New to the group

[Nate Scheidler]

Hi There!

I work for Mayfair Games, and I am working on some 3D print projects in support of our giant games used in conventions. I got my legs in 3D design by tinkering with UnrealEd and designing levels for Unreal Tournament; I have been using TinkerCAD and visiting the CPL Maker Lab at the Harold Washington Library; the setup and staff there is great, but the limited lab hours necessitate me finding another option; PS:1 is a great fit for my needs. Currently designing a support ring for use on 60+ Star Trek Enterprise models (will be producing a working version at PS:1 before sending out for production), and later will be working on custom giant Catan board sets. 

Hoping to attend Thursday's (7/2) CNC group meeting, but might be a bit late as I have another meeting to attend to beforehand. Is there an agenda set for it? 

[Ray Doeksen]

I'm not sure there's an agenda for the meeting but if your interest is making things that you've already designed and have good STL files for, the CNC build club is more about building CNC tools than it is making 3d prints with 3d printers.... not that you shouldn't come, by all means come ... for one thing it just may be that some of your parts might be suited to being subtractively created, by using a Carvey, X-Carve, Shapeoko or ShopBot type machine rather than a slow-as-molasses 3d printer. 

If you are making many copies of a thing, you might look into using a CNC cutting machine to cut yourself a mold, then pour casting resin/urethane into the mold. Cut yourself a few mold cavities and your production time for the set could be substantially lower. 

[Nate Scheidler]

Thanks! I want to get into Carvey etc too. I'm looking at generating molds for one of my projects, but a little concerned about precision and wondering if printing the objects on 3D printers wouldn't be more precise than casting (since I'm still learning my way around casting and materials). Does this group deal much in molding/casting?