

The Result

After all was said and done, I uploaded the design to Cura, realized it was too big, modified it, uploaded again, and got it going on the printer.

And while two of the gears don't fit quite right, I'm really happy with how it turned out, and ready to get going on making adjustments and reprinting!