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Showing posts from February 23, 2020

Filament Guide

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At the back of the Ender 2, the filament feels uncomfortably close to the Z axis lead screw so I went looking on Thingiverse for a filament guide. I found this version which also incorporates a cable holder for the gantry wires. I felt they had been drooping a bit and were in danger of rubbing against the hot bed cables so this is perfect. ( stl here )

More knobs

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3D printers seem to be excellent for making knobs, these ones in particular are for the bed levelling screws on the ender 2. They need to be super skinny to avoid the rails and wheels under the bed. They've been very useful to help dial in the Z height perfectly. ( stl here )

Oled Numpad and Display

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This project is never going to see the light of day so I guess it doesn't hurt to show it here now. I was tasked with creating this code entry system for an escape room. You enter the code, the numbers appear on the screen and with the correct value an electromagnet box unlocks. I used the ESP8266 because its cheap, has easy mounting points, and can be remotely connected to for future expansion. The whole thing was driven from a small DC-DC so it had 12V and 5V at the same time. The keypad is a scanning matrix and the OLED is driven from the I2C, there is just enough IO on the Wemos D1 to meet all the requirements, but there had to be some juggling to use the TX/RX pins etc. It looks like the only image I have of the screen illuminated is from the prototype system, the oled had the perfect combination of brightness and readability.

Engine Cowling

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The turbine blades look out of place without a nice rounded cowl to guide the fluid into them. I extracted the cowl from the same jet engine  (so I know it is scaled appropriately), and split it into 120 degree sections so that all 3 parts would fit on the bed together. This print was left to run overnight and I learned a lot about support materials. Nearly 5 hours into the print the machine had only printed a little lip from under the cowl and 75% support material to print the cowl on. I totally should have reduced that lip to a few mm (just the bare minimum to fit into the next piece) and it would have spent far less time printing bits to be thrown away. ( stl here )

AR15 Grip

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I wanted a handle for my prop, as a complex shape I'm not ready to 3D model it myself yet but on thingiverse there are lots of handle grips available for gun models. These are already sized and sculpted appropriately for peoples hands so it made sense just to grab one of these. The author implies that it should be printed upside down from the flat top upwards, I was a little sceptical about height and balance on my printer so I decided to split it along the middle and do it as two halves with very flat and sturdy insides. ( stl here )

Stone Tablet Prop

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Way back last year I was asked to make a broken stone tablet for an Empire  player event. The event happened this weekend so now I'm free to show the prop here. It's made from chunky 6mm mdf, the tablet was painted base grey and masked off with paper tape to reduce the burn marks from engraving. The letters are engraved and outlined to make them stand out against the grey. Finally the slab was marbled using different shades of white and grey colour. As a prop to be passed around at an event the reverse was also coloured and marbled to the same effect.

Printed Turbine

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I put my little Ender 2 printer to some heavy usage recently slicing up lots of smaller parts to make a large prop. I practised my 3D modelling skills on the largest part but I've been able to extract some of the smaller parts from existing models. This turbine fan was small enough to fit inside the 150mm x 150mm bedsize as a single piece, it's entirely flat on the bottom too so it seemed like a good place to start. ( stl here )