MSRaynsford

  According to the time stamps I actually made and filmed this puzzle last May so I guess I'm a bit behind the times. It's called the Half Hour puzzle and it's designed by Stewart Coffin. There's a whole bunch of 3D printed puzzles available on the puzzle hub website , I'm currently going through them looking for some inspiration for my next puzzle box. This one was a fun little build and I'm pleased with how well the pieces fit together for a first attempt. ( stl here )

The last in the egg series that I'm going to be printing, the time lapse process is working well so it's time to move onto bigger and better ideas. This print produced quite a few little loops while jumping between the separate wavy parts so I definitely need to take a look at retraction and a few of the other printer settings. I also need to look at my starting code too so I can get a better first layer, there's a dribble of filament before it starts putting down a layer which can get in the way and Octoprint is still complaining about the lack of G90 instruction to indicate the start of printing (even though it definitely exists). Lots of fun to be had there ( stl here )

Another one of the fancy egg range, I'm not entirely sure what makes this 'complex' because it's simply a mirror of the previous egg shape merged with itself but it still makes a fancy pattern and a neat timelapse anyway so it's all good from my point of view ( stl here )

I went back the the Egg shapes I started printing over Easter. Now I've improved the 3D printer timelapse camera and lighting they make a much nicer video ( stl here )

One of the more interesting designs I found while looking at Tensegrity structures was this cube design where the cubes are strong together in such a way that they float over each other at any angle. The two interlocking cubes lend themselves perfectly well to 3D printing and including string holes in all the corners. The design works well but it's a bit tricky to get the strings adjusted to the right lengths, hence the large knots on the corners. ( stl here ) There are two version of the design, one with DIY supports and one without, I'm probably not experienced enough to get my slicer to create supports in the way that I wanted it to. It was also a good exercise in OnShape design, particularly trying to get the cube to stand on one end. ( OnShape Workspace )

We've played a bit of the Scythe board game recently and even though the factory tile in the middle is an important location, it's rather overlooked because it's just a different coloured hex. This factory model sits on the centre hex and gives a sense of the importance it deserves. ( stl here ) In case you're wondering how I got that 90 degree twist in the time lapse video, there are no special tricks I just printed it pointing in a bad direction first and because I know more than one person who owns the game I decide I would just reprint it pointing in a better direction. This does however give me some interesting ideas about time lapses in the future. For now my next stop will be to modify Octolapse to take some more of the manual work out of time lapse generation.

I ran a 3D print for an Iron man bust last night. It's a good test of the timelapse rig again which is now working nicely but also good practice for painting techniques. The 3D print is still covered in ridges but the iron man suit should be nice and smooth so I'll need to figure that out. I have a feeling the the model on this one wasn't watertight because there is an oddity at the back of the head and most of the top seems to be filled with support material rather than infill. ( stl here )

I have enjoyed creating all the timelapse shots recently, Octolapse is a great addition to Octoprint  making it easy to create amazing shots. Once I dealt with my lighting and white balance issues I started to look at my video process. The print bed lowers on my machine so, with a static camera, the 3D print has to start at the top of the screen and fill into the lower half. I preferred a video where the print started in the middle of the screen. A mechanical solution to keep the print in the middle of the screen seemed to be the easiest solution. I made a video about it as well as this blog post, if you like it please subscribe and I'll make more videos. The design is relatively simple, the camera is still mounted to the top of the frame but an arm extends from the camera rig out under the print bed. As the bed descends the arm is pushed downwards and this motion is used to tilt the camera downwards. On it's own this would have the effect of making the prin...

I have built a time lapse rig to tilt the camera and help me take nice time lapse shots, this vase was a quick printing test piece to help me check that it's all working as it should be. There's still a minor tweak to be done to some angles but otherwise the rig is working fine, it's completely 3D printed and all that's left for me to do now is to prepare the files for sharing.

