Hey there, wonderful people!
A twist box! I haven't made one of those in forever, and this might be the first time I've made one where the lid prints right-way-up. That has a few challenges for both design and printing, which we'll get to below.
Being a twist box, he lid pushes down and twists onto the base, and it likewise pulls off with a twist in the other direction. There are some discreen cutouts on the inside hole of the lid to aid with grip if neces...
2021-12-21 14:21:38 +0000 UTC
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Happy holidays, wonderful people!
Last minute decorations? Vase mode to the rescue!
Nice and quick to print, and using very little filament in the process, these vase mode geometric extravaganzas are perfect for hanging on trees, office furniture, or just wearing as a stylish accessory!
Secret hangy-things
But how do you hang something that's printed in vase mode, since you can't have holes? Well, in this case, there's a sneaky feature in th...
2021-12-21 14:21:31 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
Say goodbye to boring gift card giving with this snazzy folding case! The Contrarian Card Case folds together to neatly encapsulate one or more cards of Standard Gift Card Size to make giving such things a little more interesting. Of course, gift cards are really just standard credit card sized cards, so this case probably has a range of uses :P
There are two versions of this case, Long and Wide, which differ in edge that contains the hinge...
2021-12-07 16:52:10 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
It's been a while since I delved into pure polyhedra, but it's something I just can't stay away from! No assemblies here, though - these are one-piece prints celebrating some of the coolest geometric solids around. Tetrahedron. Dodecahedron. Rhombicosidodecahedron! Okay, I can't deny I just love the names and working out how on earth to pronounce them. And the shapes! I love those, too.
There are many, many polyhed...
2021-12-07 16:52:04 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
It's that festive time of the year, and despite having no real intention to make specific models, here we are! 'Tis the season for unnecessarily complicated assemblies!
This started out as a much, much simpler screw-together tube-style bonbon, but I wanted to see if I could make it multicoloured in a way that would work with either assemblies or filament changes. So, I played around with bits that slid over each other, but a combination of ...
2021-11-29 06:40:46 +0000 UTC
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I was making pyramids, and ended up at a Christmas tree!
That's right, you may have seen by now the Industrial Pyramid Vase Box and noticed the distinct similarities. The pyramids came first, but when printed in green and red imparted a certain holiday vibe. And so the path to actual tree-ness began!
Taking a step back, though - yes, all these parts are vase mode! The tree itself is a single print, and it fits into a similarly styled base. Notches in the tr...
2021-11-29 06:40:26 +0000 UTC
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This pyramid turned into a Christmas tree, but more about that in another post!
Vase mode, hooray! This time, a box, pyramidal in shape, with stately vertical slats to give it rigidity and style.
Those vertical slats do more than just that, though - they provide the structure that allows the pieces to sit inside each other. There's an angled shelf around the top of each lower part that the lid can rest on, and that runs from the back to the front of those vertical corr...
2021-11-29 06:39:56 +0000 UTC
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Hello hello, wonderful people! Updates ahoy!
Multimaterial Dot Jars
Big thanks to Filament Stories for printing these up in fancy eight-colour form! My own test prints of this one weren't nearly as cool, but fortunately Filament Stories kindly whipped up these super-duper versions and took photos. Thank you!
Right, so, ...
2021-11-29 06:39:32 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
I needed a desk caddy to organise cables and bits of stationery, and obviously I couldn't just pull out one of the boxes or caddies I'd made in the past. No, no, that just wouldn't do - every need is an excuse to design something new!
Besides, I wanted to play with triangles and magnets! So, what I ended up with here is a pair of truncated triangles that are sliced off on an angle to sweep downwards to the front. Actually, that's t...
2021-11-15 15:01:20 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
Don't you hate it when your skull-shaped containers are limited to just one expression?! Well now there's a solution! Here we have a trio of faces that can be mixed and matched via two independently rotating components. Heart eyes and aghast mouth? Toothy grin and an eyepatch? It's up to you!
Oh, and there are two versions, as you've probably noticed already - a single colour version and a multimaterial version. &nb...
2021-11-15 15:00:39 +0000 UTC
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Yes, it's vase mode time again!
