Scratch is a web-based graphical programming system designed to get young people interested in programming. More info: scratch.mit.edu/

Since Scratch 2.0 is out and Scratch day is on May 18th, I decided to do a medallion to give away to kids that are interested in programming.

There is a small hole if you want to make a necklace or attach it to something like a bookbag.

The Purple one was printed as fast as my machine would handle and shows a good bit of lash. Print it a little slower than you usually would print and it should be fine.

I used the SVG images of the characters from the MIT site and made bumpmaps to get the 3d shape I wanted. Probably not the best modelling job but it works.

Posting this up here, I'm still in the early stages of trying to chop it up and print it. I supposed one could cut it in half, or take the wings off or other methods. I leave it here whole since I've not figured out the best way to print it yet.

Converted the Solidworks to see if it would be printable by a DIY printer. The size is 500x500 if you rotate it 45 degrees which won't fit on most DIY printers. Yet another reason for me to build a Large Format Printer. I thought it was an interesting shape so I decided to make it a derivative.

Nothing protects your horde of presents like a dragon with a nice toothy holiday grin. Includes a small loop for hanging.

For my compatriots to the north that are in for a rough patch with the impending storm.

Light your darkest hour! [Or longer with a newer battery ;-) ]

If you don't have candles but you *do* have stuff for throwies here is a slightly better way to light the room.

I also thought it would be useful for lighting decorations and projects. It is the same size diameter as a standard tea-light/votive so it will fit in most places you would use one of those. I find the off-the-shelf electric tea-lights aren't bright enough to do anything but this is quite nice.

We've had a few of these lit for 3-4 hours a day for about a week now and they still seem pretty bright.

I didn't notice there was already a version of this in one piece, apologies. But since this version is different I decided to post it anyway. The two pieces of the coin put together, one version standing with a flat on the bottom. Works well with a raft, which if you left a bit in place after clean up, makes up for the flat. Printed fine at .075mm layer height.

Model has the same detail thickness as the original.

"2 Skull" version has the skull on both sides TwoFace style.
There is also a necklace version.

Used openSCAD to cut the heart from the dragon model.

OpenSCAD didn't want to work with the full resolution version of the dragon so I trimmed it down a bit in meshlab. (dragon_lowres_ascii.stl) I used the heart thing thingiverse.com/thing:6190 to clip the heart from the original model. Then clipped the bottom of the heart so it could be used as the heart for the final print.

"Inspired from" Thing 5570. thingiverse.com/thing:5570

I threw this together a while ago and have used it a good bit. I kinda forgot about it because I now use mostly PLA and the marker thing doesn't work well on PLA. It works very well on ABS though.

This holds two standard Sharpie markers (i.e. "fine" not "ultra fine") and should clear a standard Cupcake's roof hole. I've no idea about the ToM but I expect it should work as well. I originally made a similar thing for one marker but it didn't color the filament very much resulting in very light coloring. Two markers actually tints the filament enough to be noticable. Three would be better, and it follows that 4 would be better-er. I suppose I could throw a three pronged one together. Might be a good exercise to make parametric in openSCAD. I think a holder that bristles with Sharpies might colorate stuff pretty good.

The image with the two parts shown is close to how it really looks. One is natural ABS the other is natural ABS colored with two black Sharpies. The final color is what I'd call a dark gray. The color is throughout the part and fairly even. Long prints you do notice the color getting lighter as the markers run out. After a six hour print the two sharpies were getting low. Most colors come out light to dark pastel colored.

I've done many turtles this way. thingiverse.com/thing:4178 The turtles shown are single blue marker, single green marker and the weird looking one is natural (clear) PLA with a single red marker, then a single blue marker. The red just made the PLA look over-cooked orange, the blue wasn't too bad but not as nice as the ABS.

Note: There is some solvent in the markers that allows the ink to soak into the ABS. If you rub a Sharpie on ABS then break the filament you will see what I mean. That said, if you leave the markers in this rig in contact with the stationary filament it will (fairly quickly actually) cause this filament to shear off cleanly at that point. I've not noticed any weakness of the printed colored parts compared to natural parts. I expect the solvent is boiled off in the hot end.

I decided to make a version of the sword from the 80's cartoon. As an exercise for using sketchup and for a present for a friend's birthday. Just in time for the impending "event" (T-cats reboot), this Friday.

I spent a lot of time on the model. I started with a few models from 3dwarehouse. None were very good for printing, or scaled well for actually holding. All of them relied on textures for details that wouldn't show up after printing.

Initially the model came out too small. Then it didn't fit the hand well. Once it was sized and shaped correctly I had to work out how it could be chopped up to fit my build envelope. The latest version has location holes to help line up parts and glue together. It seems that the blade has benefited greatly from the interior channel. Even without the filament the blade is stronger.

I'm working on another version with an insert for the eye and an insertion slot for the blade. So that the whole sword can be printed by colors: grip, blade, eye, jewel.

Finished sword is about 45 inches (1145mm) from pommel to tip.
Oh and time for print @ 30mm/s min layer time of 20 secs:
6x blade pieces 5 hours
blade tip 1.75 hours (cool min layer makes it take a long time)
eye holder 2.5 hours
2x grip pieces 2.75 hours
pommel pieces 2 hours
total about 14 hours

Please let me know if there are any issues.
I'm aware that looking through the hilt only gives you the "Sight of Regular Seeing." Working on that.
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Update V2:
Added an update eye holder piece, with an insertion hole for the blade, the blade can be printed (in an optional extra color) and sanded/cleaned/finished then inserted into the holder. The insertion point's clearance hasn't been tested, but should be close. Might need sanding cleaning for the blade to fit.

Also the new holder has inserts for the eye and cat emblem, which can be printed in two colors using the whole pause and swap method when it first starts printing the upper portion. This is also not printed yet but should be good. I'll print these and repport back later today.

So for this, obviously instead of eye-holder.stl you'd use eye-holderV2 and the inserts. One of each or two of the same one.

Switching to work in progress.

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Update V3:

Found a small geometry problem in the eye holder as well as the fact that the thin ring (around the eye/cat image) was too thin to print nicely so changes to the inserts as well. Apologies if this print is too tall, I looked up the build envelope for a stock cupcake and fixed the model to stay under the published height of 130mm but if you have trouble with that use the V3 eye holder and the new shorter blade pieces.

Removed the original eye holder to reduce confusion. Any combined print can be exported from the sketchup.

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Update V4:

Added the center channel for using threaded rod or double ended threaded studs. The hole is a 3mm and can be drilled out to a larger dim if need be. I've left the other registration holes for those that prefer to use that.

Also reversed the extrusion on the cat-insert to get around skeinforge's refusal to fill thin features. Prints *much* nicer. If you've already printed one, this one is a big improvement (see photo).

Let people know that the "situation" is "normal."

This is a high resolution model of the A-OK hand gesture (Or a salute if you are from United Macedonia) I'm not responsible for any other meanings than the "Okay" one.