3D print vu meters casing

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Rocinante

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 17, 2014
Messages
1,132
Location
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What software are you guys using for 3D printing?
Is there a software that has a library?
Ive been using some freeware which has been good but the library is just shapes.
I bought my son a nice 3D printer and I want to make a casing for a vu meter similar to the 8027 hairball sells but wider and a few millimeters taller. So basically 1u in height.
I want to stick a tft/lcd display in it that I made a nice digital vu meter with on an arduino (which I'll gladly share the code for) .  The code is mostly from

With which I manipulated for my own purposes.
The lcd vu meter also has volume level indication with numeric digits that so far work well (let's see what happens when someone wacks it while sticking it in a rack)
The height is 1.70 inches by 2.25 in width.
It's 1000 times more accurate than an analog vu meter and it looks pretty.
It's going in my 3 in 4 out monitor controller.
I tried to find a vu meter casing that would fit but no such luck. I'm trying to keep it 1u.
 
I want to make a casing for a vu meter

Eagerly await a picture of a prototype.  I'm using some old modutec VU's with the rectangular backs and was kicking around the idea of making some of those as well.
 
Fusion360 makes excellent modelling software. there are a ton of tutorials for it too.

Slicers for FDM machines (extruded plastic) are plentiful, but I upgraded to Simplify3d. the quality of the prints improved within 10 minutes of downloading it. Seriously excellent tools. (I'm running a creality cR-10 mini at the moment)

I also have a Photon 3d printer here that prints in a vat of resin. cool stuff. Special tools that you import the STL file into and it handles it's own proprietary slicing algo. Quality out if it is phenomenal, except
a) Expensive resin (b) smelly and non-healthy (c) cleanup is a pain in the arse.


 
Just finished the design via Tinkercad. It comes free with my Autodesk license.  Okay so designing it was easier than I thought. I just looked at various cases via the Tinkercad gallery and Google and took it from there. It was easiest to start from scratch.  I need to pick up some black 3d printer wire and then it's on.
 
wow cool!
how would you characterize the movement behaviour of the needle?
Is it comparable to an analog meter?
 
Ok that's cool as heck.  Do you have any plans to share this?  I've been struggling with the choice to go analog because I love the traditional classic look but of course this means I lose PPM without a whole extra set of buffers to add.  Your solution is kinda the best of both worlds if the refresh rate is so high as to make the needle look truly 'analog'.
 

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