Plates, ribs, curves and mysterious emblems, this sleek, sci-fi-inspired cylinder has it all!
What is probably not immediately evident is that the Xenon Vase actually shares its origins with the Jewel Vase from a little while back, in that it's another exploration of inset features that need a little trickery in order to work in vase mode.
Those diamond-shaped recesses that impart such a great visual depth only work becaus...
2021-11-15 15:00:23 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
Vase mode time! This ornate bowl originated from exploring a round version of the Flurry Vase from not-so-long-ago. I constructed various protrusions and fins and wings and at one stage chopped it all back to a simpler form which I turned out to like much better anyway.
After some prodding and poking that form turned into what you see before you: a zigzaggy bowl that holds quite some rigidity thanks to the bracing provided by both th...
2021-11-03 13:06:03 +0000 UTC
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Hi, wonderful people!
The Girder Phone Stand is now 87.5% cooler with the addition of an adjustable shelf, and it requires no reprinting of the existing parts beyond replacing the upper bolt with a longer one! There are two versions, too - one for Apple MagSafe and one for everything else (and that one has an allowance for a cable to be plugged in to the phone)
Why an adjustable shelf?
It turns out that a lot of iPhone cases allow MagSafe charging, but...
2021-11-03 12:26:35 +0000 UTC
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Hinges and gears, together at last! :P
This cheery robo-box features two rotational hinges connected by meshed gears so that as the lid moves upwards it also turns over, ending in just the right spot on Grrrinbot's head as it reaches the end of its arc of motion. There are spots for magnets in case you want to pop some in for a more secure closure, too :)
Printing cogs upright...
2021-11-03 12:25:41 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, my favourite people!
Vase mode time! This one's textured and flexy and based on the thought of having vase mode elements that overlap each other. I'm not sure quite how accurately "overlap" describes this end result, especially with the curled-out ends that jostle past each other and sweep outwards, however!
The vertical divisions between columns of sweepy, wavy bits are just smooth vertical lines which is what provides the flexibility. There was some ...
2021-10-21 14:14:03 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, my favourite people!
I sat down and started sketching an idea for a cube with a hinged lid, contemplating how I was going to manage the obvious overhang issues that involves. Square changed to rhombus, things got tilted on angles, and then sides started disappearing, becoming a triangular prism and finally a tetrahedron. How had I not explored that before, I wondered?!
Of course, the next step was to take that nice, simple idea and overcomplicate the tetra...
2021-10-21 14:13:55 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
By popular request, I've finally integrated an Apple MagSafe charger into a phone stand design! Of course, that was also a good excuse to design another phone stand, because those are just a lot of fun regardless :)
You want hexagons? You got hexagons! So many hexagons. I may not have mentioned it before, but hexagons are great. These industrially-inclined struts full of hexagons are bolted together with adjustabl...
2021-10-21 14:13:44 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
This spooky concoction makes good use of multiple colours, but does not require anything beyond a simple mid-print filament change for the lid! Yes, that bubbly bit with the bones is really a threaded lid that keeps the contents of the cauldron secure.
The lid is designed so that the texture of the liquid part is contained entirely below the level of the protruding bones. So, just swap that filament accordingly for a delicious and stylis...
2021-10-09 03:05:52 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, my favourite people!
Maybe you're celebrating Halloween! Maybe you just like ghosts - who doesn't, right?!
These little ghostlings have a secret - they're actually hollow, and the base on which they sit is effectively a lid, and unscrews to reveal... well, whatever you happen to put in there. Candy, treasure, smaller ghosts... the options are endless...
2021-10-05 17:15:42 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
I tend to lose all my USB drives. You can tell by the photo above that when it came time to find some to actually test out this USB stand with, I had no idea where they'd all gone. So, that's why this exists, to (hopefully) give those poor, lost USB drives a home, and somewhere to look for them when I actually need one.
Of course, you've undoubtedly noticed by now that this is all just an excuse to play around with textures and filament swaps! ...
