I have a friend who wanted a regular pentagon template for cutting fabric. She wanted lots of copies of the same pentagon shape but was worried that a standard cardstock or cardboard template would get eroded over time by the rotary cutter. This pentagon comes in two main pieces (each printable on a Replicator) plus a handle and should be able to withstand a good amount of abuse.

Maybe kids can use this for tracing and art projects, but beyond that, it may be of limited utility to most folks.

OpenSCAD source files are in the zip.

In an effort to feed the cats consistent amounts, without overfeeding, I needed a 1/4-cup measuring cup. It felt silly to buy a whole pack of measuring cups just for the one, especially with a Replicator in the other room. I decided to design a measuring cup, instead. And while I was doing the math for the quarter-cup variant, it's easy enough to parameterize for other sizes.

Go ahead and pick one of the predefined sizes (from 1/8 cup to 1 cup, in 1/8-cup increments) or pick "Custom" and enter some number of milliliters for anything in between.

The design of each cup is such that the cup's width and height are equal. This better facilitates nesting them within one another, though the actual nestability is ultimately based on which sizes you have and how thick you make the wall.

This is version 2 of the measuring cup (though the first public release). The original quarter-cup model had been in use for about a year until the handle broke. This version has a thicker, more stylized, handle plus added strain relief.

More information on my blog at: netninja.com/2013/03/02/choose-your-own-measuring-cup/ ‎

This Monogram Cube is inspired by the cover art of Douglas Hofstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach." There are parameters for (up to) three letters and a typeface. The generated cube, if looked at from one of three angles, displays one of the letters.

Open this 3D model in Customizer to select your own letters.

More information is on my blog: netninja.com/2013/02/25/a-monogrammed-cube-for-you/

This is a set of six game tokens (with some alternate designs) and a board marker for the game You Only Die Once (YODO).

Some friends participated in the Global Game Jam, a sort of 48-hour hackathon focused on game development. They developed a board game, augmented by an iPad app (for scoring and narrative), but needed six tokens and one time marker. They contacted me to design and print the game pieces on a Sunday afternoon.

They gave me six illustrations (used on the cards) to represent the six Fates that players control: hope, conflict, love, loss, privilege, and health. They also needed a timepiece-like marker to indicate the current position on the board. I built up the designs in OpenSCAD, sent photo progress as I went, and they picked them up that evening.

It was a good challenge because it took me out of my normal design-for-myself mode and threw in a time limit.

Although I haven't yet gotten a chance to play the game, it looks amazing. Learn more about their adventures during creation on the live blog archives at playyodo.tumblr.com/ or watch the overview video at youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jDdhXUjYSyE

As per Global Game Jam rules, these pieces are being released under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 free license.

I take a lot of notes on index cards and in pocket notebooks. This little index card "bleacher" gives me a place on the desk to display my current to-do list as well as an organizer for blank cards, completed cards, notebooks, and whatnot.

The parametric OpenSCAD source file is attached, in case you want to make simple tweaks to the design measurements. The constants are all up at the top of the file.

Mr. Vegetable Head

You remember Mr. Potato Head, right? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_potato_head For me, in the 70s, it was a plastic potato with plastic eyes, arms, feet, and whatnot that would plug in to holes on the fake potato. Long before that, it was a collection of appendages with pushpins that could stick into a real potato. Safety laws got more strict, forcing them to give up the pushpins and use plastic potato bodies.

Meet Mr. Vegetable Head. He's a fun guy (not a fungi, though I suppose you could use a mushroom as the body) that brings back the spirit of the old Mr. Potato Head. Print an assortment of appendages, supply your own fruit or vegetable, and have fun!

Disclaimer

I am not a lawyer, but I'd bet lawyers would want me to include some comments about the size and sharpness of the parts. The pegs are really small and could easily pose a choking hazard. The points are meant to penetrate small fruits and vegetables and could poke an eye out. If you print this model for the young ones, be sure they are properly supervised when they play with it.

No fruit or vegetables were wasted in the design and photographing of this kit. Everything was eventually eaten.

