Design Fusion Threads for 3D Printing 2026 version

this is the most genius yet so simple thing that you can 3d print but to 3d print it you need to know how to design it and to design it you need a software and someone to tell you what to do and I don't see anybody else so let me show you how to do it from nothing to a complete free print so let's get into it so that you can have your own fret as soon as possible once you enter fusion you will probably be approached with a window just like this and over here you will select hybrid design right now don't if you are just a beginner you do not really need to care about what we're choosing but just make sure that you open the hybrid design so once you click on Create New you will be put into the blank fusion workspace what we first need to create is let's say the inner and outer wall of the fret itself as you can see right over here they both have the same basically diameter only the the outer one that sits on the outside has a bit more added to it so let me show you exactly what I mean by that you will go and over here on the top left you will click on Create Sketch once you click on Create Sketch you can pick the plane on which we want to design the fret that we are going to be making on the X Z OK X y which is this bottom one so just click on that one once you are over here we need to create the circle and circle you can either go into the create menu and click on circle or you can just hit C which is a short shortcut which makes the whole process a lot faster let's say that we want the inner body to be 3 centimeters or 40 millimeters in diameter and the outer body to have something added so we can dimension it so you just always click the center for the circle then you drag it out and to dimension it you can click on d or again go into the create section as well so you will go to create section you can go into here sketch design but I highly recommend using only the shortcuts so you will hit d click on the circle and you can pick the diameter or if you want just to let's say dimension the distance between these two circles you can have the two circles and click from one to the second one and you will be sketching the dimension that is between them instead of just their diameter which can be quite useful when you know the bolt thickness that you want so let's say that we want them spaced 5 millimeters apart so once you have that that's basically it for this sketch so you can go and finish sketch or just hit enter it doesn't really matter amazing and you have the basic sketch done now to to make it into 3D instead of just having it a 2D you need to somehow push it into space to do this you will use extrude again you can go into the create menu and click on extrude but instead of that I would highly recommend learning the shortcut e you can just click it on your keyboard and it shows you right over here you have a menu called extrude and it shows you all of the operations but we don't really need to again care about that right now we are just trying to make a fret and we will select the the body that we want to create first the first one we are gonna be creating is let's say the outer one outer one it doesn't really matter you can pick whichever you like and then set a height to it so let's say we want it 3cm high doesn't really matter just remember the value that you're using so that you can later on set it even for the let's say inner body so once you hit 30 millimeters which is the dimension that you want to make the Fret 2 you will click either on enter or here on OK once you do that we need also the second body to see the second body as you can see fusion automatically hides the sketch once you use it for something so you need to go over here into the left I'm gonna move myself over there so you can see it clearly over here on top of me we have the browser where you can see all of your uh things that you are using tools bodies sketches everything construction planes but we're gonna be using it just for the bodies and for the sketches so you can open the whole browser and then you're gonna as you can see we have the body one which is the outer outer wall and then we have in the sketches we have the sketch 1 which we need to see but we are not seeing it right now so we will un a reveal the sketch 1 now we see it as you can see we can already select it and now we need to extrude the inner body to do it we actually need to hide the body 1 because otherwise fusion would automatically join these things together so there are two ways to do it I will show both of them either you can hide the body which you do by tapping the eye and then doing the exact same extrude that's one way to not join the bodies together and the second way is to have the body still there hit on the sketch that you want to extrude actually and then make it go to the top but as you can see in the in the window it automatically sets the operation to join this would join the bodies together and you wouldn't get the thread because you would just get this full cylinder so to change that you need to go into operation and new body instead of join then you once you hit okay you would get the new body right but because I would like to have let's say the the holder for the for the fret so you can actually screw it in much more comfortably and be able to operate it with uh much better you can actually just put a bit more over here let's say 6 millimeters so that you have space to put the handles handle there afterward so you can click on okay and now you have basically the two main bodies now to make the to make the cap or the thing you're gonna be rotating it with you can just click on the sketch that's basically of the outer circle because that's exactly what it needs to be to match you can click on it and then instead of starting it from the sketch that we started from we can actually start it from the top of this face and to do that in this extrude menu you will select instead of the start instead of the profile plane which is where you sketched it you will select object once you do that it allows you to select a face of an object where you will start extruding from and now again you need to be very careful over here because once you reach let's say the bottom body it would automatically switch to Operation Join and it would just join the whole cylinder together so to not do that you need to hide the body 1 so once we hide the body one as you can see we have only the cap there and it won't join them together it will join it only with the inner body which is exactly what we want so once you do that you have the object you extruded exactly the size that you extruded as extra you will have the cap the exact size that you said here you can click on OK so that both of the things are joined together perfect now we have nearly the whole two bodies together but we don't have the fret now that's the most important part of this at all right so fusion makes it I think fusion is one of the simplest softwares to do this at all because they have a feature for it you just gonna go into the create menu and go down here right under hole you have fret you're gonna click on fret this doesn't have a shortcut and you're gonna select the face so once I hit the body I can see clearly the face that I need the fret to be applied to so once you hit it it will automatically select the size so you don't need to worry about the size but you do need to worry about the menu that it popped out