
knotwork + strapwork

work as if you live in the early days of a better nation
From the box of the rather excellent Creality Ender 3 3d printer I just bought from Digitmakers.
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3d files here — egg.zip — or get them on Thingiverse: Egg by scruss – Thingiverse
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Thingiverse: Hard Disk Fridge Magnet Grip .
I’m still a sucker for vase mode/spiral contour prints … this one made in OpenSCAD:
Thanks to Andrew at ProtoLab for the loan of the PrintrBot. I’ve got a demo at UofT on Wednesday, and my Reach 3D isn’t exactly portable. Yeah, I should probably get a cheap Monoprice printer to lug around to occasional demos, but I’d need to find a donor …
Thingiverse‘s Customizer allows users to customize suitable OpenSCAD models without knowing any OpenSCAD code. While it does have some documentation to help developers along, there’s still a lot of guesswork.
I released my first (working!) Customizer design the other week: Parametric Finger Pen Holder (Vertical). While the docs are the primary source of developer information, you might want to know the following:
I use a FlashForge Creator Pro 3D printer for work. It’s okay, but I wouldn’t recommend it: you have to manually level the print bed (ಠ_ಠ), you can’t print via USB, it pretends to be a knock-off MakerBot (same USB ID: naughty naughty) and its slicing software is a mishmash of GPL and other code all bundled up in one proprietary lump. It also doesn’t used g-code, which is a bit poo.
I have been having endless trouble will tall prints losing adhesion, falling over, and leaving a noodly mess everywhere. I’ve fixed it by making some manual changes to the config file, the process as described here: Flashprint advanced print settings by editing the default.cfg configuration file. What I changed was:
[brim] enable = true # valid range {true, false}, default is false # CHANGED extruderId = 0 # valid range {0, 1}, default is 0 margin = 10.0 # valid range [1.0, 10.0], default is 5.0 # CHANGED layerCnt = 2 # valid range [1, 5], default is 1 # CHANGED speed = 60 # valid range [10, 200], default is 60 excludeInterior = true # valid range {true, false}, default is false # CHANGED
This makes a colossal double-width, double thickness brim around the prints so that they will not topple. I’m very happy with the results so far.
Rather than mucking about with config files, if you enable “Expert Mode” in Flashprint’s preferences:
Then you can make a brim that stops prints coming off the print bed.
And lo, there was much rejoicing …
This is one of those toys that you whirl around on a piece of string and it makes a chirping sound like a flock of sparrows. I have no idea what they’re called, so I called it birb_chirper.
Printer: Reach 3D
Rafts: Doesn’t Matter
Supports: Doesn’t Matter
Resolution: 0.3 mm
Infill: 0%
Notes: This is a thin-walled model, so use at least two shells and no infill for smooth walls.
Take a piece of thin string about 1 metre long (I used micro-cord, very fine paracord), pass it through the hole in the tip, then tie off a jam knot that’s big enough to stop in the hole in the top but still pass back through the slot in the side. Now whirl the thing around fast by the string, and it should start to chirp.
This is intended for the amusement of small children and the annoyance of adults.
The tip of this thing is an ogee curve. I’ve included my library for creating simple ogee and ogive profiles in OpenSCAD.
// ogive-ogee example // scruss, 2018 use <ogive_and_ogee.scad>; ogive(20, 35); translate([0, -5])text("ogive(20,35)", size=3); translate([30, 0])ogee(20, 35); translate([30, -5])text("ogee(20,35)", size=3);
Download: Thingiverse —birb_chirper by scruss. Local copy: birb_chirper.zip
When both clips broke within a week on my Timbuk2 messenger bag, I knew I had to do something. This coincided with me fixing my 3d printer (it was the extruder feed: it was too loose all along!), so I was able to prototype a new clip.
The files are on Thingiverse: Messenger Bag Replacement 25 mm Webbing Clip, or there’s a local copy here: Messenger_Bag_Replacement_25_mm_Webbing_Clip.zip.
Update, 2017-12-03: So of course, as soon as I show this to someone, they ask: “Can it stand up like a display case?†It can now!
STL file and OpenSCAD source for rev 2: VCF-6502-badge.zip
(licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 CA)
Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2687960
Rev 1: This worked better than I could have hoped, and so the 6502 40th Anniversary Computer Badge now has a snug-fitting case to prevent shorting, and to keep the batteries in place.
Digital (aka DEC) used to make some very solid minicomputers back when a minicomputer was fridge-sized and people were still building nuclear power stations to be controlled by them. The Raspberry Pi Zero is a very mini computer indeed, and in USB gadget mode running SimH it makes a nice little emulation platform.
The case is from Thingiverse: One Piece Raspberry Pi Zero + Camera Case (with GPIO) by Superrei, but with the DEC PDP logo in relief on the top.
DEC minis were famous for their arrays of blinkenlights. The Pocket DEC Pretender, not so much: it has one tiny green light that flickers a bit now and again:
But it’s a genuinely useful (for my values of useful) emulation platform. Here it is pretending to be a PDP-8, running BASIC under OS-8:
(background in case pictures woven in Toronto by Deftly Weft)