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'quality over quantity', my reason for liking Noel's videos.

FreeCAD is parametric and improving all the time. I have designed a retro keyboard enclosure using it. It is rough round the edges but I think it is going places. It is free and libre.

OpenSCAD software might be worth looking at for producing models.

Instead of a resin printer you also could use a ABS/ASA Printer (FDM with Enclosure) and smooth with Acetone.

A few ideas if you want to get smooth surfaces on filament prints - the easiest step is to use a slicer that has an “ironing” setting. This makes an extra pass with the print head on top surfaces with a very low filament flow, normally 10% of the normal feed rate and fills in the gaps while partially remelting the top layer. I find this makes a huge improvement with flat surfaces, though it can add an hour or so to a the time required for a fairly large print. I use the CURA slicer that I thoroughly recommend with an heavily modified Ender 3 printer and it’s well supported. The other thing you can do is switch to ABS filament (a bit harder to print) and then use an acetone vapor chamber after printing. The acetone softens the outer layer of the print and smooths out the surface. For things like replacement keys, it should work pretty well. The prints you got from PCB Way were probably made with an industrial SLM (selective laser melting) printer that creates the part by using a laser to melt powder layer by layer. The printers are far more expensive than home filament printers, but much faster and as you noticed, produce results that look as good as injection molding.

I've been 3d printing since 2017. I have 2 printers now and I don't think I can imagine myself not having access to one nowadays. I use for my hobby, for fixing things around the house, creating personalized gifts, etc.

As a F360 alternative, you should give Onshape a try. Nice video; thanks.

Funny to admit, that I'm using Blender for modelling parts. It's probably not the best tool for that, but this is what I know from my career as games developer, so I continue to use it for various things. Blender has also 3D printing plugin to check the models. So, if s.o. is confident in Blender, then it is possible to use it for 3D print design as well.

Some FDM tips: - Dump Creality slicer and upgrade to the latest Cura (which Creality abused an old version of) or PrusaSlicer. - Get a PEI flex-plate to get things to better stick (but probably don't risk using it when printing PETG) - The monitor door might have been designed to be printed with ABS, which shrinks a bit and hence requires parts to be slightly oversized. If you then print that part with PLA, it would be too big. I can't say for sure from the video whether that was your problem, but you definitely do not want to print such a door in PLA, but probably want to use PETG (much better layer adhesion) if you don't want it to break even faster than the original. Some SLA tips: - There are also spring steel sheets as buildplate for SLA printers that should make it much easier to get the prints off. I have not bought one myself yet though. - There is water-washable resin which makes things somewhat easier by not needing IPA for washing. I love the colored transparent ones from Elegoo as the transparency also make it possible to fully cure thicker walls as the UV light can penetrate. If you use an opaque resin, the exposure will only partially cure the inside of thicker parts and the light from the curing station just cannot reach it. So, you'll end up having that toxic half-cured resin still there behind a thin wall of fully cured resin. So, even if you don't want transparency, using a transparent resin has benefits and you can get the right color by painting it. And for Fusion 360 being slow ... I guess that will be caused by your Apple's ARM. It flies on my Ryzen cpu.

Ooh and FreeCAD is the way to go it’s fast it has a parameter based workflow. It has a learning curve if you’ve never did use sketch based modeling before.

The ZX80 case from PCBWay was most likely printed on a SLS printer. Traditionally SLS printers pint with powdered nylon, though it wouldn't surprise me if they have ones now that can print in powdered PLA.

for the grey keycaps - fine grey wet rub sandpaper, then buff / polish with a good compound! - in High School in the 80's we had a plastics classroom - used this to clean up acrylic plastics to get back to a gloss finish

Cool examples of merging the two hobbies. Thanks for taking the time to put this together! It's perfect for figuring out a way to take new parts and make them work in place of 40yr old parts that are no longer made. Ex. contrast pot is no longer made for the Radio Shack Model 100. I created a 'shim' to use a modern one as a drop in replacement for the original. Add creating a custom PCB to the mix and you get a good replacement that should last another 40 years and a computer that isn't destined to e-waste, or have to harvest a replacement from a 'parts' computer.

