Blender skin modifier part 2

This weeks video continues the lessons of the last video that will culminate in a custom 3D printed mini in Blender. Additionally I announce the first Super Transparent Attempt to Boost Joe’s Online Effect contest which unfortunately shortens to STAB JOE. The way you STAB JOE is simple: Like and follow Joe’s 3D Workbench on Facebook. Like and leave a comment on …

Why FFF 3D printing can’t do transparent

I’ve made a discovery recently. A coworker was playing with “transparent” ABS filament and I decided to get some myself and see just what it was capable of. And while the filament itself is clearly (heh) transparent, prints always turned out milky. I decided to investigate why. The first thing I printed was a filament holder to hold the spool …

Wood Wars bear soldier update

Work on Wood Wars progresses with the first modular pawn. The bear/soldier combination took exactly as long as I feared it would to make, which is to say a lot longer than I hoped. The first iteration of the pose (above) pushed overhangs way too much, so I had to switch the staff to one hand and add a shield. …

Can wood art be recreated with 3D printing?

I was inspired by a kickstarter for woodcut art by artist Gabriel Schama where he made coordinated patterns in 1/8 wood that were then layered to great effect. The process looked a little to me like the layers of a 3D print, so I decided to see if 3D printing could recreated the effect. I started with modeling the shape, only …

Harry Potter Crests for my Son’s School

Last year my eldest son’s grade did some Harry Potter themed instruction and I made a wand for him. This year my second son is in the same grade and his idea was to print a Gryffindor crest for his group. I decided to make crests for all the houses to be fair. Fortunately there are excellent crests already made …

Modeling for 3D Printing with the Blender skin modifier

This week I had a video all lined up. A real boring lecture about the idiosyncrasies of the orientation of “Z” in 3D space and how that causes imported models to be laying down sometimes. But unfortunately I shot it in 720p since everyone was complaining about the resolution of my bench lectures and the result lagged and stuttered worse …

Joe’s 3D Workbench is live

I’ve been thinking for a while that I should do this. But the logistics escaped me until I saw an instructable on using an old Android phone add a webcam and I thought, “I have an old Android phone,  I should do this”. So I did and now the workbench is live. And by live I mean whenever I print something …

Covering the sunglass with tinted plastic

And now for the exciting conclusion to my sunglasses video. I considered many different sources for something I could use to block light and UV for my sunglasses. I explored tinted lighting gels like they use on stage, but most of those are either tinted or UV blocking, not both. Fortunately my plan B worked well. I decided to find …

Deathly Hallows Pendant

This is an idea that’s been percolating for a long time. There are a ton of Deathly Hallow’s 3D pendants out there, but none of them actually use the Deathly Hallows as objects. Well, no more. Presenting the Deathly Hallows as objects arranged like the symbol for the Deathly Hallows. Some liberty was taken with the relative scale. I’ve made …

Solving a problem at the Optometrist

“Have a seat and remove your glasses.” “Aaaaand… where should I put them?” The thing about doctor’s offices is they often give me plenty of time to come up with solutions to trivial problems like “where do I put my glasses?” I’m sitting in that chair attached to something that could conceivably be used to pilot a star craft and …