STL libary

🖨️3D printing
1

Hi there,

I am a research enigineer at the VU University Amsterdam building research equipment of all sorts.
In the past I build some small mechanical constructions using Makeblock parts, but since Makeblock is now focusing more on entire robot kits I have been looking for alternatives. Totemmaker came up after some website research and looks promising for me. What is holding me back of purchasing any parts/kits is the lack of enough CAD drawings of the mechanical components.
I know you have a temporarily STL libary but most parts are still missing.

My normal workflow would be to construct a new piece of mechanical construction using a 3D CAD program (Fusion 360) and check if a construction can be build (and if everything fits as it should be), check the parts I need and then buy what I need. Makeblock had a full libary of all components which suited my needs in the past.

It would be usefull to give your STL libary some more priority to complete because for now it is not enough for me to start thinking about a new mechanical construction without the possibility of creating a 3D design first.
Hopefully you can solve this issue soon, -not only for me-, but also for any other creative mind who would like to build new constructions.

Also I think it should be a good idea to put some of the “black spider gear” into some of the Totem maker kits to increase mechanical posibilities for other projects.

Compliments for Dex for his symmetric center handle for “non-standard” angles, this sort of small inovations helps the Totemmaker system to be more versatile.

Greetings,

Vincent

1 Like
2

Dear Vincent,
Thank you for your entry, we will certainly help you with parts library. There have been mainly 2 persons working with mechanical 3D drawing, our main mechanics man, Vytenis that uses SolidWorks. He can save STEP files you can use. Then I am working with SketchUp to make my models in 3D.
Here is the library for SU:

We will send you link to the STEP library soon.
On the other topics, I am working with gears and rack-and-pinions solutions for Totem. Happy to share all we are doing with this!

Lars

3

There is a tutorial series planned for drawing 3D Totem projects.
A couple of them are kind of finished, but not whole series.

I am posting it here just so you can see what is planned, the finished series has been requested for a long time. Hope I will find the time to finish it soon.

4

Hi there,

Thanks for sending the link to the (other) totem library, this is certainly a big step forward for me.
Indeed this will extend the range of components which I could use for designing a new project.

This link:

is different than the link you use on your website:

which explains why I could not find the other CAD files, or maybe I missed something in the past…
I could not find my way from one libary to the other (yet?), so I expect they are seperate.

Step files of course would be preferred more instead of.skp files, most CAD programs are accepting Steps, but there is always a works around. It is just more work.

I will take a closer look at your libary someday soon and try to design something to see how it works.
My main interest would be the mechanical construction part of the Totemmaker system.
For the electronic part of projects I rely these days mostly on ESP32 microcontrollers like from M5stack. I think a combination of both systems could be the start for some really interesting projects.

Thanks,

Vincent Tuinder

1 Like
5

Dear Vincent,

Here is the link to the STEP library: Totem
The library is a bit outdated, but it is ok to start with. We will update it in few days.
Have fun modeling in 3D! Please let me know if you have any questions.