2021-10-05 17:15:34 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
I'm a sucker for combining angular shapes with big, curved surfaces, and the Pod Bowl is a pretty obvious example! It's fundamentally a cube that's sliced through by a sphere, but that shape is only suggested by the forest of vertical prongs that actually make up the shape. Each prong is a kind of lollipop shape, with the centre aligned precisely where the sphere would slice through, and thus we end up with this kind of discontinuous curved surfa...
2021-09-25 12:19:30 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
What is this? A water-based fidget gadget? A bath toy? An annoying noise maker? All of the above? Inspired by classic gurgling jugs, the Gluggernaut is formed from two chambers, one open and one closed, with a narrow channel between. Fill the chambers to a little over the channel, tilt it side-to-side, and enjoy the soothing* bubbling sounds!
(*okay, so soothing compared to the clacky noise of the chompy skull, at least ...
2021-09-25 12:19:17 +0000 UTC
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Just a quick one to mention some updates to existing models in the recent past, since these things tend to get lost in the comments or Discord threads...
Lantern Vase - Now with Blank Sides
As requested, there's now a version of the Lantern Vase that has nothing on the side panels at all, ready for your own customisation!
You'll find this in the original folder: 727 Lantern Vase
I have been experimenting with some Halloween v...
2021-09-25 12:19:04 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
I really do love vase mode, but this one didn't start out that way! I was designing an overly-complicated (who, me?) hinge-topped lantern of the conventionally-printed sort, and was puzzling over how I might incorporate some printed window panes into it. After toying with some vase-mode insert designs I asked myself why I wasn't just printing the entire thing in vase mode, and so here we are!
It was important to make the lantern structure stand...
2021-09-13 13:03:51 +0000 UTC
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Hexagons, is there anything they can't... wait, this one's octagonal! That's right, wonderful people, it's an eight-sided techno-container with fins, rings, stripes and radiating lines! I do love some nice, abstract, sci-fi styling!
The Jolt Capsule is an octagonal prism whose upper half unfolds into two lids, and it comes in two styles of closure! There's the classic threaded ring style, where the two lid halves each carry half the thread of the closure, and a magneti...
2021-09-13 13:03:44 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, wonderful people!
What we have here is a pair of tubes with interiors that are a little over 100mm in height and 45mm across, and have a lot of hexagons.
I had a request a little while back for a relatively secure container that could be used by someone with limited dexterity. It needed to be usable without requiring too much grip strength or steady hands, and that chunky looking green tube is what I came up with!
Those big, concave sides are intended to be ...
2021-09-13 13:03:36 +0000 UTC
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Hi, wonderful people!
This vase is made for your shiniest filaments! Let the light glint off those sweeping lines and shiny surfaces and reflect in dazzling glory off the diamonds that protrude from inset pockets along the circumference!
I am loving vase mode at the moment! Specifically, designing ways to have insets and apparent overhangs, which you normally can't have in such a print since we're eternally bound to the rule that the profile must be drawn as one contin...
2021-09-02 15:02:07 +0000 UTC
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Happy September, wonderful people! Wow, September already, where does the time go? So, we have a few updates to existing models - read on!
Narrow Phone Lounge
It's the Phone Lounge, but narrower! That's right, instead of 100mm across it's 60mm across, so more portable. Like the original version it folds up neatly, and it still contains the cable stash compartment, but obviously that has far less volume now!
You'll find this...
2021-09-02 15:01:53 +0000 UTC
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Howdy, wonderful people!
Presenting... The Phone Lounge! It's a large, fold-up phone (or tablet) stand with a cable stash compartment and adjustable reclining angle! The whole thing is a print-in-place, support-free design that's ready to go right off the build plate thanks to the wonders of vertical hinges!
It's a big stand, too, at 100mm across, so nice and stable for large devices.
2021-08-25 13:26:16 +0000 UTC
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Hey there, my favourite people!
Do you need tiny tiny jars in your life? Tiny jars with skulls on them, and with tiny screw-in stopper lids? Of course you do! There aren't really many things you could fit in these tiny, tiny jars, but probably things like eye of newt. Not all that many eyes, though.
Despite their size, these little vessels are intended for FDM printing, and just enough detail to be manageable with a standard nozzle and some thinner layer li...
2021-08-25 13:26:08 +0000 UTC
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