Printables and Thingiverse typically. Sketchfab is great for 3D scans of real objects.
Printables and sometimes thingyverse. Cult and yeggi to get in the right direction
Anything in particular you are looking for?
I always start with printables and then branch out to cults as needed.
McMaster Carr for small parts.
I believe i mostly like little hand tools or anything that could be useful. Im pretty new to the world of 3d printing i would say.
Consider starting with organizational aids. 3d printing is great for things that hold other things. Start with simple modifications like resizing models to fit your needs and branch out to more complex customizations and cad building from there.
Most site (not stl search site) have "collection" or "tags", when you find something you like, check if it under some collection/tag.
Exemple: https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=Hand+tool&page=1&type=collections
mostly thingiverse. I'll look at others if i can't find it there
i mainly print functional things. ex. i just got a dewalt planer and looked for models associated with it and found a dust collection attachment that will work with my vacuum and parts that allow me to wrap the cable to the planer itself
some things i just design myself. i broke one of the arms on my sunglasses so i designed and printed a brace i could use with some super glue and heat shrink tubing to fix it.
Now that it's a thing, I always try checking the public Manyfold instance first! Do those federate here yet? Prolly something like @q8vfvg1f7m3k@3dprint.social ?
Yeggi for general search, printables is my go to spot for posting files.
Yeggi is my go to as well when I couldn't find it at printables or makerworld.
My go to is Cults3D, since I print a lot of miniatures.
For functional prints, I almost always whip them up myself in F360.
I mainly use my printer as a tool to solve problems, so my decision process is very much grounded in arriving at a solution as opposed to just finding something to keep the machine busy.
My usual approach is to cast a wide net and go through all the models* that might do what I'm looking for. If I'm lucky, I'll find something that I like enough to print. If not I'll use it as a brainstorming session and either pick out a model or two that I can adapt (or at the very least pull critical dimensions) or get a feel for what I'd like to do differently. From there, it's off to CAD where I'll fire off slivers and prototypes until I'm happy with the fit and function of my part.
*printables is my go-to, but sometimes I'll wander over to thingiverse if I want more options (and know I'm not working on something bespoke)
Feels like most high quality results are on printables these days. Thingiverse used to be the go-to so they've got a lot of models from the early days, so it's worth checking.
Makerworld seems to be drawing a lot of the newer crowd due to their huge sponsorship push on influencers, so they have a growing audience as well.
If you're looking for a functional part (not strictly art or models) it's probably on one of those three.
Thangs is the only answer.
Nah, I briefly thought so, but their search shenanigans are trying to push people to only use their site.
They push paid designs and memberships hosted on thangs to the top, and default search to Thangs only.
They originally showed items hosted anywhere and free first, but once people got used to it they changed all the defaults. It's a big bait and switch.
Thangs aggregates other sites, or so I’ve been told.
They originally showed items hosted anywhere and free first, but once people got used to it they changed all the defaults. If you go there now and search, you have to manually set the source or it only shows you results from thangs itself, and pushes paid models and memberships to the top.
I only use it as a last resort now, and it's typically pretty bad.
None of the sites are completely free from enshittification, but printables seems the least bad. Prusa has a better track record with supporting an open community, at least for now. Bambu+makerworld is an example of a company trying to close as much as possible to lock people in. Now I can't download without a login? No thanks.
If I can't find it for free on Thingiverse, I just make it myself.
Makerworld and Makeronline. It's Bambu and Anycubic but they have a lot of files. Stls are stls- they work anywhere.
I'm always looking for boardgames for my kids.
Edit: please explain the downvotes. Using Bambu's bandwidth/server isn't helping them in any way.
There are lots of hate on bambu lab cause they are trying to lock the ecosystem on their platform. A few people that are way smarter than me came out, like Jeff Geerling and maker muse, to respond to bambu lab's update of no offline mode, I think. After the hate they backtrack. I don't know if bambulab is still trying but they will get the hate from the maker/tinkerer if they try to prevent them to tinker on their paid printer.
But using Makerworld without buying their printer or uploading models is hurting Bambu. So downvoters must be Bambu fans.
And Anycubic isn't locked down like Bambu. It supports Orca and you can put Klipper on it.
Printables. Thingiverse is dead to me.
Why?
(I'm literally on day one with the printer)
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