S3D hole issue

[Jules]

Oh....good!

[pyronaught]

Here's what the finished screen looks like. These are called "star sizing screens" and are used in the fireworks industry for sorting spherical "stars" as they come out of the rolling machine used to make them. Stars are the points of light you see blooming out of a firework shell that bursts in the air, and they are just pellets of pyrotechnic composition that burn different colors or other effects. You get a range of different sizes when rolling them, then they must be sorted into groups that are all the same size for final use. Thus you need a screen for each size of star from 3/16 all the way up to 3/4, which is about 11 different sizes. The one seen here is 1/4". This is actually a pretty good application for 3D printing because the only alternative is to drill a bunch of holes on a drill press or CNC, which is tedious if done by hand.

star_screen_full.jpg (306.97 KiB) Viewed 6313 times

[Jules]

Nice! I can think of at least half a a dozen uses for a nice little sorter screen set like that....are they on Thingie?

[pyronaught]

I run a subscription website for people who make their own fireworks and I'm adding a regular column for 3D printed tools. So the STL file for this is part of the subscriber content on that site and since I have a competitor I don't want to post any of my models in a public place where the other guys subscribers could get at them. Not that someone who is a member on both sites will eventually do it anyway, but I don't want to speed up that process.

This got me thinking about something though... is an STL file protected by copyright the same way a book, image or computer program is? Seems like it would fit into that category.

[Jules]

Yes, actually, it is, but to be completely realistic....anything you put anywhere on the internet is subject to being taken and used by whomever wants to use it.

(So the only intelligent choice, which you are doing, is to not post it in the first place.)