over here because as you can see it isn't checked in for modeled and what that means is that it's just showing you how it would look but it's not actually in the STL or the 3d model geometry at all so you need to check this box and once you check it it will go actually into the model and then of course it's really good to check also the box to remember the size because once it remembers the size and you go to make the next fret it will automatically uh set the exact same parameters so if you change something it will skip future problems so once you have this menu setup just like over here you can click on OK and you have the first fret created basically of course it's not finished but now we can hide this body for now reveal the second and do the exact same so you're gonna go create fret and then just click the face that we want the fret to be applied to as you can see it remembers the size also remembers that we ticked model so it's all set up so you just hit okay and you have this beautiful fret right over here it can reveal the second body but now I wanna show you because this would be finished but it would let's say it would go together but only once because then you wouldn't be able to pull it probably apart and you would need a lot of strength to um let's say screw it together because mine is moving very nicely as you can see but it wouldn't if I just left it right over here so to fix that I'm gonna show you a very useful tool that you will be using all the time in fusion and once you learn it it's a superpower you're gonna go into inspect and you're gonna click on section analysis which basically allows you to see into a design now this is super useful because watch what I can do when I pick a plane for the section analysis it will reveal to me once I turn it around what kind of space we have there so you're gonna click on OK so that the section analysis stays there and now we see that this would be very tight and rigid so because we see into the design it's very easy to see if we have enough space and over here we clearly don't so you can just click on sorry I went too fast you can just go to modify and over here you will find offset face uh right over here so we will first offset the face so you're gonna just select all of the 4 faces just like over here and now this can depend on your printer and you can always go back over here and change it if you would like to and once it prints it's a bit too rigid you can always change it depending on how it prints but I would recommend going for minus 0.2 from the beginning because it's a let's say a cylinder it won't take just from one side the 0.2 it's actually from both sides so it's a space of 0.4 that's really good to keep in mind because you aren't making space of 0.2 that wouldn't create enough clearance it's making a clearance of 0.4 so that the part can actually breathe once you have that you can click on okay or you can select or click control on your keyboard which will allow you to see the change that you made with that offset of space which I like to use quite a lot because it shows you the comparison of the sizes that you are changing so as you can see we made it quite less thick so it will go inside of each other much better but one thing that is also good to add is fillets for these frets because as you can see right now we have these very sharp corners which the 3D printer doesn't like too much and it would deal with fillets a lot better if you don't know what fillets are quickly it's just that you take a very sharp surface and you round it you make it round and looking all nice again if you once you can go into the modify section and you can select the fillet or most of the people have it on as shortcut F I have it on K but that's just my own preferences now you will again select all four edges on the fret on the inner one but then I would highly recommend selecting even the outer one both of them because then uh let's say the moment that you are inserting the fret inside of the inner wall it will give you a much better entry so that you don't actually need to spend hour just locating how's the fret supposed to be positioned to even enter the body so you will apply it to all of the edges that are there which there is 8 so you can always keep a track of it by looking in the fill out menu as you can see right now I have four edges selected so I know I have four more to go which are on the outer wall and once I select all of them as you can see eight edges selected perfect and you're gonna set a value depending on the size of your fret but over here I would probably go for 0.2 that's a bit too small so let's say 0.3 again it's on both sides so it's gonna create a very nice fret again you can click on control and it will show you the change that you made sometimes because the computer is loading so you cannot be that fast on it but yeah it can show you beautifully so once you hit on OK you basically now have the whole part ready and done we should have saved it at the beginning but you can save it just now so that you can have the file somewhere on your computer you can just name it whatever you want I will name it fret and then to export it if you don't know you're gonna go into file in the top left corner as I'm pointing out right now and click on export but be very careful automatically it selects the format F 3D we do not want that because that uh is a format only for fusion you always want to go with the either STL or or step or object or FMF whatever you like but STL is one of the simplest ones that I use and it's a great one then you can just hit export we are done inside of fusion so you can just go into your slicer whatever you use I'm gonna use Bamboo Studio for this to show you OK now this is a really simple part it doesn't need any special settings but I just wanna show it for the people who might not be familiar with slicing at all so it's just for anybody who's just starting out so to import something that you have designed yourself hopefully you remember where you saved it always good to remember you're gonna click on this cube right over here on the left select the cube and it will uh allow you to select anything that you want put it inside of here and as you can see the parts are together and to fix this or let's say separate them not fix it uh it's completely fine and fixed you can just right click the body go into split and click on two objects once you have that you can click off the model and just drag the piece out and the second one out you can either automatically position it bump up slicer will do it for you or you can do it by yourself but it's a lot easier to use this button right over here which basically positions the parts so that they are printable in the most successful way and it lays them basically on the on their biggest face which gives them the most surface with your build plate so that it has the least amount of chance of failure hopefully that was understandable I think this is one of the most useful designs you can learn and even start your designing journey in I would really appreciate if you leave any feedback in the comments if you didn't understand any step or I skipped a few definitely mention it in the comments so that I can go back and actually learn from my own mistakes because I'm still starting with this thing out and if you would like to see more of designing or 3d printing or all of my crazy things that I do definitely drop a follow and I'll see you next time