I’ve printed so, so many brackets, cases, and replacement parts. For me, finding and/or designing or modifying parts is one of my favourite parts (boom tish) of this hobby. My Ender 3 has so many “miles” on it from all kinds of projects. I’ll eventually get a resin printer to small, more detailed bits like key caps. If you want really, really high quality prints with an FDM printer, be prepared to also learn about sanding, filling, and painting.

FreeCAD might be worth a look as your F360 alternative. It’s FOSS, with all the usual pros/cons that brings. The learning curve can be brutal, but online tutorials help a lot and you can develop some fairly efficient spreadsheet-based parametric workflows and models.

For CAD I use SolidEdge (and I have been using it for about 20 years at this stage so...), it's commercial but there is a "community" edition (limitation is basically that you can't open files produced in the community edition in the commercial versions), you can do the parametric thing with it, including creating whole "families" of parts e.g. same physical structure (more or less, you can also suppress features based on parameters if needs be) with different dimensions. Another option to look at, though it's a completely different paradigm is OpenSCAD, it's basically CAD by scripting so about as "parametric" as CAD can be ;)

I mainly use PETG. Mainly because someone gave me a lot of it for Christmas. I had a lot of trouble with bed adhesion until I bought a PEI bed.

For that monitor door, I would try to find filament that matches that border around screen - it would still match color scheme (not like factory one, but it's still match), but since colors are not in direct contact, slight difference wouldn't be as noticeable.

the best intro to 3D printing I've seen - kudos

What an amazing video! I've been thinking of 3D printing for a while and this gave me a good overview. Resin printing looks so cool though! And I can totally understand how much it takes to make these videos. Researching, experimenting and organising all your video and keep track of the progress over months, WHILE making other videos. Kudos!

Couple of 3D printing tips. For FDM use PLA+ as it is stronger and slightly more flexible (I made a 6ft sound bar with it). For resin, use water soluble so you do not need any chemicals to clean it. I have made over 400 keycaps with walls only 0.6mm on my 13" Resin printer.

Actually FDM can do a much better resolution if you use a 0.15mm nozzle instead of a 0.4mm one. Also, if you want a very smoth surface, use ASA. It can be smoothed with acetone. First do some wetsanding. Than hang the keycap over a cup with acetone for a few minutes. The big advantage of FDM with 0.15mm nozzle: You can use a multimaterial unit (f.e. ERCF if you add klipper to your printer) and embed the labeling. Like the good old "double shot". Resin printing is good if the keycaps are in a light colour - you can use dysub transfer to label them. The downside of FDM with 0.15mm nozzle: It takes a lot of time... You should use a Voron 0 for such usecase.

One more thing about 3D printer is that it's not just the printing where you have to learn, but the post-process too! Some pieces will need glueing, some will need to be primed and sanded, etc... some pieces are very involved...

printed solid has commodore tan. I've never seen it, but I've heard it's a pretty good match to a C64. However that monitor looks more beige to me. Anyway their filament is pretty good. They have free shipping on $50+ orders and it's made here in the USA.

Hey Noel, great video, ive had alot of filament printers and the S1 was the first one Ive had that was pretty much working out of the box so it appears you bypassed most of the drama. thanks for what you do.

Great video. One more advantage to note with the resin prints - you can actually just buy white or clear resin, and then add dye to it. With a bit of effort and practice, you can actually colour match pretty close. You can also get some pretty nice effects by adding stuff like mica powder to the resin, and it also prints fine.

Noel, Thank you for your excellent work.

Thank you Noel a excellent tutorial for 3D printing.

One way I have found good for smoothing out keys is to apply a thin layer of clear epoxy resin. It fills the tiny gaps and if you apply paint first can protect it and stop it rubbing off. I just use kits made for jewellery making.

I have been 3D Printing since 2016 and have found many many uses for it. From designing & printing parts for cars that are no longer available, various brackets and bit's n pieces. I also designed and 3d printed a few parts for the A500 mini when that came out. I also used 3d printing to repair another of my 3d printers when the brackets for the stepper motors cracked. The 3d printed bracket lasted longer than the injection molded part that came with the printer. 3d printing can be a very handy tool.

I am going to be releasing a video of PCBWAY 3D Printing soon, and the hell related to it.

