Howdy, wonderful people!
I love working out ways to make vase mode do interesting things, and one of my favourite interesting things to make it do is give the impression of distinct shapes and layers overlapping each other.
So, I started out by making bowls with raindrops. The raindrops became diamonds, and the bowls became cylinders, and at some point I decided I'd lost my way. Cylinders just weren't what I wanted (especially since I was also working on another...
2023-05-23 16:28:52 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
The Subatomic Dice Depository is a neo-retro-industrial container with a hefty hinged lid with a screw thread closure and a lot of gratuitous texture. But more importantly, it prints with a slide-out drawer for organising dice!
There's also a lower storage tray!
2023-05-23 16:28:40 +0000 UTC
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Woohoo, I'm going to ERRF! That's the East Coast Reprap Festival in Maryland, USA, in September/October this year. It's still half a year away but my flights from here in Australia are booked, and I'm super excited!
I will be sharing a booth with my good friends Filament Stories, Asylum Life, Fotis Mint, and Creatrix Britt. It's going to be such a strange and wonderful thing to meet in person all all the people I've made friends with f...
2023-05-07 16:33:33 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
It's fascinating to look back over ideas and see how things have developed. Someone once said that it's a sign that an idea is a good one if you can't quite work out why you didn't think of it earlier.
And, so it goes with hinged boxes! I remember precariously-balanced boxes printed on edges, then clamshell boxes that printed much more robustly but required that lid and body be the same depth. Then came rear struts that allowed for as...
2023-05-07 16:33:00 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
The Neon Skullbox had a bunch of requests, and so there are a few variations now! All these are already up on Dropbox, and people on the Discord server probably already know about them :)
Tiny Skulls!
Okay, first thing, since it's in the photo above - tiny versions of the skull design! A few people printed very tiny versions of the actual box, so I did up this tiny, solid 16mm version just for fun. There'...
2023-05-07 16:32:28 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
Tiny caps that store tiny things! And which have holes for attaching a lanyard or keychain loop! These little hats come in single- and multimaterial varieties and feature a screw-in lid. The lid is underneath, so "lid" seems like an odd word, but let's just go with it...
All the prototyping of this one was around the specifics of that lid. An early version had the loop attachment point on the lid rather than on cap itself, but that ...
2023-05-07 16:31:52 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, electroluminescent friends!
Yes, it's more fun with EL wire! There are two cylindrical models here, along with modifiers to slide over the outside and mix things up. Actually, that's how this model started - wondering if it would be interesting to run parallel lines of EL wire and then place translucent lines at different angles over the top to distort things.
The two models are the Electric Hearts Canister and the Electric Substructure Canister...
2023-05-07 16:31:20 +0000 UTC
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A few updates and random models!
Mechanical Easter Egg - larger tolerances
We're a little past Easter now, but there's always time for mechanical eggs! Some people found the gearing a bit tight on the original model, so a second version is up in the same folder, and it has more generous tolerances for easier printing.
You'll find it at at 590 Mechanical Ea...
2023-04-19 15:16:28 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
Models generally have a series of names before finally getting published, and this one was for a while named something like "screw-top square box", which is exactly what it is - a square-section box with a screw-in lid. This mechanism has a few interesting aspects!
First and foremost, the box itself is square all the way down. There are no protruding bits that interrupt the walls. Instead, the threaded lid engages into grooves in the wall...
2023-04-19 15:15:59 +0000 UTC
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Hi there, wonderful people!
Electroluminescent wire (or just EL wire) is such cool stuff! I was reminded of it in the Clockspring3D discord recently and so jumped online and grabbed some three metre, AA-battery-powered lengths and started experimenting. A few experimental prints later, I'd worked out how tightly I could curve the wire and not be too paranoid about breakage, what kind of channel depth and width seemed to work well for the 2.3mm wire I had, and so I moved on t...