A Call to *Arms*

Please help make additional Mr. Vegetable Head parts. My artistic skill in the 3D realm is, perhaps, not the greatest. We can use help with all sorts of pieces:

● More realistic arms
● More expressive eyes
● Noses
● Mouths
● Ears
● Hats?
● Anything else you can think of! Glasses? A pirate-hook arm? A variety of crazy mustaches? Monocles and top-hats?

If you make additional parts or derivatives of existing parts, be sure to post them to Thingiverse and tag them with "MrVegetableHead". thingiverse.com/tag:MrVegetableHead Let's build up an awesome collection!

All OpenSCAD source code for Mr. Vegetable Head is at github.com/BrianEnigma/3D-Mr_Vegetable_Head

A simple cat toy that can be filled with kibble. Cats kick it around, it rolls and occasionally dispenses a cat treat. It consists of a cylinder with small perforations so that the food contained within can be seen, heard, and smelled. It also contains one large hole that acts as the dispensing mechanism. The hole diameter (in relation to the size of the treats inside) and the overall length of the tube dictate how easily a piece of food will drop out.

Designed for Science Diet dry cat food. Alter the dispensing hole diameter (a constant in the OpenSCAD source) for other food/treat sizes.

OpenSCAD source files are on GitHub at github.com/BrianEnigma/3D-Cat_Food_Toy

This is a model of the WOPR computer from War Games. The model was manually reconstructed by watching the same 39 seconds of the film over and over again. I took a few liberties in the rebuild.

(1) The recessed hatches and/or the overall length are not quite to scale (there actually should be a group of four rivets after the pair of panels).

(2) The real movie prop has a bit of an overhang at the floor, whereas I made the sides go straight down to the floor for easier MakerBot and RepRap printing.

(3) I made no attempt to model das blinkenlights.

(4) I only reproduced the large text.

(5) There may be an Easter Egg inside the hollow base for fans of TRON.

Slightly more detail on my blog: netninja.com/2012/08/03/is-that-a-wopr-in-your-pocket/

Summer has finally arrived in Portland and my garden is starting to get thirsty. Every year I tend to rotate and switch the veggies I grow in the garden. Consequently, every year I need to make alterations to the irrigation system to accomodate. My irrigation system is the standard above-ground quarter-inch tubing that connects up to sprayers, drip feeds, and drop hoses—the sort of thing you find in most garden stores.

I discovered I needed a few more hose stakes to keep things tidy and in place. Instead of making the trip across town—waiting for the bus or fighting for parking at the local nursery—to buy a $1 bundle of plastic stakes, of which I only needed one or two, I decided to do what any self-respecting maker would do: design some.

My two irrigation stake designs are based on two I purchased in the past. While the styles are close to the originals, they are not direct copies. Mine are models informed by the originals, but while the originals are optimized for injection molding, these are optimized for layered printing. The OpenSCAD source files are also available and highly parameterized and commented, should you need different sizes.

In the late 1700s Eli Whitney, the designer of the cotton gin, developed muskets with interchangeable parts to help the United States military. The manufacture of objects with interchangeable parts was soon a key factor in the industrial revolution. Mr. Whitney is perhaps a little anachronistic when brought alongside castle and siege warfare, but we can use the principles he championed to build a better piece of siege machinery.

In this spirit, and on July 4th, America's Independence Day, I would like to share the Universal Catapult for Seej. (More information about Seej can be found here: zheng3.com/seej/ ). Some friends and I started to play Seej, using the basic set ( thingiverse.com/thing:24013 ). Maybe it was our technique, maybe it was the rubber bands we had on hand, but we found the rubber-band-as-pivot to be woefully inaccurate and nearly unplayable. I set off to build a better catapult.

After two rounds of revisions, I'm posting the v03 Universal Catapult design. This catapult has three main features going for it:

Tension Keys - The tension keys pull the rubber bands instead of twisting them. This leads to fewer twisty knots and better linear tension.

