Would love to see some of your prints on here! When I was younger my dad and I built a 3D printer, and I loved it. Since then I haven’t had the funds/time/space to get back into it but as that was like 12 years ago, I know 3D printing has gotten much higher tech.
found a 90 year old design for a cactus watering can from a local designer and had to print it for myself… tried out multiple sizes and colours
This is so cool
Can you share the STL? I would be interested in this.
Do you have any problems with water leaking? People always warn about prints not being water tight, but I don’t know if that’s old advice or not.
as soon as i fix a few small problems i’ll share it here :D
the two red ones are painted with red car paint and a clearcoat, they are totally water tight, a black and a pink one are only coated with clearcoat, they don’t leak as well, but i tested them before coating and both dripped a bit at the joints… i’m correcting some parts now and will use more glue… i think that’ll fix it but i’d still recommend to use" ironing" in your slicer and clearcoating it after assembly… i didn’t let the water in the can for multiple hours, so i’m not sure yet whether water will penetrate through the plastic…
I mostly use mine for functional stuff, odd shaped brackets, pipe adaptors, electronics enclosures, so not very photogenic, but my two favourite things were a replacement door latch for the microwave, saved the cost of buying a new one, and a very nerdy bit of wall art 🖖
I’m guessing a version with the Enterprise J doesn’t fit on the print bed.
The wall art is gorgeous! How did you get that smooth final metallic look? Or is that just how it looks on picture?
Honestly that’s one of the coolest things about 3D printing - being able to create highly specific parts that could be impossible or impractical to source.
I’ve heard that 3D printers are used to repair those terrifying “iron lungs” that some people are still depending on to survive. This is because some of the parts that break on them are literally not produced anymore!
It’s not really smooth up close haha just standard sorta 0.2mm layer height, sanded down a little, then I spray painted them gold which hid some of the rough spots
And yeah I’m a big believer in repairable tech, 3d printers are huge in terms of being able to replace the kind of custom shaped plastic parts that the manufacturer doesn’t sell spares of and the appliance is completely unusable without (as I’m sure is the intention 🙄 planned obsolescence is truly one of the worst things we’ve ever come up with)
My first (and still my favorite) thing I designed from scratch is my Happy Mug.
This is one I’m particularly proud of. Makes for a really fun magnetic fidget.
https://www.printables.com/model/1145644-geometric-shapes-with-embedded-magnets-for-constru
I’m terrible about taking photos of things, it just doesn’t occur to me until I need one.
This is the view from one of my printer webcams of a 2 day print that just finished about 20 minutes ago; its covered in supports because the walls are modeled like stone. A friend of mine of running Vecna: Eve of Ruin and asked me to print him a Death House (in about 16 parts - 11 beds full). In total this is going to be about 20 days of printing because I’m doing it at 0.1mm layer height - I’m not quite halfway through. This is the model and here is a reddit thread showing it painted.
Since that one is not much to look at, here’s a pic with a squirrel, from a recent blog post about how my 3D printed Bird/Squirrel feeder has withstood 15 months of weather and abuse.