Hi Noel. I'm not sure what processes PCBWay used for your prints. However, it's very likely that no matter which method used, they are employing equipment to post process the print. This equipment can be of few different types: vibratory abrasion, fluid abrasion, or jet, as well as a few others depending on the print method. SLS printing is another common industrial 3D printing technology, which is a fused powder. I've worked with many of these post process machines, and the results can be truly incredible. They can also remove desired details. However, most higher end post processing machines can have a variety of customized profiles created to balance the good and the bad to get the most desirable result for an automated (timed) cycle. Generally some manual work is still required, before using the automated process. Some of the parts, especially on flat surfaces look as though they were painted in a matte finish, and are super smooth. Part dimensions can also change due to material removal. This 'may' explain why your parts were so smooth, and felt thinner.

Awesome video. Well worth the wait!

Thanks Noel, I'm thinking of buying one later in the year so great to see the review and tips.

Great video Noel!!! Best wishes, Michael...

tip smoothing out the prints put acertone on cloth in a tub put print for a few mins

Excelente video. Mucha información interesante para empezar a explorar el tema. Muchas gracias.

Great video! And I can relate to it a lot. I've bought an Ender S1 (without Pro) in January and have similar experiences. It works almost every time without tweaking and fiddeling. And my results look a lot like your's. But I don't have issues with parts not sticking to the bed. I had it once when trying to print a keycap for a Dragon 32, But rubbing the bed thoroughly with IPA before each new print solved that completely. For example I print keycaps without any rim, just standing on the bottom edge.

Nice overview Noel, I find that the printer can be a real life saver at times. I really like some of the colors of Jessie PLA from Printed Solid. They seem to have a lot of Commodore matching colors (within reason, I think every C64 I own is a different shade)🤨

Nice video. Yes I agree 3d printing is an excellent companion to restoring retro computers. I haven't really ventured into making things that don't already have an STL file, but I'm signed up to take classes on 3d printing at a maker center, so I hope to learn more about making my own designs.

Something important to remember about filament is that you do have to sand and prime/paint them, same with resin. You can also get clear/base colour resin that you can adjust the colour to suit your project. Resin is best for overall quality and polish as well as for highly detailed prints, though resin printing is still really good. Also, while yes, resin can be dangerous, and gloves and masks SHOULD be used, it isn't gonna immediately kill you. Precaution and safety is always the best, though the way it was handled seemed like a bit overkill. IDK just seemed like you were almost scared of it. Still very very good video. I wish I could own a 3d printer of my own. I used to have a neighbor with one that let me send files and a bit of money for filament to print what I want. Don't have money for my own printer, but thankfully there are services online for the parts I rarely need.

Super cool! Makes me want to get a 3D printer even more.

Great recommendations. Filament printing really is good enough for most, if not all, functional things.

The best upgrade I made to my Elegoo is a WhamBam flexible plate. Really makes removing the parts from the plate super-easy and less dangerous to your parts and yourself.

Recently I found an E-HT PLA filament, and it is really great. Prints have great layer adhesion and literally no warp, so they stick to bed perfectly, even on sharp corners. Of course, it still is just PLA, but it gives just perfect prints every time.

You were lucky to get a 3D printer with bed auto-levelling. This is really a game changer . I've worked with the cheaper ender models, and while the results are very good you have to spend a good amount of time trying to get the bed levelled. And when you succeed, you better leave the printer at that same spot, moving it usually ruins it.

Cool vid, thankyou

Solidworks now has a version for a subscription of a few dollars a month now.

Notes to avoid warping: 1. Look into draft shields. Even just the movement of the bed can cause air to flow across the part and cause thermal contraction issues. 2. Consider an enclosure or ways to avoid air drafts in the room. 3. Different bed materials can have better adhesion like glass or PEI. Notes for keycaps: 1. Use a smaller diameter nozzle (.2mm) for finer details. 2. Use smaller layer heights for better top surface. 3. If you can, use ABS and smooth using an acetone vapor process to get rid of layer lines and get a nice, shinier look. 4. With resin, it may be impossible to achieve a completely opaque print, especially something like the black keycaps you're trying to match. The resins, by their nature, are always going to have some subsurface light scattering and will always have a 'soft' look to them. Painting is the solution here.

8:10 what a nice boxed joystick on the left end of the upper shelf 😁

In addition to OpenSCAD there is also CadQuery for modelling in a programming language. If you are used to programming vs doing everything with mouse/gui that could be a quite viable option.