2023-04-19 15:15:28 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
I was a math nerd in high school - shocking, I know! And while that was rather a long time ago now, there are certain things that have stuck with me over the years. Most relevant today, is plotting equations! It was all a bit dry back then, understanding what sine waves looked like, or graphing polynomials. But I didn't have a 3D printer back then, of course (imagine how cool I'd have been if I did, though! Right? Right! ...
2023-04-19 15:14:55 +0000 UTC
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Happy almost-Easter, wonderful people!
This design came about because I was agonising over mechanical egg concepts, and decided to do something else - an assembled egg! This is a set of slices that assemble into a vaguely-egg-shaped thing, and are then held together with a threaded ring over the top.
While the threaded ring does hold things together, the parts are engaged with...
2023-04-02 08:02:44 +0000 UTC
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Happy almost-Easter, wonderful people!
I had a bunch of requests about a mechanical easter egg in a similar style to the Mechanical Valentine, and it's finally ready to roll! (pun slightly intended, har har har).
The Mechanical Easter Egg started out as an egg with a hinged top, rather than a hinged side, but that meant much steeper curves on the lid and the gears had to be on significant angles, which did not bode well for printability. Eventually, though, the whole idea tr...
2023-04-02 08:02:34 +0000 UTC
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Larger nozzle support for Moonbeam Lamp bases
The original bases (both the regular and shorter versions) had fairly thin walls in one part, which was fine for 0.4mm nozzles, but caused some print artifacts when a larger extrusion width was used. There are now new versions of both those models that thicken the internal walls in those spots, and they're named "for larger nozzles" :)
You'll find the new models under the existing folder at 598 Moo...
2023-03-22 14:06:29 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
Here we have a spinning top with a threaded handle that screws outwards after printing, simultaneously bringing the spinning point closer to the disc for stability!
Printing spinning tops is an interesting thing to explore. The thing with tops is that ideally you want a handle that's just a little above the spinning disc, and a point that's just below it. The obvious way to approach this is the assemble things that print separately, and tha...
2023-03-22 14:05:47 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
It's a vase with gecko shapes!
Making things printable in vase mode can be a tricky thing. It's like designing to avoid overhangs, but it's something that needs to be considered in both upward and downward directions, since we don't have the luxury of infill to handle horizontal ledges or sharp angles.
This particular model, as well as being an ...
2023-03-22 14:05:15 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
It's a box with sliding geary bits, a hinged lid, and a secure threaded closure!
Many years ago I made a box with a lid that had cogs along the side. It was fun, and it was an easy print because the rack gearing ran horizontally. Could, I wondered, such a thing be engineered to run vertically?
The first hurdle is the angle of the gear teeth. &nbs...
2023-03-22 14:04:44 +0000 UTC
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Ahoy-hoy, wonderful people! Here we have a couple of updates and extras for the Gothic Hourglass and the Moonbeam Lamp...
Gothic Hourglass Case
As promised, there's a stylish home for the hourglass, and the provision for magnets will now make sense! This ornate enclosure is sized to allow the hourglass to slide in neatly, thus stopping things falling out the top (but mostly there to just look cool).
The model prints back-down, and that's t...
2023-03-06 02:19:22 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
It's a little box that looks like a book! This one's a little larger than a gift card, and I did have that kind of thing in mind for it. Quite some time ago now I posted a gift card holder, but that one couldn't hold much more than just a card or two, and certainly didn't have fancy things like magnets to keep it closed! It also didn't look like a little book. But this one does!
The interesting thing about this model, though, is...
2023-03-06 02:19:04 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
I love optical illusions and things that make my eyes and brain do strange things. These caddy models are intended to do just that! Depending on the light, these models shift from arrays of concentric squares to perpendicular stripes through diamond shapes instead.
I couldn't decide whether I liked this effect more on big, boxy forms, or on a curved, tapering shape, so we have both!
Also, these kinds of boxes always get requests...