Adjustable Strike Plate - I only have the one strike plate for now, but in theory, you should be able to swap them out for plates of varying depth. This allows for more fine control of the angle of release.

Modular Base - Everything sits atop a base with modular holes. If you would like to design a trebuchet, ballista, or even gatling gun or death-laser, then feel free to skip reinventing the base and use this one. See the base detail image for exact measurements.

The OpenSCAD source files are also attached.

For the blog post announcing this model, read netninja.com/2012/07/04/the-universal-catapult-for-seej/

For the blog post presenting the earlier revisions that led to this one, read netninja.com/2012/08/12/the-evolution-of-a-catapult/

This is the same model as the original, but with a few changes to improve one-step printability:

- Rotated and translated to be on the build platform
- Multiplied size by 3 to be a bit more reasonable (though you may want to increase it more)
- In Blender, extruded, then chopped flat the base to normalize the concave holes and convex bumps

Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done about the chin overhang. You're likely to get some droopy plastic there. Some diagonal clippers and a set of hobby files will help a bit.

Do you like to play games with dice? Do you find yourself unannoyed with QR codes? Then we have the dice for you! Until you memorize which pattern is which digit, this is guaranteed to require a cameraphone to decode what number you rolled!

This is an update of the original Useless Dice model ( thingiverse.com/thing:22986 ). Instead of using an image editing program to turn QR code pictures into 2D vectors to extrude (which had extremely bad results), this variant uses a Ruby script to generate the QR code pattern for each face, then writes out OpenSCAD files that build up each face from geometric primitives. For those interested in the messy details, the Ruby script is part of the source zip file.

Do you like to play games with dice? Do you find yourself unannoyed with QR codes? Then we have the dice for you! Until you memorize which pattern is which digit, this is guaranteed to require a cameraphone to decode what number you rolled!

Please note that this is a proof-of-concept and a work in progress. OpenSCAD is not properly extruding my QR code line art, which leaves bad QR codes on the faces.

* * *

I ended up rewriting the whole thing, using a Ruby script to generate the QR code "pixels", then outputting OpenSCAD cube primitives for each "pixel." This works around the problem with OpenSCAD messing up the vector images. The updated version is "Useless Dice" to at thingiverse.com/thing:22997

This is a shower caddy for holding your near-empty shampoo bottles upside-down!

Many modern shampoo bottles have a flat top that allows you to set it down top-side-down. Unfortunately, the brand of all-natural crunchy-granola urban-hippy shampoo that I use does not have such a top. I either cannot get to the last little bit of shampoo or I have to do something creative with the bottle: balance it, wedge it against something, or do a quick centrifuge-style flick of the bottle. None of these work all that well in the dim, pre-coffee hours of the morning.

I then decided to take matters into my own hands and design a shampoo caddy to hold my shampoo and conditioner upside-down. The main features are cylindrical holes to hold each bottle and a wide, flat base to help keep everything upright. At the bottom of each bottle-gripping cylinder is a draining hole that links up with a draining trough running to the front of the caddy.

The whole thing works pretty well and can be reconfigured to your brand (and more specifically, geometry) of shampoo.

There are some cat toys at the house that are particularly popular with the local residents. They are simple hollow spheres with cut-out slots. They are great for kitties to kick around — small and light. After staring at one for a few minutes, piecing out the geometry, I realized that this would make a great instructional design for an introduction to 3D CAD modeling using simple geometric shapes and boolean transforms.

In the main image are the original (left), render (middle), and printed (right) versions of this object.

The step-by-step process of building the model is on my blog, here: netninja.com/2012/03/24/from-atoms-to-bits-to-atoms-a-cat-toys-journey/

The final fully parametric OpenSCAD file is attached.

About a year ago, I uploaded the plastic version of a "wooden nickel." You can still find it here: thingiverse.com/thing:6579 It was a simple coin with cut-out text. Today I updated the design for dualstrusion. Instead of the text being a cut-out, it is a fused-in second color. All the same stuff I said about the old nickel still applies:

This isn't a wooden nickel, but a plastic one. It's fun for "don't take any wooden nickel" jokes, children old enough to not choke on it, and poker buddies sober enough to not choke on it. It measures 40mm across and is 4mm thick along the rim and 3mm thick in the body. The attached photo shows the plastic nickel next to an actual nickel for comparison.