Had an FDM printer since my Anet A8, but got a resin printer in 2022 - they are very different beasts. I too have mine set up in a spare bathroom for ventilation, but struggle with maintaining a room temperature about 20°C. I finally achieved good prints, but now have sizing issues. Arrggg 😋

Happy Easter Noel. P. S. I love the new bench.

You can grab either white or crystal clear resin, mix in resin dyes from companies that make dyes for liquid casting resin(stuff like Alumilite). Make a custom color and print with it. In this case the brown for the key. And when you're done, put the leftover brown resin in a solid container, seal it, and mark it as to what it is. And you can use it later. As long as it doesn't sit for a long period of time it can be used later.

I almost forgot you can get a smoother top layer by enabling ironing. I get pretty smooth top layers on my prusa, but ironing makes it feel like glass. I'm guessing it won't be quite that smooth on an ender, but it should hlep.

Literally just bought an Ender 3 Neo, and getting some really good prints with draft settings. So it's great timing to see one of your videos being about 3D printing.

Cool special effects. I think I have the same Ender 3D printer I got for school sitting in my office. I will be playing with it this summer. Something else I've been wanting to look at is mold making. COVID sort of slowed that down but maybe this summer.

Thanks for this new video upload. Really fun and interesting as many of us we have faced similar scenarios 😊

Phenomenal video! So many things I’ve been thinking about have been clarified. This might actually convince me to unbox the 3D printer I’ve had sitting here for a year and really try it out. Let us know more about the filament storage issue, as I’m wondering if my filament needs to be stored in ziplocks.

large companies tend to use plastic powder laser sintering which produces vert smooth prints, akin to resin.

Hey! That's my model in the middle of the first row @ 10:11 :) I love 3D printing!

Noel - Great video - I have the same exact printer as you but with a magnetic spring steel PEI bed surface. Not sure if it is available in EU but old 70's Aquanet brand heavy duty hair spray gives me much better and cleaner bed results than glue stick, and more precise than blue tape which requires bed re-adjustment for height. I have found on my printer, the "auto- leveling" does not work consistently all that well at the very 10-11" diagonal extreme edges and I have had the same experience as you with diagonal full bed prints edge lifting (usually in the opposite back corner for me). I actually use the old school "nozzle paper gap" thin paper adjustment method, and once dialed in by manually testing the corners (rather than auto-leveling), I comment out the auto-leveling G29 line gcode that automatically gets put in by Prusa slicer to prevent constant and sometimes inconsistent auto-leveling (Cure doesn't do that but I prefer Prusa for quick prints even though for complex stuff I also use Cure once in a while) HTH

havnt seen using painters tape. You might want to try PCB boards.

print with a thick wall - sand and paint and some clear coat and it feels like 'real' injected molding

The monitor model probably just warped. Applying heat to bend it back would be a hassle, I'd just try to add some supports and sand it afterwards.

A couple of years ago Geetech sent me one of their multicolour printers to review, this one can have two different rolls of filament installed at once and swap between them or even mix the two together, so you can actually do colour mixing ! I use my printers mostly for making replacement parts for old electronic test equipment I repair for my videos. For finer details I run my Ender3 V2 with a 0.2mm nozzle, it takes a LOT longer to print but it results in much better quality, I am yet to find a 0.2mm nozzle for the geetech.

I wonder if by heating the printed monitor door with a heat gun you can make some adjustments to its shape?

Fusion is a web app I think. In the background it runs in a web container on our machines. So, it took time to running up

ABS plastic can be smoothed in hot vapor of Aceton; PLA - in Di-Chlor-Ethan.

I noticed the inner frame of the monitor goes in darker gray which might match your one of your filaments, it might just blend in better?

You might want to try prusa silcer instead of that one (I think that's cura). I'm watching you use it and I'm like.......damn that's a pain in the ass. Prusa slicer has a feature where you can select a surface and it automatically puts that surface flat on the bed. I'm currently using 2.6 alpha 5 (alpha 6 is now available) as it now supports organic (tree supports). They require less material and are generally easier to remove.

