Dragon7350 and the Lithophane

I wanted today to be a video post, but having just got back yesterday that wasn’t going to happen. So I hope you’ll be okay with this inspiring little bit. Deviant Art user Dragon7350, Justin Ethington, saw my video on making a lithophane and decided to give it a shot. Even better, not owning a 3D printer he sourced the …

Inserting magnets into prints

Here’s the theory. You print something, then as it’s printing you pause the print at specific points and drop a buckyball magnet into the print. Then you continue the print and let the bucky ball get sealed off. Here’s how it works in real life. Not very well. First of all you have to fight the super strong magnets that …

Lithophane keychain/charm

My second post in the 3D printed gifts posts was inspired by someone on shapeways offering keychain lithophanes. I realized I could totally do that and it would be a perfect gift. I opted for a round design because it was simple but I realized it could be adapted to any number of shapes with just a little more time. …

Testing Modio for Android

Modio is a cool app that is basically a library of home 3D print ready parts for robots that you pick from to assemble in software, then download to your computer for slicing and printing. It exports to STLs so it can work for any 3D printer. I played with it a little when it first came out on a …

Modeling for 3D Printing – Wood Wars Base Soldier Time Lapse

A little something different this week. Set up a time lapse as I modeled the generic pawn soldier pawn for the upcoming Wood Wars remake I mentioned in my Distributed Manufacturing response video then overlayed it with some royalty free music in YouTube. I’m going to be out of town for 2 weeks to be with family. I’ve been pretty regular …

Packt’s $5 bonanza

It’s time for another sale from Packt book. Get any eBook from them for $5 including my book, 3D Printing Blueprints, the beginners guide to modeling for home 3D printing. If my videos have convinced you that you need a copy of this book now is the time to get it.

Guiding the wise guys

We have a Nativity in our house that is kid safe. So naturally the star quickly went missing. Thank heavens it was the monochromatic part with the simple geometry. A little measuring of the peg with my calipers and it was off to Blender. Rotate the default cube 45 degrees, subdivide in the X and Y, pull the corners out …

Chris Fink: Fixing Cootie

Spotted on Reddit, Christopher Fink has used his 3D printer to fix the game Cootie. Cootie isn’t the sort of game I’m interested in playing or owning, particularly. Too luck based. But it is a perfect game to be adapted for 3D printing. In fact I think a whole 3D printed version of cootie would be trivial. I found it …

Video – Making it Manifold

So did anyone notice in my last video that I was reading from a script? Obviously not doing that this time. It took all day (literally) to craft that script the way I wanted it. It’s almost more time consuming than editing. But I think the result was good. What did you think? Was the last video markedly better than …

SLA Dragon ring

I recently, randomly, ran into a giveaway for a 3d printed dragon ring. All I had to do was guess the layer height and time to print and I could win. Based on what I know about DLP printing I guessed this ring was made by that process and made my guesses accordingly. And owing to the fact that practically …