clockspring3D

Necromancer's Bottle (vase mode!)

Hey there, wonderful people!

We're back in vase mode land today (that's Spiralize Outer Contour mode for the Cura users out there), and this one's a zig-zaggy snakey bottle that ends up quite rigid as far as vase mode prints go.

This one started in a completely different direction, as another vase that was intended to contrast textures.  It was covered in diamond-shaped holes that expanded as they went inwards, which would normally create unprintable pockets, but thin slots r...

Concentric Atom Cases

Howdy, wonderful people!

Remember the Atom Case, fairly recently?  That's one of my favourite practical box designs, and it's been given a bit of an overhaul!  We now have:

* A new "long" version that's rectangular rather than square

* Magnet closure option for each box

* A filament-change friendly style change to the lid!

The Long Concentric Atom Case

Yep, it's a different size!  It still works much the same way, of cours...

Flippity Cup!

Hi there, wonderful people!

Are you tired of storage options that are devoid of noisy, dynamic features?  Then this is the model for you!  It's a cup of sorts, but with a lid.  A lid that flips open and curls in on itself by way of a tab above the handle.

Enjoy the clattering of hinged components as they flip up over, then flip it back with your thumb, and repeat!

So,...

Updates! Wider Planetary Stand, Handle-less Ambassador Flask, Sprinkle-Free Doughnuts!

Hey there, wonderful people!

I love feedback and suggestions!  There's always more than I can possibly get to, but I do try to do the things that are practical and/or just cool :)  So, here are a couple of updates to recent designs! 

Wider Planetary Phone Stand

I'm really blown away by the amount of love people have had for the Planetary Phone Stand!  However, a comment refrain was that a wider version would be very useful, so ...

Flex Panels!

Howdy, wonderful people!

Today we're exploring the wonderful world of texture and tactile sensations!  No, not fidget toys!  Okay, maybe fidget toys!  In the never-ending pursuit of interesting visual effects in 3D printing it's easy to overlook the opportunity to work with texture, which is another thing that these for which these machines are just great!

This particular set of designs came about when exploring the way linked structures can move when bound together...

Ambassador Flask

Hey there, wonderful people!

I really don't put enough handles on things!  So, I set out to make a tall container with a hinged lid on top and some interesting handles.  

Tall hinged lids are always a tricky thing because the moving parts tend to be so far above the point of rotation, which means they end up moving forward into things as much as moving down.  So, since this means the lid couldn't just drop into the top of the box, the back half of the lid carries wi...

Sugar Rush Doughnut Box!

Anyone for doughnuts?!  Add some cheerfulness to your day with these sprinkle-topped icing-laden toroidal extravaganzas!  It works very nicely with magnets, but pegs are provided as an alternative - more on that below!
So, the technical stuff!  This was an exercise in seeing if I could make an easily-printed lid with asymmetric curves that would be printable without needing supports,   and which would still just show a nice curvy line on the outside where it meets ...

Planetary Phone Stand

Howdy, wonderful people!

Do you  need an overly-complicated way to prop your phone up, one that says to everyone around you that you have a 3D printer?  Then this is the model for you!  The angle of the stand adjusts by pivoting on a set of planetary gears, and is then fixed in place by tightening a sliding bolt form the opposing side. 

You might recognise this as the somewhat more refined descendant of an experimental model from some time ago!  That one w...

Atom Case (and some Yarn/Knit Bowl updates)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Yes, it's a box with a print-in-place hinged lid!  It has a threaded-ring closure, a top that flips over from the back, and a snazzy utilitarian sci-fil kind of feel :)

You may have noticed that I like print-in-place hinges, especially boxes and lids!  These kinds of models can be characterised by the kinds of constraints they incorporate, whether that's accommodating moving parts in a lid, having certain dimensions, or, in the case of this one, ...

Yarn Bowl and some Knit Bowl Updates!

Hey there, wonderful people!

This is where the Catalyst Capsule and Knit Bowl collide!

So, apparently "yarn bowls" are a thing for keeping balls of wool organised during various kinds of activities, and numerous people (including my mother) enthusiastically suggested that maybe the Knit Bowl could be adjusted a little to suit this very purpose.  So, here we are!

