I’m planning on building another printer and would like to prototype some ideas.
Does anyone know of an app that’ll allow me to design frames to test out my ideas?
what “testing” are you needing to do? Do you need collision detection, stress, flex?
Those will be good starts. Stability, weight, vibrations would be nice too
SolidWorks is an excellent Mechanical Engineering program that will allow you to see stress points with how much force it takes to reach those values, it will also allow you to input the material being used which will allow you to see the mass and center of gravity. When you create all of your individual parts and assemble them into an assembly you can set mates for all the individual parts which will show you areas that hit when parts are moved. I’m not sure about vibration or stability but I’m sure it has those features also. It’s not a free program and I haven’t used any others but I think it would be hard to find a free program that would give you as much data as you are wanting.
Awesome @Mike_Smith , that sounds right up my street, I’ll give that a whirl 
The solid works simulation would give you the stress and deflection and the modal analysis if vibration. This is not in the student or evaluation package though. We only have a single floating seat of it at work since it’s so expensive.
Well, I would say this looks awfully close to something we may want
You can also check catia but both of them will be pretty hard for someone who never even heard about them.
Also vibrations are going to be pain because it’s combination of driving motors speeds and weights of parts including their geometry…
I guess it’s easier and cheaper to take counter measures than try to calculate them…
So I guess what you can check easily are the clash, clearance and contact, providing you know how to create a model. If you choose catia I can help creating it, since it would be a fun project to participate in.
Regards
Grabcad is a great place to help along your project or get help.
What about the physics engines for video game developers?
You’d only get a modal analysis which gives you natural frequencies, but the uncertainty on results is high due to part variations. Vibrations is easier to just do empirically. Pretty much don’t have any of your top speeds at a resonance. It’s ok if you accelerate through them as the system won’t be at the resonance long enough to self excite.
I don’t use modal analysis too often, and when I do, it’s just to give you an idea of where the resonance is and where you can possibly stiffen areas, but you can figure out your weak points with normal static analysis… which if you’re not an ME, you’d probably need to FEA.
But honestly, I’d advise against people using FEA that can’t do the hand calc’s because the FEA result is only as good as your setup. The only way I verify my setup is to do quick hand calcs.
Just my 2 cents. Good luck
Thanks everyone for their suggestions. I’m going go away and have a play with them over the week