Recently, with it being Christmas and all, I had been looking at purchasing a 3D printer. Their prices have come down quite a bit, but at this point I didn’t think I’d ever get my value out of it.
Anyways, it just so happen that I recently broke the knob off of my propane blow torch, which was a bit of pain as I use that torch quite a bit… heat this, heat that yada yada. With the broken knob in hand I set out to modeling the knob on a website called tinkercad.com . On that website you , create an account, login and start to model objects all through your chrome browser. They also have a library of other widgets people have made. So once I had a model I was happy with I had to find a local 3D printer.
Which wasn’t that hard of a process, Tinkercad has some integration with find-a-printer websites and you basically contact out local people who already own 3D printers. That website is called 3Dhubs.com.
So I created an account on 3Dhubs, found a local dude who could print my piece and the guy wasn’t charging a ton of money for the work. Here is Dudes(“Glasswalker”) profile. So through the website, dude gets my file, reviews it, agrees that he can print it and accepts my contract offer.I send him money through paypal and we schedule a pickup.
Voila! Here is the final product
You can see the busted black knob in one of the photos.
Anyways, the peice was almost perfect except for some extra plastic in the center hole, I think when I was designing the knob I made my tolerances to tight for the 3D printer.
All in I paid $6