Best Sources for FREE 3D Printing Models (and more) in 2019

one of the top things I get asked by newcomers to 3d printing is where do I find those cool models that you print online where do I look so in this 2019 updated video I'm going to go through my top ten websites where you can find all sorts of amazing models for free to download and print let's get started [Music] that's gonna guys I think it's here from makers Music ick things off with thingy verse it's gonna be no surprise to anybody Thingiverse was originally created by MakerBot years and years and years ago and it was the first real 3d printing file repository originally it wasn't even for 3d printing you could get laser cutting files and anything you could use to download and then make stuff but it quickly became known as the go-to place for STL models for 3d printing now these days is owned by Stratasys which bought MakerBot and look it's the biggest by far place to get STL files but it's sociability is poor it's almost impossible to find exactly what you want just because of the sheer volume of models and the fact that the navigation wasn't really ever improved it's kind of sat and just gained all these models over the years and hasn't really become easier to use so a lot of models on there but searchability is pretty poor and the quality of the models unfortunately is pretty low as well because there's no real quality control you can upload almost anything to it and just it goes up ready to download and it's hard to tell if the model is suitable for 3d printing or if it if it works if it's being designed well having said all that there is still incredible models hosted on to Thingiverse and this is a great collection by wreckless Robbie and it's Settlers of Catan tiles but they've been modified so these are Warcraft and inspired Settlers of Catan files and you can download and 3d print them and modify your game so that's really really cool a great use for 3d printing and with Thingiverse everything is free but you can choose to tip a designer if you'd really like their work and it will eventually find its way to them if they've enabled that feature so overall it's free but you can tip if you want to number two is my mini factory mighty many factories whole thing is guaranteed printable I don't know if they still say that but the idea is that these models have been tested so you're going to get a much better user experience when you download models from here versus the kind of Russian Roulette of Thingiverse but there's a less less wide selection having said that though money in Factory has exploded since I featured it last and there are so many models on here my personal favorite are the models from the scan the world initiative where people go to museums around the world and sites and 3d scan things like statues and artifacts and then make them available for free to download and print so for example you would have seen this on the channel this is the Gayle Anderson cat which is an Egyptian cat and it's it's a fantastic artifact and a very fantastic 3d printer the scan is very high-quality and I love to print this to test out my 3d printers now think about money factories that recently expanded off two paid files so you can also buy models on Miami factory or if you're a 3d designer you can choose to upload and pay a certain fee to sell your 3d printed model models on maimoni factories that's also an interesting option if you want to go down that route but overall my manufacturer you're going to find a lot of really good models in heaps of different categories it's very easy to search very easy to find interesting categories and things to print and the model quality in general is very good number three is you imagine this is like thingy verse except it's owned by Ultimaker not MakerBot it's essentially the same thing it's not as big as Thingiverse and the model quality is generally a bit higher now I don't use you imagine personally very often but there are a few designers that use it almost exclusively because it's got such a good sort of open-source following the Creative Commons licenses and stuff are very well respected here and you can get lots of really neat models on it so as a great example would be the open RC stuff done by Daniel Marais if you don't know Daniel Narae why go follow his work this is the open RC f1 dual colour McLaren Edition there this is a fully Twitty printable remote-control car and it's amazing daniel has done incredible work and he's uploaded this free to print modify and create so you imagine does have some really really cool models on there it's just not as big I'd say as what my manufactory it has become and definitely not as big as Thingiverse in terms of cost I don't think anything on you imagine has any price I think it's all free because as I said the whole idea is open-source designs so yeah you're not going to really pay for anything on you imagine but again if you do like someone's work you should seek out a way to tip them and show your support up next is Colts 3d a French founder 3d file repository where you can find incredibly high quality models that are free and all paid so you can also sell your models on this website or you can buy them for buying very high quality files or you can also find very good 3d printable files that are free thinking about thing I like about cults 3d is there's a very high aesthetic level so a lot of the models on here are very well designed in terms of their aesthetics they've really look very good if you're going to be printing demo models and a lot of designers find their home here because you can be financially supported on here and you'll find a good mix of free and paid models from them generally the in terms of searching it's very easy there's lot of very good categories here like art fashion jewelry home and you'll also get various promotions and they do contest as well my manufactory as well do contests which is a great way of bringing lots of new models in and new users but in terms of featuring and artists are designer on here you can't go past URI of 3d workbench prolific designer does a lot of amazing cosplay stuffs that cause like weapons I got a poker ball there he does charge for a lot of his models but a lot of them are free as well so for example he did the McDonald's I remember when he was modeling this looking ridiculous like MEC hamburger and then like this is a transformer model that is free so you can't go past Yuri's work and he hosts is up here on cults 3d next up we have the models uploaded by this myth so nyan now I did feature this in my previous video quite a while ago and I'm happy to say that this is still active unfortunately like the NASA STL repository did slowed down significantly after 2015 with like only one model a year sometimes but Smithsonian still has heaps of things that you can view and in lots of cases download and 3d print and what's