EL wire revelations, updates and fire trucks!

Updates and stories!

Firetrucks, Filament Stories and HotMakes!

Some time ago I guested on a YouTube channel called HotMakes, and that led to me agonising for months over a model that became the Torture Toaster.  Good times!  

Fast forward to the present. I had a message from my good friend Courtney, of Filament Stories fame, who was going to be a guest on that channel later that day, and she said "Hey, it's one hundred episodes since the torture toaster - do you want to try to quickly panic design something for tonight's show?"  Okay, "panic design" might be my wording, but it was challenge time!  What would be viable to pull together and test print in a mere few hours?!  

Thus began a flurry of brainstorming on ideas and prototypes, throwing interim versions in parallel at the printers for testing while the model was still coming together.  There was always a moment of held breath when a new test version came off the printer, waiting to see if there was going to need to be some backtracking to correct something...  but it all worked out well!

The model is up on Printables and MyMiniFactory, but it's also on dropbox for convenience at 581 Flippy Ladder Firetruck

And the HotMakes episode is here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzZMH5YQIHc

Hearts, and EL wire updates... a tale of feet and metres!

Something puzzling happened!  

The Electric Hearts and Substructure models each required three metres of EL wire, and that was only just enough.  However, more than one person commented that it turned out that nine feet wasn't quite sufficient.  Why were multiple people mentioning that fact?

Well, it turns out there are a bunch of online sellers listing EL wire in "3m/9ft" lengths, despite the fact that 9ft is only 2.7m.  So, a bunch of people inadvertently ended up with EL wire that was too short for the models.

Fortunately, now there are versions of the Substructure and Hearts canisters that are specifically designed for these 9ft lengths!

For the Hearts version, the small hearts were removed, leaving just the large ones with the double lines.  I actually like it better this way!

For the Substructure version, the overall track has been shortened vertically by 11mm:

* The existing models have "3m-10ft" appended to the file names

* The new models have "9ft" appended to the file names.

Don't forget the new lid -

Oh, and there's a new lid - it's that stylish green one in the Hearts picture above.  The main point of the new lid is that it's deeper than the original one and removes stress on the battery pack if you have it standing up in the bracket.

You'll find all these in the original folder at 584 Electric Hearts and Substructure Canisters

Link to dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592

A New Cap For the Cap!

A new lid, by request!  This one has a slot to fit something like a coin, as opposed to a protruding handle, which also means the cap will sit flat :)

You'll find this one in the original folder at 583 Keychain Cap

Link to dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592