MSRaynsford

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 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 tried another one of the timelapse settings, this time is was the 'printer mode' which should move the print head left and right above the print throughout the duration. There was a minor issue with the print though because it wasn't centred in the middle of the print area. This did however lead me to realise what was 'wrong' with the previous orbit print , during the whole timelapse the print head just wafts around the top of the print because it's not actually printing. In this worst case scenario it means it's not even wafting around above the print. So that's my testing done for now, I'm reverting to the back left corner for now.

Ruling out higher resolution for the time being I looked at some of the other octolapse settings. Dad was talking about the 'orbit' setting which moves the print head around in a controlled manor to make it actually look like it's printing, this is different to a normal timelapse where the print head is a bit of a blur at the top. I tried it out and the effect is pretty good but there's something I don't really like that I can't immediately put my finger on.

Now that I figured out how to set the white balance, I thought I could increase the image size to produce some better images, trouble is that bogged down the raspberry pi and stopped simple things like the mDNS working so it's not a great combination. I'm wondering if there is a better solution than the raspberry pi camera but with lock down I'm kind of limited on the things I can actually test with. It might be easier to integrate another processor in there altogether, maybe something like an old phone or an ESP Cam board. In the meantime I have a few more timelapses to process using this camera and alternate settings.

I kept this minecraft based easter egg hidden from the kids for the last two days. I knew they would love it when they saw it. I finally managed to get the white balance sorted on my raspberry pi camera, I still need to tweak the settings, particularly as they're not currently remembered between boots but here is a time lapse in the meantime.

Much like the last Easter Egg  this one is a low polygon shape where some of the vertexes have been pulled inwards to create a crushed effect. Just like the last timelapse too I clearly haven't fixed my white balance issues but I am much more confident about the one currently running.

Because it's Easter and we're all at home I thought I'd print some more interesting egg designs this year. Thingiverse provides as usual with this set of lovely designs , that I shall slowly work my way across while attempting to improve my timelapse set up. I thought I had changed the white balance for this one but clearly not.

Makezine recently featured these bias tape makers which are apparently useful for people who are sewing material masks. I obviously ran some through the machine asap and offered them in my circles. If you need one let me know and I'll print some more. In the meantime I made a timelapse of them (anything more than the 20 layers of the 3d printable masks currently looks like a good timelapse to me)

With my Octolapse  set up I was looking for a larger print to film. I set it up to run overnight, 5 hours of printing and 662 layer which led to a nice little timelapse. I also enjoyed spending time today painting it, next step is to find a plant to go inside it. ( stl here )