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 …
Video – Modeling Sunglasses from a Photograph
This week’s video covers the technique of matching something in the real world with an object you’re modeling using nothing more than a photograph. The same technique is also covered in Chapter 10 of 3D Printing Blueprints. I will get the report on how I got the plastic and how I stuck it on next week. Passed 200 YouTube subscribers …
Wood Wars Video follow up.
I printed the Wood Wars base soldier I recorded a time lapse of modeling and it worked great. Details look fine. I still want to revisit it and add some detail but I should probably focus on other units first. Making detail minis (with exchangeable heads) is a lot of work and I keep having smaller, easier to finish, projects pop …
Updating the space wrench
So after dissecting the space wrench I got to thinking about the problem of it only being for tightening bolts and how to fix that. After some discussion in the comments on a similar video by Barnacules I think I have a solution. A removable center peg that can be flipped to the other side reversing the ratcheting action to loosen …