2023-03-06 02:18:45 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
More fast food! I didn't actually set out to make a collection of such things, but stylised food turns out to be a fun design challenge. This one is perhaps a little less stylised than the burger or hot dog in the picture because it turns out icecream cones are fairly simple, iconic forms already:
It won't surprise you to hear that the bit that took th...
2023-03-06 02:18:24 +0000 UTC
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Hi there, wonderful people!
It's slightly amusing that I set out to make a lamp, and it ended up looking like... a lamp!
I had picked up an LED strip and enthusiastically set out to design some kind of lamp that used it, and initially that looked very different. Imagine lampshades with helical LED strip channels inside. From there things turned into something that looked more like a radiator with zigzagging LEDs, but at some point I wondered if an LED strip coul...
2023-02-17 11:20:51 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
Ripples on water are mesmerising, and you will not be surprised to hear that that's exactly what inspired this design! How, I wondered, could one construct a form that gives the impression of ripples along it, fading away by the time they reach the top?
This one was entirely devised in code, using OpenSCAD and lots of poking and prodding at trigonometric functions. The attenuated ripples are just peaks in a sine wave that adjusts the profile of...
2023-02-17 11:20:39 +0000 UTC
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Hi there, my favourite people!
While this fancy hourglass does fit dice, it's also a stylish piece that will bring joy to your home, office, or ominous castle ruin.
Okay, it's no accident that this gothic-styled hourglass happens to fit polyhedral dice - it was intentionally designed so that it would. The neck of the central hourglass figure remains sufficiently open to allow standard dice to fall through, which means this can serve to roll dice in the most showy and ...
2023-02-17 11:20:23 +0000 UTC
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Here are a few recent updates based on requests!! Let's start with some variations on the Mechanical Valentine...
Mechanical Valentine Variants
* Unadorned version
* Smaller unadorned version
* Added bracing (to all four versions)
I like my gothic patterns, but some people prefer their hearts plain! Also, there's much more resilience to bed adhesion when the print isn't ful...
2023-02-01 11:58:38 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
If you suspect I made this model just for the sake of that texture you'd be entirely correct. It's the same original heart profile as the Candy Hearts Vase Mode Gift Box, though it's not quite treated the same way. The angles behind the hearts are much shallower in this model to accommodate the curve of the main body (which is actually a series of straight lines that approximates a curve). the specifics of the tiling are also different, as the ...
2023-02-01 11:58:21 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
Sometimes I really just get caught up in a texture or a pattern, and that will be obvious when you see the post after this one, as it uses the same heart shape, but patterned differently. I just really liked the heart shape! It's not just the visual appeal, though, but also the tactile results of printing these embossed figures.
It does look nice, too, though - time to break out the shiny filaments!
But anyway, what is this mode...
2023-02-01 11:58:01 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
Yes, more questionable food choices in printed form! This time, we have a hot dog, complete with a delightful squiggle of delicious sauce.
The sausage is effectively a lid, and pops vertically into the bun. There are holes for optional magnets should you want more security in your hot dog storage, but that's strictly optional. The sauce prints separately and slots into the top of the sausage. It could be glued, but it's a reasonably...
2023-02-01 11:57:47 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
As requested, we now have insert options for the recently-published Tentacle Treasure Chest! Specifically, there are following:
1) Two upright trays that fit together into the chest.
2) Two trays that fit one on top of the other and which are each divided into small parts.
3) A single insert that occupies the whole volume, and which can be used as the basis of custom inserts, should you be so inclined.
2023-01-16 16:39:41 +0000 UTC
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I love big assemblies and I can not lie!
I also love fractals. Trees are the classic example of building something up recursively from individual components repeated at different scales, and that's what this model is all about!
Let's look at the parts.
This is Fractal Tree G. It's pretty rudimentary as far as trees go, just three curved bits that meet at a common base:
2023-01-16 16:39:28 +0000 UTC
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