really cool about this idea this particularly excites me is that they can 3d scan and incredibly fragile artifact because obviously Smithsonian has a lot of artifacts in their possession and then you can 3d print them and share it with people in a way that they can touch and they can explore so in terms of the tactility that's a word the tactile nature of things you can't touch a thousand-year-old artifact but you could pretty scan and touch the actual 3d printed version of it I went to an exhibition where they had 3d scanned little ornaments found in mummification burial sites where they actually like got a cat scan they didn't even hope they don't open them up because it destroys them and then they recreated the actual little ornaments with 3d printing so you could touch them and that's fantastic so it's a great example of what the Smithsonian has done this is a fantastic little cat ornament the quality of the 3d scans are incredible in most cases depending on the object they're scanning this is a little wooden cat absolutely spectacular and as I said not everything can be downloaded and printed but just to show you a good example you know into models here and then you go into ListView and if it says downloadable then it highly likely will have an STL file to print and the thing cool thing about the Smithsonian models is if it's got an STL file for 3d printing it's been made watertight so it's been wrapped and prepared to be 3d printable without any issues and so for example this one this basket three scan basket that's one they've got some good scanners there you go so you've got a render version which is a higher quality higher triangle count and then you've got a 3d print version so 11 megabytes there in terms of cost there is no cost to these models you can download a 3d but their terms are very specific they are for non-commercial use they're for personal use and therefore education so don't print these and try to sell them or anything that's against their Terms of Service you can only really use these models if they're just for personal not-for-profit use and for educational use next is one that I pretty much guarantee you've never heard of and that is the NIH 3d print exchange the National Institute of Health in the US and this is like an exchange of models for health professionals and teaching so this is fantastic for scientific models and things that not many people would really understand or know about but for teaching a difficult complicated subject I can see this being incredibly valuable and I can see why something like this is so useful because you can connect with different educators around the country and around the world and share a model to 3d print for your for your education so one that I found really interesting was this fluid filled vestibular apparatus for vertigo education and it's a DIY project and actually made a video about it and where to get the the actual parts for it and it's it educates how positional vertigo works like I don't know how it works but I'm sure if I went through the DIY process of printing this model and then putting it together I'd figure it out and learn so that's just really need so niche but in terms of education it's invaluable so definitely check it out the models are free to download but they do have licensing in the Creative Commons which is kind of Commons attribution-noncommercial that might vary between different models but for example with the one I just showed it actually goes into say you know to clarify the type of Creative Commons license that you can remix tweak and build upon but its non-commercial and you have to let other people know that your new works are based on the original buy attribution so pretty straightforward I will say there is a bit of a management issue with the website because it looks like people are going on and uploading trash and then using it to try to market things so like for example this castle here that's nothing to do with education you know another one there another one there you can see here a regiment of degenerative lumbar spine something something like that's not that's not use useful for this website but there's other stuff like that's the that's the vertigo teaching model syringe cutting tool adapter all sorts of really nice things for medical industry for teaching in the medical field pretty neat now the next two aren't really for 3d printing they're for designers and 3d printing might be part of that that workflow they're not specifically for truely printing Emma starting with grab card if you don't know grab CAD you're an engineer a product designer what are you doing go sign up for grab Kat it's free to register and people upload the craziest assemblies and models to grab CAD like for example this is the homepage and someone's 3d model the any cubic Photon so Mike Congrats you're nuts any cubic photon we don't know is a 3d printer that uses resin I reviewed it as well recently it's one of my most watched reviews for some reason and he's gone in 3d model that's so you can actually get his model and download it he's assemble that together as a step file which is a going to be the assembly and fusion 360 we'll open that for example he's got some renders so what I use grab cat a lot for is if I'm doing a design with very standardized mechanical components and a good example of that would be a NEMA 17 so number 17 is a stepper motor that's in almost every 3d printer out there and why would you 3d bottle learn from scratch when it's such a standard component there's heaps on grab CAD for a start beaten grabbed one so this is from mode for de raha man I'm sorry I'm bad with names and he's uploaded this in step format I do need to stress that a lot of these models can be in like SolidWorks format or Autodesk Inventor I do think fusion 360 will open SolidWorks files and inventor files but I don't believe you get to keep the feature tree so keep it in mind but Steph is universal and they'll be opened up in most CAD programs and then you can use that bringing into your sembly and build your model around it so it's really good for speeding up the design process but don't expect these models to 3d print they're really designed to be like a representation of the real thing there's not really designed to be does like 3d printable like the wires there for example the intention of these models aren't for that it's so you can design really cool things quicker using standardized components next we have an absolute goldmine for engineers and product designers just like grab CAD accept even more specific we have trace parts so picture this you're a company that provides timing pulleys and gears and all sorts of things well you want engineering firms to use your components so how do you encourage them to do that you're at least 3d models of those components that these companies can use in their assemblies and then when they're happy they