Now, this all required some engineering changes.  The original Knit Bowl just had a lid sit on top, held...

Shimmy Bin

Hi, wonderful people!

I  have one of these next to each of my printers.  This is what I use for all those bits of loose filament, fragments of failed prints, skirts and other various bits that are the inevitable byproducts of printer use.  Being vase mode, it's very quick for a container with this kind of volume, and very economical on material usage!

This is a mostly-rectangular container with a snazzy zigzag texture for a little extra vase-mode-appropriate structu...

Catalyst Capsule

Perfect for storing lunar samples and glowing alien artifacts, this twist-top container will look at home in any contemporary space home.  The deep lid slots into the top of the container and rotates into a locking position, keeping your important possessions safe from space pirates and other ruffians.

You'll notice that the lid and container have points for adding 6x3mm magnets, should you so choose.  Those are completely optional and the Catalyst Capsule will work just fine ...

Knit Bowl!

Howdy, wonderful people!

One thing I really love about design is stripping things back to just the essentials, and working out what aspects are really important to something's identity.  Balls of wool turn out to be really iconic things, and it took me a while to finally find an approach to detailing this design in a way that made my brain say "ball of wool!".

That's what this is - a ball of wool!  Well, a bowl and lid in the shape of a ball of wool.  Of course, we ...

Inertia Box

Hi, wonderful people!

Hinged lids are an interesting thing, especially when we're dealing with print-in-place designs!  Not only do we need to consider the way the lid fits with the body of a box, but there's the whole consideration of the path of the lid as it rotates, especially if that lid has printed top-down on the bed.

These problems get especially prominent when dealing with tall, slender designs like this one, and particularly if the lid sits on top, as most lids ten...

Happy June! Upgrades, Odds and Ends!

Howdy, wonderful people!

Another month whizzes by in a blur of empty filament spools and prototypes!  And, as usual, there are a few bits and pieces that are worth mentioning lest they disappear forever into the distant past, forgotten and unloved!

Dropbox locations are at the end, so scroll down there for the list.  But let's start with something I put together for my own purposes:

Cable Coiler

2021-06-02 13:10:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Diagonal Slider Box

Howdy, wonderful people!

Yes, it's a pencil box!  Well, it could be a box for lots of things, but it's long enough to hold pencils, which turn out to be somewhat longer than most regular pens!  Who knew?  Okay, that's probably common knowledge, but it's one of those things I'd never really considered until designing this box.

The thing is, I wanted this to fit, ideally, on a 180mm square printer bed, but pencils are 210+ millimetres long.  So, the box shifted d...

Vase Dodecahedron

Break out the glue!  I don't often work with assemblies that need adhesives, but that's what we have here - and it's vase mode!  Yep, twelve vase mode components that get glued together to form a dodecahedron!

Now, the dodecahedron part is familiar ground by this point, and doesn't require a lot of problem solving.  However, see those notch things on the sides?  Those took a bit of puzzling out.  See, the idea of those is to align adjacent sides properly while t...

Mister Kettle!

Hey there, wonderful people!

Meet Mister Kettle!  He's a print-in-place box thingy who puts his articulated arms up to use his hands as a lid.  And he's cheerful, very cheerful!  Look at that smirk!

From a technical design point of view there are a couple of things worth noting.  The arms hinge out not from the sides but at 45 degrees, between the sides and the front.  This probably isn't how I would have designed it if I was working from scratch, but insp...

Taller Vase Mode Dot Jars

Just to round off the set, here are vase mode versions of the taller round and hex dot jars!  As always, the regular-mode versions of the jars will be much more robust, but you can't beat vase mode for quick, clean, fun prints. 

All four heights of both the hex and round little dot jars are here, awaiting your vase-mode enthusiasm. 

Printing Tips...

Taller Hex Dot Jars

That's right, now the round little dot jars are not the only tall ones!  These are much the same as the original little hex dot jar, but taller.  There's also a new rack, and this one lends itself better to wall mounting.  Round jars get one, too, just so they don't feel left out.

Printing Tips

As before, the hex jars print base-down, and the lid...

