My wife wants to take advantage of me using my 3D printer and asked me to make something useful for her. Normally I just find designs that others have created and print them. The most common designer for the stuff I print is my own son but there are a number of places to get 3D print designs. I won't tell you where they are as you will go there looking for cool things to print and never be heard from again. If I didn't have skiing to pull me away from the computer, I'd still be looking at fun stuff to print from the last time I visited Thingiverse.
My wife has an advent wreath that she pulls out every Christmas. This year she got some really massive candles to go in it but didn't have proper candle stands. She asked me to use my printer and create some. I thought about outsourcing the design to my son but realized he has his own priorities and I didn't want him to tell me I should design it myself.
As my son is a mechanical engineer that works at an engineering firm, he has access to all sorts of great computer-aided drawing (CAD) software. He also has tried a number of free solutions and suggested I give Tinkercad a try. I logged in this afternoon and went to work.
The first time you go to Tinkercad, there is a quick tutorial you can run through. It gave me enough confidence to start designing. Then I just used my usual search engine to figure out how to get Tinkercad to do things the tutorial didn't show me. Things like how to stack objects on top of each other and how to make a hollow cone. The result is shown in the image below.
I sent it to my son and he immediately gave me some design suggestions. Something about fillets because hard corners tend to be weak spots. I just watched a YouTube video on how to do that but should have added them before I put everything together. I'll print one of these and see how it works. If my wife likes it, I'll consider the project done. If not, I'll spend another 30 minutes and design another candle holder.
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