For Christmas, we got a hand-me-down KidKraft Deluxe Garage Playset.
Wonderful! There was only one minor issue– it was missing some kind of piece at the top of the elevator. As a result, the elevator did not go up and down. This caused some discontent for my two year old. At first, I would tie a toothpick at the end of the string and that would allow him to raise and lower the elevator for a while… but it frequently came undone. I thought, “Hey. I have a 3D Printer. I had TinkerCAD. I can do a lot better than a toothpick.”
One Saturday morning, the kids and I did just that. Our first step – calipers, which both children love to play with.
I…uh…. I retook all the measurements for myself after they were done.
Then we pulled up the free and web-based TinkerCAD. As you may know, I do a great deal of modeling in Blender. I have found the colorful interface of TinkerCAD to be much more conducive to “keeping the attention of my kids.” In this case, they sat in my lap and we modeled it together.
The Model
This was a very simple design. We just had three pieces:
A cylinder that I sized to the exact width of the hole we measured in the playset. Usually I put in 0.5mm clearances, but for this, I wanted a snug fit. It would even be okay if I had to force the part in.
There was also a second flat cylinder in the bottom. This was to make sure we couldn’t just pull or push the part all the way through the hole.
At the top, I used a tube. I used the Rotate handles (the little arrow icons) to rotate the tube 90 degrees.
Tip– If you hold down the Shift key while you rotate, you can rotate at 45 degree intervals.
Tip: Since I was working with exact measurements, I dragged a Ruler object to my Workplane which allows me to type in the dimensions of my parts.
Once I had all the parts on my workplane, I selected them all and went to Adjust->Align…
This allowed me to center them all with each other.
Moment of Truth
We made pancakes while the part printed and then we had a moment of truth. I was happy to discover our calipers did not lead us astray, the part fit AND the elevator worked.
Between the pancakes and this toy fix, it was a very productive Saturday morning. My Mom self esteem was at an all time high. Don’t worry– I was back to normal by the afternoon (after unsavory Mom tasks like “saying No” and “wiping butts”). : )
My sister turned 40 this month and get this– I have never, ever, ever printed her anything. I printed something for her husband, but not her. Bad Vicky! That definitely needed to change. Her house is a very visually stimulating house. They have a variety of lighting and effects– think blacklights, giant flatscreens with screensavers dancing to the music, lasers making patterns on the walls, lava lamps. I wanted my design to fit in and interact with the lighting in her house. I wanted something with mirrors.
Designing
At Michael’s I bought little mosaic mirrors– 35 of them for $1.99.
Then I got out the trusty calipers. There was some variance in the measurements, but the mirrors were pretty much 15 millimeters by 15 millimeters and 1.75 thick. I designed in cavities into my model for the placement of the mirrors. I used 0.5 millimeter clearance– which meant my “hole” came out to 16 x 16 millimeters and 2.25 thick.
All my design work was in Blender. I decided my design was going to built out of a series of 18 x 18 millimeters squares– each ready to hold a mirror. I used some simple math to figure out how many mirrors I would need to be a good stand for a 3″ pillar LED candle and the ultimate radius of my final product.
I made one template square and put in the proper placement of where it would be in the final holder. Another simple math equation told me how many degrees I would have to angle each piece.
360 degrees / # of Mirrors
So for example, in a design with 15 mirrors, each piece would be angled 24 degrees from the previous one. If I did 14 mirrors, each piece would be angled 25.714 from each other.
In Blender, when you rotate items, you are rotating around the Point of Origin of that object (where the little yellow dot appears when you select the Object).
Usually this is the Center of Mass of the object, but guess what! You can control it and the origin doesn’t have to be in the object itself. Once I had my template square in its proper position in the final candle holder, I placed my 3D Cursor at 0,0,0.
I went to Object->Transform->Origin to 3D Cursor.
This meant the origin was right smack in the middle of my candle holder. It also meant, when I rotate, I rotate around that point.
So I proceeded to Duplicate the square, hit R (for Rotate), hit Z (for around the Z axis) and then type in my angle (25.714).
