Exciting to see this morning that Thingiverse’s web version of OpenSCAD aka “Customizer” can now accept uploaded files making possible a custom lithphane script. Apparently my work has merited credit in this, which is cool. Naturally Thingiverse is flooded with people making lithophanes they have no intention of printing. Every meme and logo is going to be lithophaned by the …
3D Printed Stepper Motor… kind of.
For those who don’t know, a stepper motor is the basic muscle of a 3D printer. Instead of other motors which are basically “on = go, off = stop” a stepper motor is told how far to move and it does, which makes it perfect for, say, telling the arm of a 3D printer to go to a specific location …
Wow, really bad skin
Printed Kid Entropie’s Dice Tower for my brother-in-law. It’s functional but… what is all over that surface? Ben Withers was just complaining about this and seems to think it’s related to alt-shell and I’d love to test it, but I don’t think I’m printing another one of those. They’re huge. Took all day. Part of me just wants to take …
When in doubt, go with the schematic
After repairing the nozzle I thought I was back to producing dual prints, only to discover that the right extruder was still producing fragile messed up prints. I was lucky to discover that the right extruder fan had finally given out entirely. So I got a couple of nice new ball bearing fans from Digikey, also received another new heated build platform …
How to model a 3D mini
Zheng, famous for his 3D printed artillery game, has been printing custom tokens for Magic: the Gathering. He took the latest one and did a series about the process of making it. He does his modeling in Maya but the general techiniques should be applicable to whatever 3D modeling program you’re blending… er, using, don’t know why I said blending …
OpenRC 3D printed remove control car project
I love projects like this. Partially because they’re cool. Partially because it’s one less project I want to try. Oh don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind making one some day, but being able to skip the design and experimentation phase is priceless.You can find out more on G+.
Questions about 3D Printing: But can it print a 3D printer?
Whenever anyone says “3D printers can make anything” there is an immediate response from the uninitiated: Oh, so can it print a 3D printer? It’s difficult not to go straight into eye-roll mode whenever this is asked. Mostly because if someone is asking it it shows that they know nothing about 3D printing. But then I remember that there are likely 10,000 people …
I want to believe
Thinkgeek is selling a child’s 3D printer that uses playdough! Awesome and only $50! Yes, I know what today is.
Replaced the nozzle. Dual printing again.
As usual I was going to take a lot of picture and walk you step-by-step through the process i went through, but the Makerbot’s support page pretty much covers it, except for the absolutely filthy state of my old nozzles. And when I lost one of the nozzles, just put it down somewhere and I lost track of it. I’ll find it. …
Acetone Vapor for Smoothing ABS
Jumping to the end the final result: This is a great way to quickly give a glossy finish to your prints and it does hide the layers somewhat, but getting good results necessitates having good starting material. There’s a lot of talk about using an acetone vapor to smooth ABS prints so I thought I’d try it out. But instead …