Tag Archives: GlowFill

Print Diary

Print Diary Catch Up – Business Trip

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Phew. I was on a business trip to Wisconsin last week and I returned home to a two year old with strep throat. Needlesstosay, 3D Modeling and 3D Printing were not on the forefront of my mind. But here’s what I’ve been up to:

Business License!
I got my business license from the Town of Occoquan. The Town Clerk confirmed my suspicion. I’m the first 3D Printing business in Occoquan. : ) Now to submit my application for the Fall Craft Fair!

Etsy
I’ve slowly been getting an Etsy site ready to go. My goal is to have everything I’m selling at the Craft Fair, also on Etsy. This is probably going much slower than necessary. I suspect I’m being overly picky about pictures. :/

Glowing Pumpkin Medallions
I have this awesome moving part product on Shapeways – The Dial-O-Lantern. It prints assembled and allows people to configure their Jack-O-Lantern face. It was a hit with children at the Maker Faires. And six children got to design faces for the Dial-O-Lantern (via a contest).

National Maker Faire - Army of Dial-O-Lanterns

The price point is super high though ($50), particularly for children. I want to do something specifically for children at the Craft Fair. I grew up in Occoquan. I remember being a little girl perusing the vendor booths looking for kid stuff.

So I tried to brainstorm something that would be fun for kids at the craft fair at a much lower price point, a kid-friendly price point. I came up with glowing pumpkin medallions.

3D Printing - Glowing Pumpkin Pendant - Sketch and Final (Far)

Without moving parts, they don’t need the fancy SLS printers of Shapeways. I print them on my MakerGear M2. The bottom in green, the middle in ColorFabb GlowFill, and the top in orange. The facial features are carved out of the orange, so the GlowFill shines through in all its glory. I could print a whole plethora of face combinations and still invite kids to customize them at the Craft Fair. It would be easy to have them draw faces and carved them out of the pumpkin.

3D Printing - Glowing Pumpkin Pendant - Standard Face - Before And After

Best part– I think I can price it in the single digits and still make a good margin. : )

Redwing Blackbird (Agelaius Phoeniceus)
A fan of my Baltimore Oriole requested a Redwing Blackbird. I managed to model that during my business trip and print it when I returned home.

3D Printing - Redwing Blackbird

3D Modeling, 3D Printing

Print Diary – July 29th – Monarch Butterfly and Glowing Cthulhu

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Victory with the Monarch Butterfly
As I mentioned yesterday, I was having some trouble adapting the Public Domain Monarch Butterfly model by Liz Havlin. Although I have been 3D modeling for about 18 months, I was having some trouble achieving what I wanted– I wanted the holes of the butterfly to not be holes. I wanted the sections I wanted to be orange to be 2mm high and the sections I wanted to be white to be 2.3 mm high.
Unfortunately, I was introducing all sorts of manifold issues along the way. One day, I may look back on this and laugh at myself and my “silly ways”, but for now here’s what I ended up doing that actually worked for me.

I was able to easily make a solid butterfly that I extruded up to 2mm high– so I had my orange all set. For the white, I:

  1. Highlighted the vertices of the hole I wanted to fill.
  2. Hit the Duplicate button to make copies of those vertices.
    Monarch Butterfly - Duplicate Vertices
  3. I hit escape (those new vertices were selected).
  4. Then I went to Mesh->Vertices->Separate->Selection. This move those vertices to their own object, which I filled in as a face and then extruded up 0.3mm.
    Monarch Butterfly - Seperate Menu Options
  5. I ended up with a bunch of 0.3mm high cylinders that I added to the solid butterfly (that was 2.0 mm high) and the hollow butterfly which was 0.7 mm high (making my black outline 0.4mm high)

    Monarch Butterfly - New Solid Cylinders

The colors are in the same height and order as the Baltimore Oriole (Orange – 2mm, White 0.3mm, Black 0.4mm), so I can print butterflies and orioles together.

Again, with future modeling knowledge I may look back and scoff at my approach. Nonetheless, I have my butterfly… and he’s beautiful!

3D Printing - Monarch Butterfly in Action

3D Printing - Monarch Butterfly Magnet

Glowing Cthulhu Coaster
Another project I tackled was a lot easier. I have a little Cthulhu cutout I modelled for my “Glowing Cthulhu Pumpkin” on Shapeways.

Cthulhu Pumpkin in Hand and Glowing

In the case of the pumpkin, an LED inside provides the light. I decided to see what ColorFabb’s GlowFill could do. I went ahead and took that same cut out I drew and modelled and carved it out of a small beveled cube to make a coaster. I printed the first 2mm in GlowFill and then the top in a solid color. I am pleased with the result. Not only does Cthulhu glow, but the border around the coaster glows as well. A win.

3D Printing - Glowing Cthulhu Coaster (Blue) - Before After

Filament, Shapeways

This is How I Become A Hoarder

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So I’m not much of a shopper. I rarely buy clothes. I’m typically at the mercy of whatever garments various relatives give me as gifts. Luckily, I have found they tend to have better taste than I. All my nice clothes come from other people.

When I started 3D modeling and 3D printing, there was a bit of a paradigm shift. Suddenly I had things I coveted– prints from Shapeways… of my own design. And now that we have the MakerGear M2, there is a new phylum of purchases in the mix.

Filament.

I’m really into filament at the moment. At the National Maker Faire, I was helping out the Shapeways booth and it just so happened Printed Solid was nearby with the bronzeFill I had been coveting…on sale…with no shipping fees. I bought it, just in time to print a bust of my father-in-law for Father’s Day. I was instantly in love with the material.

My fate was further sealed when I learned to do two colored prints on our single extruder machine.

Well now I wanted MORE colors for the ideas brewing in my head. And as luck would have it, Printed Solid had a big sale to celebrate their new website. Well I couldn’t just let that pass me by. “Oh I’ll just order one,” I thought to myself. I decided to get the GlowFill my son and I had tried out the week before. Just like bronzeFill. Instant love.

3D Printing - Fun with GlowFill
I placed an order for GlowFill. And then like five minutes later, I placed another order. That’s how fast I found more things (4 more things to be exact) that I coveted. That shipment has arrived, but I still yearn for NinjaFlex, WoodFill, a wider nozzle to better work with WoodFill, hdGlass, green PLA, purple PLA, on and on. I Still Want MORE!

The comedian Amy Schumer aptly described how she eats popcorn— the progression from “oh, I’ll just have a little” to “Gah!” and shoveling it in your mouth en masse.

That can easily become me and filament. : )