I would then Duplicate that square and Rotate it and so on until I had my entire ring. I did Object->Join to merge all my panel pieces into a single object.
I switched to Edit mode and did some cleanup. I Merged Vertices that were close together and then added in new Faces to fill in the gap.
The inside of the candle holder is a 14-sided Cylinder. When you add a new Cylinder, you can specify the Number of Sides. I made it match the number of mirrors.
I cheated with the placement of the three feet. I added a 3-sided Circle and used that to help me determine where the place my feet.
Under Modifiers I did a Boolean Union on my panel piece, my inside cylinder and my feet and voila– I had a model!
Slicing – Simplify3D
In Simplify3D, I set up two separate processes. The first process ran from the 0.00mm – 17.00mm (You can set that up in the Advanced tab under Layer Modifications). That is the point right before my mirror cavities would get sealed up.
Usually when a process finishes, it’ll run a default ending process– turning off the extruder and disabling the motors, completely dropping the bed. I didn’t want that to happen. In this case, I just wanted the bed to drop down enough for me to put those mirrors in without burning myself and more importantly, get that hot nozzle off my print so it isn’t melting and deforming it and making it hard for me to slide my mirrors in. I went under Scripts and customized my Ending Script. Instead of the usual process, I did two simple steps:
1) I changed it to Relative mode, so my next instruction would use the nozzle’s current position as it’s starting point
2) I told it to move the nozzle up 100mm.
G91 ; relative mode
G1 Z100 ; lift 100mm
When I prepared just that process for printing, you could see how it was going to stop while I still had openings for my mirrors.
My second process was set up to run from 17.10mm on (again under the Advanced tab)
When a process begins, there are a number of things the printer typically does at the beginning such as turning on the extruder, turning on the fans, homing the axis’s, running off the side of the bed and oozing some filament. I didn’t want to do this for my second process. My axis’s are already homed, my extruder is already heated up, my filament is already flowing. All I had to do was set my printer back to Absolute mode and go. So for this second process, I went under Scripts and customized the Starting Script.
G90 ; absolute mode
A preview of the second process, illustrates how the mirrors will get sealed in by the print.
After a recent trip the Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, my husband had a 3D Printing request for me. He wanted a 1934 Buck Rogers Disintegrator Gun.
The Model
Thanks to the great community up on Thingiverse, I didn’t have to do any modeling. I had THREE Buck Rogers Guns to choose from. The one that caught my eye and seemed to most resemble what my husband wanted was “Disintegrator 1934 Buck Rogers Gun” by user bluesroq.
The designer recommended printing the model with supports and there is indeed a lot of overhangs with how the gun is positioning now.
Avoiding Supports
Even though Simplify3D has top notch supports that are easy to remove and easy to control, I wanted to try to avoid supports in this case for a few reasons:
As great as Simplify3D supports are, they would still leave some scarring or souvenirs on the faces– in this case– an entire side of my gun would be subject to that and not look as pretty and finished as the other side.
Supports increase your printing time AND your material usage. In the case of an adult-sized Buck Rogers gun, the print time would have gone from 4 hours 30 minutes to 7 hours 12 minutes!
If it were in half, this particular model would be an easy, straight forward print without any troubling overhangs.
Looking over the Buck Rogers Gun, the model itself was very symmetrical. It would be a great model to print in two halves and glue together. As a 3D Modeler, I could easily pull this model into something like Blender and break in half that way. But, I could also save time and just do it through my slicer! : )
Cutting in Half – Simplify3D
In Simplify3D, anything that is below your build plate will get ignored by the printer. So in the case of this gun, I would want to lower it down so half of it is above the build plate and half is below. The steps would be:
First off, it is helpful to see the build plate while you are working. If yours is not displaying in your Simplify3D, click on Prepare to Print and check the Build Table under Show In Preview.
Next we need to figure out how far we want to lower our model. Simplify3D makes that easy for us as well. Double click on your model and in the information panel under the Change Scaling section, we will get a reference of the exact measurements. In this case, we are interested in the height of the model, the Z value.