I find Fusion 360 performs much better in Windows compared to MacOS. It’s still my preferred CAD program but I’ve also used Onshape (cloud based) which is pretty good as well. For really simple designs, TinkerCAD can also be useful. I have a Prusa printer that has served me well these past few years.

i have to try this, when i get round to it i have a original zx80 motherboard that came in a joblot with no case

Have you tried submerging in acetone to smooth PLA filament prints? Seems to do a pretty good job if you dial in the duration properly

I couldn't get into Fusion 360 at all; I spent a couple of hours on it and couldn't make anything of note 😞 I use Tinkercad as it does what I need something to do; have made quite a few things with it, including an Amiga PSU cover that screwed into a wooden base.

As far as I know you can mix resins. So you could in theory figure out the Pantone code for the original key's plastic and mix multiple resins to get the right color?

Gran vídeo fiera. Yo tengo la mía hace tiempo y no termino de engancharme al tema. Un saludo y espero que todo vaya bien por EEUU

Acetone vapor can smooth PLA surfaces. Just make sure not to ignite it.

It takes a lot of handling but I prefer resin printing over filament. I easily can print the little cogs for the Macintosh floppy eject mechanism in high detail. But filament is great for testing, design, ...

Nice video, thanks :)

Would it be possible to correct the warped monitor door with the old steam/hot water trick for glasses, to soften it up and bend it into shape? It looks like it got warped from cooling faster towards the ends than in the middle.

Quality content as usual, with extensive insights and amazing production value. More than a decade ago I worked on the software stack Fusion 360 is built upon. The cost of deterministic behavior across multiple platforms and versions leads to largely bloated codebases, which often have to dispense with platform-specific optimizations. It would not surprise me if this software required a very strict variant of Rosetta to be able to reproduce with exacting numerical precision the results in the x86 reference.

If you don't mind the mess, glue stick works very well for PLA. You've got a lot of warping going on during the cartridge and failed door print, could be too high fan speed or too low build plate temperature.

Try printing a cartridge case in resin. Preferably a transparent resin. I did my KungFu Cart case in transparent blue. It looks amazing.

When you need a plastic part, or one printed of wood fiber or sintered metal, 3D printing can get it done. Additive Manufacturing is a revolutionary and disruptive technology.

Nice video. A few remarks though: - PETG is not necessarily stronger than PLA. Modern PLA filaments are complex blends, and are often stronger than PETG. However, PLA is usually a bit more stiff than PETG, and that can be detrimental for specific applications. - If you really want to print really fine stuff with filaments (FDM printers) instead of resin, there are some things you can still do, like using a smaller nozzle with extra-small layer heights, and ironing the top layers (through the slicer). The difference between 0.4mm and 0.2mm nozzles can be astonishing. Also, printing extra-slow often helps with the quality.

If you're having problems with the print popping off too soon, you need to use Elmer's glue stick

i found that just sanding PLA pieces down and after take a old cloth with some wd40 to rub it down...looks amazing.

i'm very surprised by your experience with fusion 360, my relatively low end windows pc boots fusion in about 15-20 seconds

From the video title, I thought you would show a way that vintage computers could be used to control 3d printers and got excited... sadly not the case

I use OpenSCAD for pretty much everything. Super intuitive for me compared to fusion etc. and very easy to learn.

If regular Cura addons work in this customized version, there is an addon that lets you place brim-like pads wherever you want. This way you can print objects like that monitor cover with some extra bed adhesion improvements. I can't remeber its actual name, but I think it had something like `antiwarping tabs` in the name.

Re: The color-matching, you could always do what even mass-manufactured products often do and spray-paint it. Just get as close as possible on the filament to so any wear or damage won't stand out readily like with the annoying ghost white plastic under most silver finishes.

Fusion 360 runs just fine on 2015 Intel PC. It's just not compiled for arm64. That's why it's so slow on Macs...

freeCAD has parametric modeling too. And it's open source.

If you had an old IBM PS2 with CADKEY plus it's associated Dongle that plugs into the LPT set up as EPP in BIOS then you should be good to go.

Blender which is frfree as in freedom has parametric modeling... It's not a CAD software though, so it doesn't have like sketching and constraint-based designing.

Thanks for the detailed and honest video, Noel. TBH this has put me off buying a 3D printer as it seems like too much hassle and expense for my particular use cases. I'd probably only need maybe 5 3D printed parts a year, so I'm more than happy to pay others to do the 3D printing for me.

blender doesn't have parameters, but it's free. It loads instantly. I use it all the time. It's not exactly ideal for engineering components though. It's more for artistic models. But I'm making a car part for my dad and it's worked great for that.