Back to Cooling Fans

Well, the air pump cooling system I installed a while back really wasn't performing as well as I expected. Aaand in the process of adjusting it, I cracked off the fragile air pipe. So, I'm going to try out the stock cooling fans that came with the new hot end.

While I'm doing that, I'm adding a ring of LEDs (originally built as an accent light for cars, and therefore conveniently already designed for the same 12 volts my printer runs on).

It's pretty bright!

Maybe a little too bright. It washes out the camera. I'll see if I can adjust that later.

Mother and Child

I wound up giving this one to my mother-in-law, who is a nurse-midwife. My wife wants a vapor-smoothed version.

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1541512

TB-406 Insoluables Tailings Tank

This is a project that's actually tied into my day-job.

One of my projects at work is to replace a steel tank at a mining facility. I worked with one of our staff designers on the tank drawings, and the project manager, who had seen my printer during the "Bring Your Kids To Work Day" commissioned me to print it.

The designer was able to export the model from AutoDesk as a .stl. I printed a prototype as a solid model, but did not really like how it turned out. Several of the connections were too small, and the top layers didn't print well on top of the 10% infill I specified.

I printed the final version in two parts. I used TinkerCAD to separate the roof plate from the rest of the vessel, and printed the main body with 0% infill and 0 top layers. I spent a couple hours editing the model of the top plate to make everything thick enough to print, mostly by changing I beams into solid rectangles.

Overall, I think it turned out pretty well:

My Project Manager was very pleased!

Incidentally, this is a 25.4:1 scale model of the real tank. That's because the original model was in inches, and my printing software defaults to millimeters!

For size context:

Fire Safety

I'm working towards getting my printer set up for longer, unattended prints, so I can make larger models.

My new hot end came with a thermal fuse built in, to make thermal run-away impossible. I have since added thermal fuses to the heat lamp and to the heated bed and power supply.

I also installed some passive fire extinguishers (in addition to the traditional fire extinguisher I keep near the door)

Next step will be adding a relay board to the raspberry pi that controls the printer, so I can remotely control power to all the heated elements and the entire printer.

Raspberry Pi Cases

I've been customizing some raspberry pi cases for my home automation hobby, and they have gotten some nice feedback on Reddit and Thingiverse.

I started with someone else's design, then started removing features I didn't want:

Then I moved on to adding logos that I wanted. I found another design, and started hacking away at it. First up was an OpenHAB logo. It took a couple tries to get something I liked.

Once I had that model sorted, it was fairly easy to swap out logos, and I quickly added designs for HomeSeer:

And for HomeAssistant:

You can check out my designs on Thingiverse, if you like.

Human Nudt15 (MTH2) Protein Model

My sister-in-law discovered the structure of this protein during her research. I printed it out for her.

We were able to work together to follow this walk-through on converting the protein model into something I could print.

The protein is actually two halves that work together. I first printed a prototype of the whole thing in one piece:

Then I printed the two halves separately to see how well they fit together outside of a virtual model:

At that point, I knew they would fit together, and I knew roughly how big I needed to print them to get all the detail in with my printer's resolution.

However, I wanted to go fancy: I wanted the two pieces to magnetically snap together.

I modified the 3D file to have a gap for a magnet, then inserted the magnet at the last layer with the gap open, while the printer was still in operation:

The magnet was solidly in place in the final product. You can see another magnet hanging from the finished part here:

I then did the same procedure with the mating half:

Et Voila, they mated nicely!

But I wanted to go fancier still. I printed these in ABS so I could use Acetone Vapor Smoothing to really give these models a glossy sheen.

I bought an old slow cooker at my local Goodwill, and subjected both models to hot acetone vapor for about 10 minutes.

They came out looking pretty slick!

Holographic Cortana Appliance

I just saw this really cool project.

I'm gonna build one.

It might take me a year.

Use this tag to follow my version of this project: Alexa Hologram