Now we have some simple math. We want to lower the model so only half of it is above the print bed. That means we want to divide the height by 2. In this example– 25.43 divided by 2 is 12.71. In our Change Position section, we want to change the Z offset to -12.71 (aka Lower the model 12.71 mm).
At this point, half of our model is under the print bed! If we click on Prepare to Print, you’ll see that only half of the model is going to be printed.
Getting the Second Half – Simplify3D
To make a whole gun, we obviously want to print two halves of the gun.
Click on your model to select it and then go to Edit->Duplicate Models and make one more copy. You may have to move it around to a better spot on the build plate. (You can also click on the Center and Arrange— but you’ll have to reset your Z Offset again for the original model).
Now we have to flip our new part. Gotcha– Watch Out for Mirroring! My first inclination was to go Mesh->Mirror Mesh and mirror my second half over the X or the Y axis. That could work for some models, but in the case where there is text on your model (like this), then that also mirrors your text and it too would be backwards. Mirroring should also be avoided if your model isn’t exactly symmetrical and has different detailings on each side.
D’oh – Backwards Text
In lieu of mirroring, you can rotate it! Double click the object and then in the Change Rotation section, rotate the model 180 over the X or Y axis. Don’t be alarmed if your object suddenly “disappears”. It’s actually underneath your print bed. You just have to adjust the Z Offset now to move the new one 12.71 above the print bed.
Slic3r
I have found Simplify3D to be absolutely 100% worth my money, but if it is not for you or your budget, you are not out of luck. You may be able to do the same thing in your slicer. As an example in open-sourced (and free) Slic3r, once you had your object on your plater, you would go to Object->Cut…
And you can pick the cutting height (and you have options to get both sides and rotate one)
And there you go, you can break your model up without modeling software like Blender. This technique’s applications are not limited to merely cutting objects in half. You can use it anytime you want to isolate out a particular section of a model to print. Say you got a 3D Hubs order and you are worried about a tricky section near the top. You don’t have to waste the time and material to run the whole print to find out that section is going to fail. Instead, you can lower your object down and do a quick print on just the troublesome section to see how it performs.
My son is named Sagan, after Carl Sagan. Over here in the U.S., that’s a unique name. As a result, he won’t be going into gas stations or souvenir shops and finding mass produced keychains and trinkets with his name on it.
Luckily, I have the MakerGear M2. I am not bound to get what someone else has decided to design and make. I can make it myself!
In my son’s pre-K class, a vast majority of the students are in the same boat– most of them have unique names. This seemed like a great use for the flexibility of a 3D Printer.
The Design
The design is not especially ground breaking. Hey, it’s a little heart pendant/medallion with a name on it. I printed most of it in ColorFabb Traffic Red PLA/PHA (duh) and then the detailing and the name are in GlowFill. One thing I have noticed with my kids is they LOVE glowing things. They love taking it into the bathroom and turning off the lights to see it glow.
Modeling – Blender
The base model I did in Blender. I started with a Bezier Curve. I used the Mirror modifier to make it symmetrical.
I converted the curve to a Mesh.
I did a little cleanup of the Vertices, by Merging a couple of oddly mirrored vertices to the center.
The detailing of my design, I wanted an outline of a heart in GlowFill. I’ve worked with hearts in the past and I knew that just scaling another heart down wasn’t going to do the trick. Inset is key to that! Scaling Versus Inset – Inset Will Give You Consistent Widths
I did an Inset of my face and did some manual cleanup of the vertices.
After that, it was just straight Extrusion to the heights I wanted.
The hook was just a cylinder subtracted from another cylinder (courtesy of the Boolean Modifier). I decided to keep the hook separate in case anyone wanted to print just straight up hearts.
At the end of my Blender session– I had two .STL files — my heart and my hook to make it a medallion.