This was designed in OpenSCAD, using a PostScript file (converted to DXF) for the text. The source zip includes the OpenSCAD source, the EPS, and the DXF.

This is a derivative of timogiles’ original “6 Packer” model. Specifically, this started as his design, generated for 1/8" material. I then hand-optimized the pieces to allow parts to better share cut lines. Finally, I (barely) squeezed it to fit on to two 24" x 12" boards.

This design also inclues an etched QR code directing people to the downloadable files.

It's the question-mark box from Super Mario Brothers! Put your coins in it. Hide a mushroom or fireball (the candy of that name, obviously) in it.

The other day, I thought I'd design a 3D-printed box. This wouldn't be just any old box, but the question-mark block from Super Mario Brothers. I started to break down what would be involved in the design. I would have to come up with the base box template, then virtually punch out a grid of dots representing the correct pixels. But, I thought, if I was going to do the work to calculate a grid of pixels on the box faces, I really could just put any pattern on the side. And if I could put any pattern, I might as well turn it into a template. And if it was a template, then other people could come up with some pretty cool designs that I never even thought of.

So, if you're into the question-mark box, print the attached STL. If you'd rather have your own pattern, either hand-edit the OpenSCAD source file or build your own variant at netninja.com/fun/mariobox/

(Don't mind the slight wiggliness of the photo at left. I just upgraded my print head and am still optimizing the extrude settings, so many of my prints are looking a little misaligned at the moment.)

I needed a little cup to transport a single serving of loose-leaf tea from my desk to the coffee station at work. This is the no-frills (well, maybe a few frills) object I ended up designing for this purpose. I'm sure you can find your own uses for it. Shot glass? Egg cup? Dipping sauces? Leave a comment describing how you'd use it.

The OpenSCAD source file is attached.

This is a hollowed-out skull with matching lid. It is a derivative of the Chester Copperpot skull, sliced and diced in OpenSCAD.

Octocat is watching you check in your source code.

Based on the popularity of the octopus model here on Thingiverse and the popularity of GitHub among programmers, I figured I would try making a creepy version of GitHub's octocat.

This model is a frankenstein mashup between Bucket o' Octopi thingiverse.com/thing:7900 and The Cat thingiverse.com/thing:1283

Change Log:

Version 2 of this model is the latest and fixes the flat areas found in version 1.

Version 1 of this model has a couple of flat areas in the cat's head. This is entirely due to my Blender skills and a big mistake that occurred early in the process, but wasn't caught until late. It's not noticeable at MakerBot resolutions, but if you were to print this on a fancy professional printer, I'd wait until the next version. There's also a minor problem with the cat's chin being just a bit too much of an overhang for a MakerBot to handle perfectly, but it still looks good after you cut away some of the slop/drool.

This is a tablespoon and teaspoon, suitable for printing and using.

The source file is an OpenSCAD document for outputting a measuring spoon of any desired volume. The measuring spoon consists of a scoop (a half-sphere of desired radius and thickness) connected to a handle (with desired length and thickness). All of these parameters are variables that can be fine tuned to your desire.

If you have never used OpenSCAD before, this is a simple and highly-commented first taste of its usefulness and flexibility.

This isn't a wooden nickel, but a plastic one. It's fun for "don't take any wooden nickel" jokes, children old enough to not choke on it, and poker buddies sober enough to not choke on it. It measures 40mm across and is 4mm thick. The attached photos show just the nickel as well as one next to a penny for comparison. Ironically, I do not have an actual nickel right now!

The Rev. B version has a greatly improved cent-sign.

This was designed in OpenSCAD, using a PostScript file (converted to DXF) for the text. The source zip includes the OpenSCAD source, the EPS, and the DXF of both the original version and Revision B.