When I first checked out My Mini Factory about the only thing they had of interest to me was a stylish chess set that I had seen around before, but didn’t know where it was from. Turns out it was from My Mini Factory’s army of professional designers, which, yes, I am slightly jealous and would love to get that gig. …
HIPS as support material
Really cool post on Joseph Chiu’s blog about a new material he’s playing with for supports. Looks promising, but the chemicals to dissolve it quickly aren’t very common or cheap. On the other hand there are cheap alternatives (Pine Sol) that will make it easier to remove after a few days. http://toybuilderlabs.com/blog/2013/9/15/melt-hips-shape-abs
Troke, the Old is New Again.
A coworker friend of mine when introduced to Thingiverse out of the blue said “I know something I’ll bet you can do” and told me about this old game he played with his family, Troke. Old game is right, Troke is from 1956 and way out of print. The basic idea is it’s similar to chinese checkers except in this …
Help me test TARDIS Run
Update: Final decision on the board. Please help if you can. Follow this link for more information. Imagine a game that uses the Doctor Who pawns I’ve created that plays on a board that folds into a TARDIS for easy storage. You imagining it? If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, like I am, hopefully you’re pretty excited by this. …
New depths in layer height.
In the past one thing that made shorter than 0.15mm layer heights difficult is that my build plat wasn’t completely level. Where it bowed up it wouldn’t let the extruder get any plastic out and it would clog. But with the new glass build plate providing a more level build platform than before I decided it was time to try …
OverrideGc, Yes, Transparent PLA for Lithophanes, No.
So I finally got around to using a feature of Jetty’s firmware that I knew was there, but never played with. It’s called OverrideGC Temp which essentially allows you to set the temperature for printing on the printer instead of when slicing so I can switch from ABS to PLA without reslicing and it works great. I still have to …
Packt Running a Contest on Twitter
Can you guess where the robot from my book 3D Printing Blueprints is vacationing in the UK? Check out the pictures on @Packtpub on twitter and the special bonus picture here and guess the location on twitter or on a comment here. Where could that little robot be resting? He looks all tuckered out. You can get 3D Printing Blueprints now …
New TARDIS ring
I’ve put a new style of TARDIS ring in the Etsy store, one that has a plastic gem in it for the light since the print orientation would make that overhang. I like the way it looks and it’s subtle enough for daily wear. However I was thinking it might look better in metal with a real gem so I …
Rain Gutter Regatta Trophy Stand
My sons were in their local cub scout troop’s rain gutter regatta and afterwards I wanted them to have a cool place to store their boats so I made this. A rain gutter regatta stand available to download for free on thingiverse. In truth those pictures are hue shifted because I printed them for my sons in red, because I have …
The best bad Blender tutorial I’ve ever seen
By all rights this is a lousy tutorial. It doesn’t talk about the steps being done, it doesn’t introduce the concepts being used, it runs through the material at a break-neck pace without consideration for the learner. And yet I have learned more by repeatedly going through this tutorial than I would have ever expected. Maybe it’s because of the …