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:

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!

Venus Box

Here's a clever little design. It prints as six pieces that are assembled later:

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1559232

Prints for Coworkers

I printed off a few things for some coworkers:

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:73489

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:223393

All printed in PETG. There was ZERO warping on that big flat bottom of that last one. I'm very poud of that.

Dry Erase Marker Holder

I remixed a design on Thingiverse to make this:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2287304

First time I have remixed a design like that.

Charizard - More PETG

Man, I'm liking this PETG. There's a fair amount of stringing, but you can actually bend and flex those wings!

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1716369

Nintendo Switch Stand - First Print in PETG!

Now that Kid's Day was successfully complete, I was ready to experiment. I broke out my first roll of PETG - bright orange. I printed out a little Charmander to make sure things looked ok:

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:323038

Then I knocked out the Nintendo Switch Stand:

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2164088

The customer (a dude at my office) was pleased!

A Few Gifts

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1510605

Source: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2238443

Eggbot for Easter

I made an Eggbot to decorate Easter Eggs!

The first eggbot I saw was the one made by the fine folks at EvilMadScientist.com. It shares a lot of design principles with 3D printers, and I wanted to make one ever since I saw it. This year, I finally remembered to get started in time.

I found a design I liked on Thingiverse, and ordered the control board from EvilMadScientist.com for $50. I had all the other parts already, although I later got some better springs and bearings.

Overall, it worked great, and was quite a hit!

Oh Yeah: We're having another boy later this year!

Chessbot Hero - White

I finally got around to doing the white version of the Chessbot Hero.

I am really disliking this white ABS filament. It's not sticking well (at all!) to the build plate, and I had to up the extrusion rate by 12% relative to the black ABS filament to get things looking half-way decent. Additionally, it seems relatively brittle. I spent several hours this weekend working on adjusting the printer to get a successful print.

I printed this one at its original scale, and it actually snapped together pretty well (one of the knights cracked in the process, unfortunately). This one can actually stand, unlike the black version, which I printed with a 1.5 scaling factor:

Original file here.
Nozzle: 220C
Bed: 100C
Chamber: 50C
Layer height: 0.2mm
Speed: 40mm/s
Time: 6 hours
Material: Hatchbox ABS

Unfortunately, the next print I attempted resulted in a jammed nozzle. 

Printer is Running Again!

Unfortunately, I needed the kick-in-the-butt of my Dad coming out for a visit to prompt me to tear down and fix my printer.

I pulled off the heated-enclosure brackets and lifted the bed in order to access the stepper motors, then put locktite on all the motor pulleys.

I also worked on the heat source for the heated chamber. Having two 150 watt bulbs right next to each other and inside a metal box concentrated the heat onto the top plate worse than I had realized. Here's the damage, viewed from below with the bulbs and fixtures removed:

To prevent this from happening again, I covered the bottom of the top plate with aluminum tape:

Later on, I'll clean it up and add some ceramic insulation around the bulb fixtures (I have to find it again - it got lost in my sea of stuff).

After a quick re-assembly (and some really quick calibration), I ran the file for "knurled bolt and nut", this time with white filament. All things considered, it turned out pretty well, though not as nice as the previous two I made.

All in all, it was some good male bonding, and Dad took the bolt and nut home as a souvenir!

Pencil Holder - Organic

This one is for my wife:

If you look closely, you can see there was a ton of stringing. Stringing is usually caused by a nozzle that's too hot, retraction settings that are too low, or a combination of the two. I'll have to adjust those on the next print, because it was a pain in the butt to clean up all those protrusions:

Original file here.

Nozzle: 230C
Bed: 100C
Chamber: 50C
Layer height: 0.2mm
Speed: 40mm/s
Time: 15 hours
Material: Hatchbox ABS

Edit: For comparison: