clockspring3D

Vase Mode Steampunk Lighthouse

Hey there, wonderful people!

How complicated can we get, and still have a valid vase mode design that can be printed with one single unbroken perimeter?  Well, evidently we can go nuts and get quite complicated indeed!  This design was sparked by wondering if I could put a staircase with handrail on the outside of a tower in vase mode, but everything is better in steampunk style, so that's where we ended up!

The trickiest thing in all this is actually the angles - I gene...

Kinematic Case

Hey there, wonderful people!

I love mechanical linkages and things that move things that move other things!  Push that bar at the front and the lid flips open, driven by two-piece lever arms and a bunch of swivel points!

Sometimes things do roughly work out as planned, and I did embark on this intending to make something with chunky exterior linkages.  Much of the process involved me sticking my tongue out the side of my mouth while drawing curves and working out where t...

Lodestone Latch Box

Hi, hi, hi, wonderful people!

Well, this was a complicated one!  It's a snap closure box that uses magnets as a spring to keep the lid securely shut until released via a sliding switch!  

There were two main problems to solve in getting this one to come together: how would the slidey switch actually be assembled, and what kind of mechanism would allow the lid to be locked in place firmly without opening when being pulled upwards, and still be printable in the orientation...

Waffle Stack Box

Howdy, wonderful people!

Another entry in the Questionable Food Choices collection - waffles!  No longer is the kitchen waffle maker the only machine in the house that can make waffles.  These ones will last longer, too!

This tasty stack of waffly goodness is comprised of three main parts: a bottom, an arbitrary number of middles, and a top, and they form a cylindrical container internally in which to store valuable waffle-related things.

You'll have noticed of cou...

Fragment Coasters - no multimaterial needed!

Hi there, my favourite people!

I have a bunch of printed coasters that I use every day. I tend to accrue mugs and glasses on my desk, each sitting neatly on a printed coaster from the stack in the corner. They're one of those things that turn out to be unexpectedly practical!

A while back, I designed some patterned coasters for multimaterial printing, and I'd had a thought floating around in the back of my mind that an assembly version would be superior (and more fun, too), and he...

Dial Box

Hey there, wonderful people!

The way mechanical things interact is always a source of fascination for me, and that's really what brought this little box into existence!  The Dial Box is a small-ish round container with retro stylings that uses magnets as part of what keeps it securely closed.

You might remember the Catalyst Capsule from some time ago, which used magnets to hold a lid from rotating freely, so that other mechanical features could hold the lid securely.  Th...

Peculiarity Box (with festive holly option!)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Oh textures, where would we be without them!  As you've probably guessed, I got caught up with the deep buttoning texture used in upholstery, and somehow that ended up as the primary feature of this model.  The pattern here is of course fairly abstracted from the real thing, made up of a few key design elements, and it's always a fun process to identify what those bits of identity are that makes something recognisable.  On this pattern it was the ...

Convolution Vase

Howdy, wonderful people!

The Convolution Vase is a sweepy, twisty organic vessel that nonetheless has a definite precision to it!  The twisty tendrils merge, split and merge again as they make their way upwards, and most of the time in designing this one went into making agonising decisions about where exactly those mergings and splittings should take place!  I'm a sucker for precise proportions, and getting things to look nicely balanced involved a lot of squinting and frowni...

Myriad Vessel

Howdy, wonderful people!

Are you tired of containers that don't have ridiculously over-complicated mechanisms to open the lid?  Me too!  Fortunately, the Myriad Vessel comes to the rescue, with layers of rotating bits, gears both large and small and lots of angles and protrusions!

Now, there's a good reason for some of this complexity.  Okay, a reason, at least!  I'd b...

Modular Festive Foliage - Adventures in Scaling!

I like the idea of models that are built up by successively larger parts.  In fact, I've made models like that before - the Fractal Tree comes to mind!  But in that model there were a series of models involved, each at a particular scale.  What I wondered, though, was: could I construct a model that could be attached to larger and smaller scaled versions of itself?

