My wife and I recently bought a Fokoos Odin-5 F3 3D printer as a first foray into the world of 3D printing. What a wonderful decision that’s been! I’m pleasantly surprised by the sheer quality that this printer can deliver with only minimal setup.
So far, we’ve been practicing with the printer by making small, useful things, such as cable clips and holders. Currently, I’m printing a 90 and 45-degree angle drilling guide to help me hang up our smoke detectors that we’ve been just lying around so far. It’s been a really great way of quickly making a simple tool or accessory to help with things, and that’s not even tapping into the real potential here.
It was surprisingly easy as well to learn a little bit about FreeCAD and how to model for 3D printing using that. Tracy and I have had a little annoyance in never being too sure whether the dishes have been run yet or not, so this weekend I’ve designed a little pendant on a hook with “Dirty” on one side and “Clean” on the other, made to fit exactly on our dishwasher handle. It took just under an hour to actually print it, and now we have a simple solution at hand! On top of that, with 3D printing, these things feel a little less precious in and of themselves—I feel more comfortable with this quick-and-dirty prototype, because we’ll try it out and if it needs improving, I can just make a new version.
Overall, I’m really excited to seeing where we can take this!