Dragon egg project (wip)

WIP Project: Dragon eggs

(Note: W.I.P stands for Work In Progress. Posts tagged with WIP can be voted on here in order to encourage me to re-prioritize what to work on)

The Dragon egg project consists of trying to make a mould for wax casting cool fantasy candles. The first idea I had is of a simple candle wax egg, hence the name. 

First attempts at a dragon egg model.

First attempt at a mould

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Mould with tabs to ease opening, holes to line up the pattern, and notch to see how the parts are oriented.

I expect the first version to have a few problems, mainly the pattern might be too detailed, and when trying to remove the candle from the mould I expect it to be stuck, I may have to print the model itself and do a latex cast of it instead of 3D print it directly. I want to 3D print and test it to be sure however, I won't know if it has failed before it has failed after all. Another problem is that it has overhangs and can't be printed in the orientation I wanted.

The next version I am working on will have arched legs stuck to a larger surface of the egg body, for strength and avoiding overhangs when 3D printing.

3D print: deal with it glasses

"You wouldn't download a meme"

Thingiverse.com is a directory where one can download and upload 3D models for free. (The authors choose the licences. ) The system is geared towards collaboration and iterating on other's designs. It is probably a great asset to humanity in the long run.

So of course I use it for downloading and printing internet memes.

Original (unknown author)

This is my first "make" as recreations are called on thingiverse. Modeled by everysecond initially (this is called a "design")

Now all I need is (actually good) 3D modelling in VR and I will be living in the future.

3D modelling: stamp part 3

(part 0) (part 1) (part 2)

I feel I have come a long way since "part 0", it is funny to look back at it.

Progress:
Tested the 3D printer's resolution at a small scale. The ultimaker is much too rough at 2 cm. 

All the pieces together, the dish fits the mold perfectly.

 Closeup of the ~5cm print (blue) The design is almost recognizable at this scale, but the printer is still too rough for such a delicate logo. I'm considering making a simplified version, but I'd prefer not to. I will have to learn how to use the "roland modela 3d plotter mdx-15" and engrave the stamp surface in wood instead, I'm told the plotter is more suited for such tiny work, though I have yet to see what it can do.

 I tested the mold as a stamp just to see if the plastic can function as a stamp surface, the answer is "meh, depends" I had to sand it down to even leave an imprint, it looks flat to the human eye, but it isn't flat enough. I used simple watercolour to test, the plastic was oddly hydrophobic, but it may be because i put the stamp in stamping paint in an earlier test and washed it with soap. I'm not sure what part made it hydrophobic or if it is the plastic.

As a bonus, I attempted to use the 3D pen (a bit like a glue gun) It is true that they are difficult to use. Very unintuitive, like modelling with unpredictable gravity adhering spaghetti. Doing useful things with it probably will require a fair bit of practice, for now I will use it to weld 3D prints.

This marks the temporary end of my stampmaking adventures. My next step to concluding this successfully is learning the new machine, but there is going to be some time before I will do that as I have other priorities at the moment. At least now I know how to 3D print on my own, and enough blender to extrude most kinds of models. It was more enjoyable than I expected and I will definitely come back to 3D printing for fun.

Good day!

3D modelling: stamp part 2

(part 0) (part 1)
Yesterday I said I had made some progress on learning how to use blender, and today I made my first (purposeful) model! It is probably not as optimal as it could be, I had to hack it together with my limited knowledge. Seeing as it's for 3D print, polycount and such is not really a concern for me (that I know of).

 What you see here is my logo stamp (v1.0) the green is the handle, the red is a dish to hold the sugru (stamp surface) and the brown is essentially a cast for the sugru to go in. I suspect the design is too minute to really get all the details, nor do I know how minute details the Ultimaker 3D printers can really do, but I shall see. Worst case scenario, I will print it larger. It's designed to be about 2-3 cm in diameter across the dish. I am also considering what other material could replace the sugru, it is definitely the most costly part of this plan (I'm planning to make many), and I'm sure there are other moldable materials that might hold/print ink/liquids better than sugru around. I'm not up to date on clays and such, so suggestions are very welcome.

As I modelled it, I was realizing it might be hard to remove the cast from the sugru and to get the sugru to stick to the correct surface and not just get pulled back out. I will have to test this. I added 2 flaps to the cast to make it easier to grab. I hope they are not too thin and will break. I will test it and see if I shall make them bigger for v.2.

I wanted the red dish to screw onto the handle, but screws were a bit too advanced for me to get my head around right now, so I will just glue it on and hope for the best. Alternatively I might make the dish square and have it slide onto the handle, but that doesn't look as cool in my opinion.

Messy blender mesh from messy illustrator path. 

 The logo was imported from Illustrator, I did have some trouble with that due to how I initially created it: with an automatic conversion from a raster image to vector, (I then manually went and deleted hundreds of vector anchor points and adjusted them to fit, I found this process easier than creating a path with the standard pen tools and tracing it myself. The reason for this is I get stuck in "making perfect curves" who end up ruining the design. By converting it I get the design straight away, but a messy path. it works for 2D.) Of course that made it convert poorly in blender, paths were crossed, facing odd directions, who knows. After making the path function (I got some help), the extrusion went mostly fine, I had to patch up a missing face and make sure the model was watertight. (In blender this is called Manifold, I have yet to learn how to use this word in a sentence. "The model is Manifold?" sounds as alien as 3D modeling is to reality haha.)

Blender screenshot: logo impressed into cylinder with boolean operation.

When I have tested it and settled on decent version, I will upload the stamp design to thingiverse (or something like it) under creative commons licence, yay for sharing! (there are already some good stamp designs on thingiverse, but I wanted my own handle, round and grippy) I will make a new post when I have a working version, so stay tuned.

Learning a new skill: 3D modelling

(part 0) (part 2 here)
A little while back I mentioned on tumblr I was starting to learn 3D modelling. After much time-consuming and perhaps -pointless- deliberation, I settled for learning Blender. Despite it's bad reputation, the updates to the program in the past year has made it much more appealing. It's features are many and versatile, and most importantly: open source with a great community and learning material. I put it down shortly after I began, but now I am back on it again, and thankfully have gotten past the *head to desk* stage of initial frustration. I'm learning with the book called "blender for dummies" this time around while supplementing more and more with youtube, manuals and general googling the further I get. I underestimated the book due to it's name, I never expected the "For dummies" series to be more than "sell-bait" however, using it has been a un-frustrating and productive experience. I'm on chapter 4 so far, and am starting to get very close to my goal of making my first 3D print.

Blender screenshot: My first 3D model, how sentimental (Babys first extrude)

Blender screenshot: The Skyfish logo imported from .svg (illustrator) to Blender. (I have no idea what I'm doing.) There appears to be a problem with some of the vectors facing the wrong way or maybe crossing. I'm still working on figuring this one out.

The goal is to make a stamp with my logo on it using 3D model from blender and some sugru (for the stamp surface) It's 3D printer weekend at the Oslo makerspace Bitraf this weekend, so I'm hoping I will have it all figured out by then.

Game development tuesday

I made a flyer for Bitraf, Oslo's coolest hackerspace! What is a hacker space you ask? bitraf.no It's like a club where we do anything and everything related to video games, electronics, technology, art and whatever other cool stuff we want to do. It has nothing to do with "hacking" like it is portrayed in mainstream media, the term "hacking" refer to "hacking things together", as in DIY, though the sound of rapid clicking on keyboards is often heard in our offices. :P

The design of this flyer was inspired by the missigno glitch from the pokemon games, I used it's colours as a base and a glitchy theme.