Modeling – OpenSCAD
Although I had experimented with Python scripting for Blender roughly a year ago, OpenSCAD seemed easier and quicker for me. There is an Import command in OpenSCAD where you can pull in STL files. I went ahead and brought my Blender STL files into my OpenSCAD project and set a variable name for the “Child’s Name”. I was then able to rapidly run through and create 17 models for all my son’s classmates.
Slicing and Printing – Simplify3D and MakerGear M2
I printed on my trusty MakerGear M2. Since I have a single extruder machine, I used Simplify3D to set up two processes to print my heart:
GlowFill
From 1.1 – 1.7mm, I printed in ColorFabb GlowFill. I printed those in 0.10mm heights. Usually I have found with detailing 3 or 4 layers were sufficient. In this case, because the GlowFill was a little translucent, going up to 6 and 7 layers made sure the text appeared more crisp and white. (It also gave me a little more leeway to recover if an edge came unstuck from the build plate).
Quick Tip
And a quick tip. Sometimes parenting is harder than 3D Printing. When I printed my first batch of hearts, I was quite pleased. I showed my son and was ready for a positive response. It did not go well. I..uh… I kinda didn’t include his name in the first batch of hearts. He can read and he was quite miffed when he did not see his name. Luckily, I started an emergency print and was able to get back on his good side. But you can avoid such drama. Make sure to print your kids’ in the first batch. : )
On Thingiverse!
If you covet a heart for Valentine’s Day or a special occasion, I was able to make a Customizer on Thingiverse. Feel free to make your own.
After months of craft shows and custom orders, my very last design and print for 2015 was something for me! As soon as I received my first spool of ColorFabb GlowFill, I wanted to do an anglerfish. I’m almost done with that roll, so this seemed to be the time. And as luck would have it, PrintedSolid and reddit were running a mixed material use contest. Destiny! I designed and printed my anglerfish in BronzeFill and GlowFill on my MakerGear M2. The GlowFill parts were actually inserted into the fish and sealed in as the BronzeFill printed.
Tada! Anglerfish!
As you may expect, the GlowFill parts glow in the dark and the blacklight.
Glowing Anglerfish
Material Choices
I chose two materials for my anglerfish, both were mainly selected for aesthetic reasons:
colorFabb BronzeFill – The bulk of my print was in bronzeFill. To me, bronzeFill elevates designs. It’s heavy, so it feels expensive. It gets a sheen with sanding so it also looks expensive. I have found it to be a forgiving material as it is so easy to sand afterwards and redeem. I only had time for one print of my design before leaving for vacation. I needed a forgiving material. : ) I’ve also seen it bridge and do overhangs well, so I knew it was a good fit for my fish.
Semantics also play a little bit of a role. Bronze pulls with it connotations of the Bronze Age– gladiators and warriors. Bronze is a material of badasses. Anglerfish withstand immense pressures down there at the bottom of the ocean. They warrant a badass material.
colorFabb GlowFill – And GlowFill was a no brainer. To really do justice to an anglerfish, I needed him to glow. : )
Design
I designed my angerfish in Blender. I designed cavities and supports inside the fish to hold our GlowFill pieces. That way, I could insert the pieces and let the rest of the print seal them in.
Model in Blender
Cavities Inside the Fish to Hold GlowFill Details.
So for example, the glowing eye detail. Inside the head of the fish, I have a little rectangular holder to keep that detail in place. I wanted the pupil of the eyes to remain dark, however, so that glowing eye detail had a circle cut out so the BronzeFill behind it could show through.
A View To Show the Relationship of How the GlowFill Eye Would Be Supported
Printing – GlowFill
I printed all the GlowFill pieces first. Very straight forward– 0.25mm layers, nothing super special.
Printing – BronzeFill
BronzeFill is where the thinking came in. I still printed at 0.25mm layers. Using Simplify3D, I set up nine separate processes for the BronzeFill. At the end of each process, the print would stop, the Z bed would drop 100mm allowing me to insert in the appropriate GlowFill piece(s) before starting the next process.
