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3D Printing The Hadley 114mm Newtonian Telescope

3D Printing Saves A Neighbors Day

When I started off in the 3D Printing world in November of ’22, I knew it would be neat to be able to print trinkets here and there, or maybe a Telescope or two. But to be able to help a neighbor in a bind? I didn’t expect that.

On Tuesday I saw a request for help on a local Facebook group. Somebody had bought a new CPU but forgot to get some thermal paste, and rather than wait for it to come in via Amazon or run 30 minutes to a store that would have it, he asked if anyone locally had some he could use. I did. And it turns out he’s a neighbor just down the street. It worked out well.

The next day though, I got a message from the same neighbor. “Hey, do you have an AMD processor?” As a matter of fact I do. He needed the fan retainer brackets that a motherboard usually comes with, but his were long gone. I didn’t have any to spare, but a thought popped in my head. I sent a link to Thingiverse.com. “If you can find what you need there, send me a link and I’ll fire up the 3d printer.”

As it turns out, he’s into 3D printing too but guess which computer has his slicer and is setup for printing? You guessed it, the one that needed the brackets.

He found the brackets on Thingiverse and I printed them in PETG. The installation went smoothly, and he plans on leaving the brackets in unless they break, in which case the ones he ordered on Amazon will be on standby.

If you’re interested or just getting started in 3D Printing, be sure to check out the MiscDotGeek Youtube channel for more content 🙂

1 comment

    • David Wilcox. K8WPE on March 18, 2023 at 3:16 AM
    • Reply

    Oh Ryan, so neat. My old shop compressor’s fan finally gave up the ghost and another ham friend heard my plea (the Clarke compressor was made in England and they don’t sell parts to the US). He took the parts home and after 3 tries he made a better fan that will last longer than I will. The first one would have worked but he is more anal than I am…. It had to be PERFECT! And it is!

    Dave K8WPE

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