Obviously, the answer was yes, or else you'd be reading about a different model right now!  This tree i...

Gothic Deco Flask

Hi there, wonderful people!

The world is full of inspiration!  Sometimes that inspiration comes from looking at interesting venue ceilings when you're supposed to be paying attention to the band you went to see.  The ceiling in question had ventilation ducts with mesh over them, and I really liked the depth that gave.  So I started designing things in my head and tried not to forget it all before I got home and could scrawl things on one of the many dot-paged notebooks I ...

Multibaubles!

Howdy, wonderful people!

It's vase mode bauble time again!  There's something really satisfying about coming up with ways to make shiny, baubly things that print with a single wall, but I really wondered if there was a good way to make them a little more varied in colour.  So, here we have baubles that print in three parts - a middle and two sides.  The side pieces slide onto their guide rails from above until they reach stoppers at the bottom.

There are four differ...

Transposition Tank (and a big thanks to Alex at Protopasta!)

Hi hi, wonderful people!

Well, look at this complicated bunch of gears and threads!  It will not surprise you that I set out to make a mechanical design that was intentionally convoluted just for the sake of it!  You see, I had a spool of filament that was just demanding such a design, and who am I to resist such a call?

I had the great pleasure of visiting Protopasta in the US, and boy are they a fun bunch of people!  Alex at Protopasta is a filament magician and a...

Popsicle Box (single-material print!)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Yes, it's another entry in the questionable food choices boxes collection!  Someone seems to have taken a bite out of one of them, though :)  

The Popsicle Box opens from the bottom with a rotation of the handle, which is in turn engaged with a captive bolt that will open things up.  The handle slots into the bolt via a hexagonal slot, and then a nut threads onto the top to keep the handle in place.

2023-11-12 04:32:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Stair Jumble Vase

Hi there, wonderful people!

Vase mode printing, as we know, has a particular constraint in that angles just can't be too far from vertical, and that's in both the angling-up and angling-down directions.  There just isn't enough overlap between lines past a certain point, and the results are a mess!  I'm pretty conservative about those angles, and generally keep it to about 45 degrees.

Now, this made life a bit difficult when I set out to model some vase mode staircases! ...

Mechanical Coffin Box (single- and multimaterial)

Hi there, spooky people!

I got this one done with just a few days to spare before Halloween! 🎃

I had a few requests for a larger, more secure take on a Halloween-style coffin box, and I like cogs and mechanical things, so here we are!  It's a Halloween container that securely closes with a threaded handle, and it can optionally be printed as a multimaterial print, too!  That said, I personally prefer the single material version, but the option is there if you want it!...

Triplicity Tub

Hi, wonderful people!

You might remember the Japanese Weave Tiles from a little while back.  I really love that style of weave and I wanted to work that into a vase mode print.  Now, there are complications in doing that, because we need to consider 'overhang' angles both upwards and downwards.

My favourite approach to dealing with that, especially if I'm not entirely sure how things are going to end up, is to start by developing the "front" detail, which in this case is...

Anonymous Tome and Taller Sea Meadow Jars

Anonymous Tome

It's another version of the Skull Tome, but this time slightly simpler!  We already have the aforementioned skull decoration as well as the Compass Tome version, but this version omits the decoration entirely (unless you count a few little bits of texture) and makes the cover much more subtle.

This one is only in single-material version, and is otherwise the same as its predecessors, including the option for up to sixteen 6mm x 3mm cylindrical ...

Normal Mode Poison Bottle

My little cat is a fearsome creature!  Okay, so maybe I just caught her mid-yawn :P

Vase mode is great, the robustness of vase mode prints suffers as things scale up (unless of course you can bring a nice big nozzle to bear on the situation).  The tiny poison bottle is a quick print, but also a tiny print, and it can be useful to scale it up.  But, yes, scale brings limitations, and so this regular mode version now exists.

The bottle itself is similar to the origina...