{"id":886,"date":"2025-12-28T17:42:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T17:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/?page_id=886"},"modified":"2025-12-28T17:43:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T17:43:52","slug":"faqs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/faqs\/","title":{"rendered":"FAQs"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Does TGAW Stand For?
\n<\/strong>TGAW stems from my childhood. When I was young, one day my cousin took a little notepad and kept furiously signing his name, ripping off the signed sheet, signing the next page, ripping that on off, and so on. He littered my grandparents’ den with tons of little paper with his scrawled signature. He said he was practicing signing autographs. I still have one of those practice signatures and after his surname, he added “The Great and Best”. I wanted a fancy title too, so I dubbed myself “Vicky Sawyer (Maiden Name), The Great and Wonderful”. Back in the day, letters and pen-pals were still a thing.\u00a0 My cousin would write to me and sign his letters “The Great and Best”. I would write to him and sign my letters, “The Great and Wonderful”.\u00a0 As time went on, we started to abbreviate and The Great and Wonderful became TGAW.\u00a0 As an adult, TGAW is typically an unclaimed and very easy handle to snag. I have also owned the four-letter TGAW.com domain since 1996.<\/p>\n

What is Up with the Gray Hair?
\n<\/strong>The premature gray hair runs in my family. My father started greying when he was 17 years old. It hit me a little bit later in life. I was a consistent dyer until 2012 when my father fell ill. One day I looked in the mirror, looked over the grey hair and thought, “I got this from him. Why am I trying to hide him?” I stopped coloring my hair. Interestingly enough, I now get more hair compliments from strangers than I ever did when I paid for hair coloring.\u00a0 Then again, I also get mistaken as my kids’ grandma. \ud83d\ude42
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\n<\/strong>How Did You Get Started 3D Printing?
\n<\/strong>My 3D Printing journey began with BREASTFEEDING! When my second son was an infant, a friend of mine started selling Origami Owl lockets. The concept is you buy a glass locket and then you buy charms to put inside it to \u201ctell your story.\u201d At the time, a big part of my story was breastfeeding. Alas, Origami Owl did not have a breastfeeding charm, but that is the beauty of 3D printing! I am not bound to buy what other people decided to manufacture and market. I can make what *I* want. I taught myself Blender (with a huge shout out to all the ample tutorials made by the Blender community, particularly Jonathan Williamson) and made myself a very simple model based on the Public Domain International Symbol of Breastfeeding. I didn\u2019t own a 3D Printer, but no worries on that front, not when there are 3D printing service companies out there like\u00a0Shapeways<\/a>. I ordered my print and about a week later, my Origami Owl locket was sporting a breastfeeding charm. And just like that, I was hooked.<\/p>\n

In March of 2015 my family surprised me for my birthday with a 3D Printer of my very own\u2013 a MakerGear M2. I *thought* I loved 3D printing before, but boy, I had no idea!<\/p>\n

A decade later, I’m still in love with 3D Printing and the wonderful community that surrounds it. Since 2017, I have been a board member of 3DPrintopia<\/a> (formerly known as the East Coast RepRap Festival).<\/p>\n

What Tools Do You Use?
\n<\/strong>Printers<\/span>
\nI got my start on a MakerGear M2 which I sadly had to retire after 9 years of use. Over the years, I’ve printed on a MakerGear M3-ID, Creality CR-10, Wanhao Duplicator i3, Prusa MK3, BambuLabs A1 Mini, and a CocoaPress.<\/p>\n

Slicers<\/span>
\nI was a heavy user of Simplify 3D and a big fan of their multiple processes for many years. Nowadays, I more commonly use PrusaSlicer and BambuStudio. I teach classes on Cura.<\/p>\n

Modeling Programs<\/span>
\nI most commonly use Blender, but on occassion I use OpenSCAD and TinkerCAD. I have taught classes on all three.<\/p>\n

What is Your Favorite 3D Print?
\n<\/strong>Often, if you ask me my favorite 3D Model, it is going to be the most recent\u00a0 model I completed.\u00a0 One that does stand the test of time is my 2019 Maker Faire Nova project. It was a “Needlepoint Stained Glass Heron<\/a>” that combined 3D Printing with 131 hand-stitched plastic canvas panels. It still hangs in my office and I still catch myself staring at it and taking in all the textures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Does TGAW Stand For? TGAW stems from my childhood. When I was young, one day my cousin took a little notepad and kept furiously signing his name, ripping off the signed sheet, signing the next page, ripping that on off, and so on. He littered my grandparents’ den with tons of little paper with … Continue reading FAQs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-886","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":891,"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/886\/revisions\/891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tgaw.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}