Preview in Simplify3D, the Blue Lines Illustrate Stopping Points
Using Layer Modifications in Simplify3D
Custom Ending Script in Simplify3D to Just Drop My Bed At the End of the Process
After Eye Detail Was Inserted
I did have a bobble. When I inserted my side panels, I noticed they were a little higher than the BronzeFill layers around it. I thought it would be safe… but it knocked my nozzle and offset the X a bit. The seam you see in the pictures is the product of that shift. Lesson learned — better safe than sorry. : )
The Bobble
I did also end up printing the little dangly do-dad on the top of the fish separately. That was unplanned, but serendipitous as the fish would have been a pain to sand with that delicate detail in the way.
Finishing
I sanded the fish with three separate grades of sand paper and I finished him off with super fine steel wool.
Lessons
I only had time for one print and I do have adjustments I would make for my next run. First off– the teeth are not worth installing during the print. It was a lot of stops in the print to insert the teeth and the sanding. My gawd, the sanding. Those teeth were just a nuisance during sanding. I did get a little thrill each time I installed a tooth and had the print seal it in, but it wasn’t worth it. Next time, I’m just going to glue the teeth in after the fact.
Secondly, I learned to decrease the height of those side GlowFill panels slightly so I don’t get my nozzle knocked. : )
Even with my little bobble, I am thrilled with my anglerfish. Love!
The le FabShop’s Wolverine Claws were making the rounds on the Internet and they looked amazing, but I did not feel compelled to print them. My husband saw them and instantly wanted some… but still I hadn’t quite worked it into my 3D Printing schedule. And then…. The 3D Printed Nerd nonchalantly mentioned in a VLOG that he printed them.
Suddenly I was swayed. And I already have grey filament in my printer from the Fun Police Sheriff’s Badge. It was destiny. So I went ahead and gave it a whirl. This was before The 3D Printing Nerd’s full video on the claws, so I was still blissfully unaware it took 3 tries to get them right. That might have deterred me, but luckily I didn’t see the video yet and luckier, my first print was a huge success.
I printed at 0.25mm layers with 10% infill. The Thingiverse instructions recommend rafts. I forgot to turn rafts on in Simplify3D, BUT knowing the brutal overhang was coming, I did glue stick the absolute heck out of my bed. That was sufficient to keep the claws stuck on the bed. I did have a minor first layer issue, so the very first layer of one of the claws was fused together in my print. I freed that up with Exacto Knife and SHEBAM. We were in business.
Sadly, my husband STILL doesn’t have the wolverine claws he desires. My four year old took one look at those things and yeah, now they are his. : )
A friend of my brother’s passed away last week. He was in his thirties, so it was an unexpected death. Last night, my sister-in-law texted to see how soon I could 3D Print something for the funeral. She wanted a Sheriff’s Badge with one request– that it simply read “Fun Police”.
Thanks to Thingiverse, OpenSCAD, and Simplify3D, I was able to turn around her request fast.
Thingiverse and OpenSCAD
Thingiverse had a lot of Sheriff Badges to choose from. I went with the design by Bichiatari. I liked the standard six star approach and bonus– it was in OpenSCAD, which I taught a class on last June! I used his base code to make some slight alterations:
I made the points of the stars spheres to give it a more three dimensional look.
I changed the font to “Rockwell Extra Bold”. I liked the look of the text and I liked how thick the letters were
And finally, I changed “Sheriff” to “Fun Police”.
Original Model
Simplify3D
Now, when I was done, the points of my stars did extend below the base of the star thanks to the spheres.
I didn’t want to print those sphere bottoms
For my first trial run, I didn’t go to the trouble of making that flat in OpenSCAD. I just flattened the bottom when I sliced in Simplify3D. I simply changed the Z offset, so the bottom part of those spheres were below my build plate, so those parts wouldn’t print. A nice handy trick.
I also felt the proportions were a little off, so I scaled just the height of the object down so it was only 6mm high.
Hack with Simplify3D – Changed my Offset To Lower the Object Down
Rev 2
The first print was okay— and I bet they would have been satisfied with it. I didn’t like how the “E” at the end of “POLICE” printed out and I thought it would be a better use of real estate to make the letters bigger.