can just they can order them from you well trace parts puts everyone into one spot used to used to have to go to everyone's website like mcmaster-carr and SD psi and all that but now trace parts just has everything so a great example would be this so this is just a spur gear in terms of the navigation in trace parts it's incredibly intuitive it knows exactly what things are so for example to get to this point it's a classification chemical component power transmission gears helical so you can go back one and then you can find okay well what some of the gear category you can go down to gear rack spur helical it's the best in this whole list and the really neat thing about this is you can go in and see a proper 3d preview before you download it and then you can choose from so many different formats and it depends what your CAD software is you know you got a Libra you got 3d printable models like 3m f MF Kassia creo you know I just which is Universal obj all sorts so whatever program you use you'll find a format that works for you here we've even go straight to Sto you do need to register for trace parts users like you need to register for grab CAD but it's free and the really neat thing is you can't really put these models so for example you're designing something just for yourself maybe you can just download and print a gear instead of buying a gear but also if you need lots of them or you need a real metal one you can go straight into the quotations that stage and buy them so really neat definitely under use I don't see many people using this sort of stuff except in industry so definitely add trace parts to your bookmarks you could design anything mechanical because it's really really handy up next we have STL 5 I'm not sure how I came across this one but it's got some really really nice models so what I underst GL high-vis correct me if I'm wrong whoever owns this website is it's their own in-house models and they have a lot of data for sale and a lot better for free as well and it's like toys for adults and kids so you've got lots of remote control like quadcopter parts for example like you know amazing stuff you've got this self balancing robot design you've got a prop balancer you got these Lego like tires and a lot of them are free so a lot of them are paid but they're definitely look like high quality models I will say though the navigation is pretty good but the process of checking out needs to be improved because it needs you to fill in all this information like address and that but we're buying digital assets so why do we need to fill in an address it's a bit too clunky and I really did hesitate to bother doing it so the team at STL hive need to make them a bit more streamlined but definitely worth checking out if you're looking for something cool to 3d print maybe with your kids or something by the electrical components and put them together or alike in this circumstance it's using Lego components so it's really printing to add to Lego and make things that's really cool and number 10 we have the DM workshop so Miguel has done kind of the impossible he has produced tons and I mean tons of free Dungeons & Dragons minis of all the kind of monsters you'll need to play D&D he's produced them they're on shape ways but you can just download them and print them at home if you like and that is a crazy achievement so as an example here I like the Lich for example you can get printed at Shapeways using this the smooth fine detail is a very high quality 3d printing process for 16 bucks us that's very little for a high quality mini or if you sign in to Shapeways which it's free you can then just download the product here massive hats off to Miguel for making all these models available which is just incredible because if you have a 3d printer even the resin one these days they're quite accessible like the any cubic photon I just mentioned before you can print these out for just cents versus paying heaps and then paint them and finish them and they'll look more than good enough for your games I will say that the Lich that I did download does have to have a few errors in it there's a few intersecting bodies and there's a few gaps in the mesh it's not quite properly watertight most 3d printing slices won't care but what I recommend is chucking the file through 3d builder of course I recommend doing that with everything from Thingiverse because Thingiverse is invariably very usually very bad but it's really builder will tell you if a file needs repairing and it will do it very easily quickly for you using the net fab engine and that's the only thing I'll say about these models is they needed a little bit of repair but that's I mean who cares they're free Chuck some love to McGill and also a big thanks to 3d printed tabletop for this video which pointed me to his direction a link to this video as well in the video description so you can check out a good like preview of what they look like when you print them on FDM and all of that but it's an incredible achievement and definitely worthy of this list aah-ha by bet you didn't think I'd include my own files in this list well you probably saw this coming but look I do charge for some of my models but a lot of them are free as well and I charge because this is my full-time job but at the same time I understand that 3d printing is an incredible community and I do keep a lot of my models free for you to test out at home so one of my most popular free models by far is the Easter egg torture test so I did this last year 2018 Easter and it is a file with three different parts that are separate they print at the same time the idea is that they can rotate around each other it's a really challenging gorgeous model that you can try to 3d print at home and that's free and there's a link in the description to where you can get all of my models free and paid but look best just my little plug at the end thank you so much for watching guys I hope you found this video useful and you discovered a few great new sources for 3d printable models or normal files for designing stuff like you know from grab CAD or trace Parts I they're definitely underutilized oh and if you interested to see how I process these models you can check out the first episode of the 3d printing gauntlet where I looked through thingy verse and downloaded five random Thingiverse models and showed how I sliced them in pressure slicer 2.0 that video is going to be here and that will hopefully help you to the next stage of the 3d printing journey which is slicing see you later guys bye

Channel: Maker's Muse

Views: 372,505

Rating: 4.9403968 out of 5

Keywords: free 3d printing models, free stl files, stl file download, top 3d printing sites, 3d printing models, maker's muse, tutorial, guide, free download, thingiverse, myminifactory, youmagine, smithsonian

Id: CLRWCtQ5KZY

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019