Hex Bloom

I just can't stay away from polyhedral assemblies!  This time it's another one based fundamentally on a dodecahedron, though somewhat embellished with hexagons, and hexagons in hexagons.

There are only two parts to this design - the sides and the bolts.  Being a dodecahedron there are 12 sides.  Each side has five bolts, so that's sixty in total.  The bolts push through one ...

Shimmy Caddy - with lid! :D

Vase mode is just the best!  Also, I needed somewhere to store tools next to printers!  Well, really this is all an excuse - what I actually wanted to do was play with shimmering zigzags and shiny filament :P

This segmented caddy harks back in part to the video I did a long time ago about vase mode, in which I made similarly segmented trays by cutting lines into a solid object.  In those trays, there was a ridged profile to aid rigidity, but this model takes that idea fur...

MultiJar!

Howdy, wonderful people!

Sometimes you've just can't help but throw your hands up in frustration at clogged printer nozzles, bed adhesion issues, broken filament and the multitude of other frustrations that we just can't avoid sometimes.  My reaction to such things seems to be to go design something silly.  Like this thing!

Yes, it's an arrangement of little dot jars!  A bouquet?  Who knows, really!  Suffice to say that this is not intended to be in any wa...

Taller Jars and Racks!

Howdy, wonderful people!

I mentioned not being able to leave the little jars alone, and it seems that includes the design side of things as well as the actual prints.  There were two obvious things that the little dot jars needed: something to keep them a bit organised, and a wider range of capacities!  All the existing ones were quite small (and intentionally so!) but now there are four different heights of round jar.

As it happens, four jars also happens to be just the...

Swingtop Bin! A Print-in-Place Trash Can

Howdy, wonderful people!

That's right, it's a trash can!  Or a rubbish bin, waste receptacle, or other term depending on which part of this globe you reside.  There's a swingtop lid that spins around if you jab it hard enough, and the whole top lid section hinges for easy emptying.  As usual, it all prints assembled with no supports needed, because that's the most fun way of doing things :D

The key to this design is the way that the whole thing prints hinged open, w...

Sunshine Box! 🌞

Hey there, wonderful people!

Brighten up even the gloomiest of days with this cheerful fellow!  The Sunshine Box is a threaded box with a hinged lid and a threaded collar that holds it closed, and it all prints in place, assembled and ready to go.

This one came from a challenge I set myself: how could I make a threaded closure that involved a hinged lid?  The big question was how to have a lid that hinged off the ground plane without it causing problems with a ring that ...

Updates! Dropbox Additions, Earplug Box, Toaster v1.1 beta

Hey there, wonderful people!  Just a quick note to highlight some happenings!

More Stuff on Dropbox!

Dropbox has turned out to be fairly convenient so far for distributing content, which is probably why numerous people have asked if my free content on MyMiniFactory could be made available through the same means.  My answer was generally "sure... but that's a huge amount of work, and will have to wait!"

So, that's why I owe a huge debt of gratitude ...

Mariner Vase

Hey there, wonderful people!

There really aren't enough designs out there that are specifically intended for transparent filaments!  Plenty of designs do well when printed in transparent materials, but this one really does require it in order to reveal its mysteries!

The outside surface of this vase mode print is a series of smooth, curved segments, but the inside has sweeping organic shapes and detail that isn't reflected on the outside at all.  So, depending on the fil...

Little Dot Jars (Vase Mode)

Vase mode!  Vase mode is always fun, and so it was not a surprising detour when I found myself adapting the Little Dot Jars for a single-line print.  The jar bodies themselves don't really have a huge difference to the solid versions, but the lid, not surprisingly, is completely different.

The thing about vase mode is that the shapes of the inside and the outside are fundamentally linked, so unless there's fancy stuff going on like the Swirly Whirly Egg has, the two shapes nee...

Little Dot Jars (Regular Mode)

Hey there, wonderful people!

One day, I just really wanted to make a tiny jar.  So I did!  It was round, small, roughly like the round jar here.  I printed it, and the best thing about it was the lid.  Taking the lid off, putting the lid back on.  It was fun.  This little jar sat on my desk, printed in light blue, and I fidgeted with it far too much.  It was cool.  

But not cool enough.  So I added some nice curves, making sure to keep ...