The First Print Had a Messed Up E
So I went back into OpenSCAD and made some changes:
I put “FUN” on one line of text and “POLICE” on another
I made the text bigger.
I resized my object down to 4mm high
Finally, I went ahead and chopped off the bottom of those spheres so it would all lay flat
For those interested in the code, the full OpenSCAD code is below.
As far as the second print— I liked it much better. I used the MakerGear Silver PLA filament.
Second Print
OpenSCAD Code
//I thought the current height was too chunky,
//so scale it down to 4mm high after everything
//else is done
resize([0,0,4])
difference () {
//Rotate the star 30 Degrees, so it is easier to visualize
//and place the text
rotate([0,0,30])
union () {
//The first two cylinders are our star
//3 sided cylinder is a triangle
cylinder(r=40, h=5,$fn=3);
rotate([0,0,180])
cylinder(r=40, h=5,$fn=3);
translate([37,0,2])
//Spheres at each star's point
sphere(r=5, $fn=32);
translate([-37,0,2])
sphere(r=5, $fn=32);
translate([-19,33,2])
sphere(r=5, $fn=32);
translate([19,33,2])
sphere(r=5, $fn=32);
translate([-19,-33,2])
sphere(r=5, $fn=32);
translate([19,-33,2])
sphere(r=5, $fn=32);
}
//These cubes are our engraved lines
translate([-23,10,1])
cube ([50,1,4]);
translate([-23,-10,1])
cube ([50,1,4]);
//This is our text for engraving
scale([0.7,0.7,1])
translate([-30,3,1])
linear_extrude([0,0,5])
text(" FUN ", font="Rockwell Extra Bold");
scale([0.7,0.7,1])
translate([-30,-9,1])
linear_extrude([0,0,5])
text("POLICE", font="Rockwell Extra Bold");
//Finally this cube is to cut everything off at the bottom to make it flat
translate([-50,-50,-5])
cube([100,100,5]);
}
A week later, my design has its first Remix! A gentleman from the Ukraine adapted it into a keychain! And interestingly enough, he printed it in a single color… and it looks fantastic!
Just like the Mill House Museum Ornament, I’m glad to see my colored design translates well to a single color! : )
When I was preparing for Occoquan Arts and Craft Fair, behind the scenes I was somewhat worried the organizers wouldn’t perceive my work as handmade. I had these preemptive unspoken arguments queuing up in my head. I collected up examples (and photos) of all the hands-on work– the modeling, the trial and error, the bed prep, the filament changes, the sanding (my gazebo ornament– I have to sand in between each and every slat in the railing- 70 in total), the painting, the sealing, adding split rings and keychains. I had a point all lined up at how Etsy considers 3D printing handmade.
This whole process was quite similar to all the practice arguments and the State Code passage I memorized in case anyone ever gave me flak about breastfeeding. In both cases, I never had any hassle (which doesn’t mean people aren’t hassled).
But should the tide ever turn, I had thought the giant gash in my thumb would be another good testament to the hands-on nature of 3D Printing.
If it wasn’t hands-on, how did I get that injury, huh? Huh? Huh? : )
And this tweet from PrintedSolid shows that I’m not an anomaly. Heads up– his picture includes the blood.
Over the summer, NASA released a FREE 3D Printable model of the Curiosity Rover. Now that the Fall Occoquan Arts and Craft Show is behind me, I had time to do a “fun” print. NASA had two versions to choose from – detailed version estimated to take 11 hours and a Simplified version, estimated to take 2 1/2 hours. I chose to go with the “Simplified” version.
I decided to break the print up into two prints. I did most of the parts in MakerGear Silver PLA filament (I did have to rotate some of the parts in Simplify3d before printing) and then I did the six tires in MakerGear Black PLA Filament. I printed at 0.25 layer height with 20% infill.
The final rover came out FANTASTIC! An easy print with easy assembly. NASA even put in their own rafts and supports which worked wonderfully. I am impressed how easy it was. Great job, NASA!