I have finally finished my 3D printed time lapse rig (blog post to come) and this lovely vase was intended to be a fast print as a time lapse show piece item but it proved to be unsuitable and I learnt some valuable lessons along the way. There are several different 3D models provided for this vase, I started with the 2mm wall thickness design, it slices well and the print started ok. After leaving it for an hour to settle the base I became aware of a lot of noise from the garage, the extruder was working overtime, After it had printed the inner and outer skins, each little bit inside the cubes was a separate island and my bowden extruder was putting in a lot of effort to extend and retract each time. So much so it was really slowing the print down. Another hour later and it had barely done the first row of cubes, so much for a fast print, I cancelled it and started again. The original solid shape provided on thingiverse is it's intended design which can be printed in a ...

After sorting out a sturdy camera mount for my timelapse videos I needed to sort out the lighting to go with it. I was using a large lamp wedged in front of the printer and then diffused with a sheet of paper, the trouble is every time I went near the machine it would blind me. I had some cool white 24V LED strips that could connect directly to the PSU in the printer and be mounted on the framework. I printed some mounts that angle the strips in towards the print, these were done in two parts; the 45 degree angle to point the lights in black to match the framework and a white light cover to hold the strips in place and diffuse the light some more. ( stl here )

I made use of this camera mount for a few weeks but the arm is a bit spindly and wobbly. The 2020 mounting was good but I have a sturdy frame all the way around my printer and I wanted to bolt it directly to the top. I designed a new camera mount that was stronger, with less wobble that holds directly to the top. I didn't want to bolt through the frame yet so I just clamped it in the appropriate place for the duration. I also need a long ribbon cable to put the raspberry pi in a more sensible location so I had to wait for that to arrive. The new camera position was too high to get a decent time lapse, you couldn't see the layers build up during the print so I ended up removing the middle section and mounting the camera under the frame instead. This gave a much nicer position and is what I used to film the different egg prints . ( stl here )

I have a design in mind for my timelapse rig and there are a lot of things to learn in the process. I'm picking up a new CAD tool for 3d modelling (onshape) and I wanted to test out some helical gears to get smooth camera motion throughout the movement. I was pleasantly surprised to find a gear generator in onshape so I just had to figure out how to mount the parts and animate them etc. They printed well and are perfect for the next step even if the axles were too thin and snapped after some basic use. The gears will be mounted on bearings/screws anyway. The whole thing was caught on timelapse. ( stl here )( onshape workspace here )

I've been changing colour on a few different 3D prints recently and some of the rolls started unravelling themselves between prints. I took a quick look at filament clip designs and decided upon these simple ones; because they clip onto the filament itself they'll work for all of my 1.75mm filaments regardless of which spool it's on. Obviously the ones that clip to the spool edge are more secure but this suits my needs for now, the only real problem was trying to turn less than a second of timelapse into a watchable video :) ( stl here )

I tweaked the mechanism to align the camera slight better and to tilt down slightly faster than the previous timelapse. There's a blip towards the end but I think it's where the ribbon cable on the pi camera pulled tight and wiggled the camera a little. I'm very happy with the prototype now, time to 3D model it and make a more solid unit that can live on my machine forever. ( stl here )

I was looking for something tall and fast to test my timelapse videos again and I found some nice looking vases. I want to say that there was no post processing in this one but clearly I did, the tilting camera is automagic though so I keep the full resolution of the camera without having to mess around with zoom and tilt in the edit. I've been experimenting with a mechanism to do the tilting for me, considering this was just a prototype I'm very happy with the results. Time for another test before I start sharing some details. ( stl here )

I remember seeing this marble machine at a maker faire when it originally came out, I marvelled at the simplicity when compared to my similar Archimedes screw marble machine . It was one of the few times I realised 3D printers were better than lasers for some things. The print ran smoothly although I probably should have scaled it down so that it took less time. The timelapse is acceptable although I still need to work on white balance, exposure and focus (so all the things really). I'm gonna struggle to get larger objects into frame so am currently thinking of better ways to start the print in the middle and have it fill the screen from there, mostly I need a longer ribbon for my camera so I can play with positions more. ( svg here )