Also didn’t get much designing and printing done this month.
I did make an updated light-switch plate for the living room with fall leaves. Yellow seemed like a nice contrast to the red, but it’s basically impossible to see from a few feet away. Orange would have been a better choice.
And I printed a bunch of things for Heather’s parties. A spider to dangle from the chandelier, the cats and mice for the adventure, and the party-favor pumpkins.
Pretty cool to be able to decide, “I want a big spider to dangle over the table.” Then click some buttons and in a couple of hours and for less than a dollar you’ve got one.
First a cover for an RSA OTP token. Due to security changes at work I now have to have 2 of these and needed a way to differentiate which one was for which system. So I designed and printed this little cover and also printed a few for coworkers.
I did the design in SolveSpace and then put the text on in Bambu Studio. My first attempt was not strong enough and the “legs” snapped off almost immediately, but this version seems to be holding up really well.
For Jess’ birthday adventure I needed a key with an embedded magnet and a “lock” with a contact sensor inside. So I designed and printed those.
I wanted some autumn-themed sugar cookies, but our big bin of cookie cutters has no leaves in it (it has Halloween stuff). So I found some leaf-shaped cookie cutters and printed them. I took the cookies to work and, whoops, they all got eaten and I didn’t take a picture of them.
Most of my modeling energy has been in to some longer term projects I’m working on. So I didn’t get much printed this month.
First up was a modification to my organizer for The Guild of Merchant Explorers. The guy that runs the board-game group was impressed with my design and wanted one for himself, but he puts all his cards in sleeves. So I modified the card trays for sleeved cards and printed him a copy. The modified version is up on MakerWorld with the original.
The cats had an altercation at the window screen the other night and when we came out to investigate (at 2am) we found that the screen had been pushed in ~4-5 inches and the little plastic catch that holds it in place was broken. So apparently a neighborhood cat threw itself at the screen?
So I measured things and designed and printed out little catches that pressure-fit into the jamb opening and hold the screen in place. Seem to work pretty well. I couldn’t get one out when I tried.
My big project lately has been an box organizer for The Guild of Merchant Explorers. It comes with no organization and you just have to stash everything in bags. This makes set up and take down a pain and unnecessarily long.
A couple organizers for the game already exist on the 3D printing websites, but I wanted something better. Something that could stand up to the box being turned sideways or upside down without making a mess. So, naturally, I designed my own to meet my stringent criteria. Also, designing it myself let me spruce it up with premium details.
A challenge of keeping pieces from scattering is that there is space between all the components and the lid when the box is closed. It’s only about 2mm, but that’s enough for cards and bits of cardboard to slide around.
So to accomplish my goal of keeping pieces from going everywhere when the box is turned I created my trays to nest on each other so there’s not enough room for pieces to slide out when they come apart a little bit. This works great, but you’ll have a tray on top with nothing above it. So for that case I printed covers which set into the trays to keep things in place.
The game has 3 decks of cards that you use regularly (and 1 which is used only at set up). As a little nicety I chamfered the bottom of the tray so when you press on the side of the card the other side pops up a little making it easier to grab.
Finally, I added the symbols used in each section of the trays to identify what components go where. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the final results. Set up and take down are now almost instantaneous. And I already got a request from someone at the board game meetup to print one for them.
Some of my design notes from the project. I worked on it for about a month before I decided I was happy with it and printed it.
For the last 8 years I’ve organized and run an event at work called Developer Day to encourage software developers to interact with each other and learn about the various projects happening around the Lab.
To encourage attendance and participation I give out door prizes–usually whatever I find interesting off of Amazon. This year I augmented the prizes with some 3D printed things I designed.
First up is building 453. This is the main supercomputer building on site and the building where we’ve been holding the event. I modeled it based on aerial imagery from Google Maps and some educated guesses from first-hand information. Then I put it on a base and added the Lab logo and some text. It’s about the size of a credit card. The big bland block on the back is the machine building where the supercomputers are housed.
Then I played around with a couple of designs of these text blocks. They’re hollow, about 2.5 inches long, and 3/4 of an inch tall.
And then I thought it might be fun to do something with light and the translucency of the filament material. So I designed these blocks which show LLNL when light shines through them.
And my final project of the month was modeling the Trinidad Head Light Station in Trindad, CA. One of the projects my team runs is named after this lighthouse and I’m considering printing a few of these for those team members.
I printed this in parts and assembled it after so I could get the differing colors without wasting a huge amount of filament switching back and forth during the print. I’m pretty happy with it. I’m very pleased with how the assembly went.
My skills with SolveSpace continue to improve. Also, my pull request to implement text kerning was merged, so I’m officially a contributor to that project.
In June I designed these battery organizers. A lot of battery organizers already exist, but almost all of them are tall whereas I wanted something to fit in the drawer in the kitchen (where we previously organized our batteries in a cardboard box). They’re not perfect, but they’re good enough. The angle they sit on probably needs to be steeper to encourage them to roll forward better.
The labeling on the front of each was completed in Bambu Studio after designing the rest in SolveSpace.
The fabric on one of my speakers has been coming off one side for a long time now. It’s under tension so I’m not sure how I could glue it back on effectively, but I designed and printed some clips that are doing a pretty good job of holding it in place.
At some point I realized we were missing out on a great home-customization possibility: light-switch plates! I found existing plate models someone shared and started putting designs on them. It’s fun. The girls picked out some dragons for their rooms. I made a tree for the living room, a butterfly near the front door, and a lighthouse in the kitchen.
The multi-color ones take some work because you have to put each color in separate SVGs and then align them correctly on the model.
I also discovered that the switch box in the living room is not aligned with the plane of the drywall, so to get my switch plate to sit flush against the wall I had to make it deeper and then cut the back off (in the model, not physically) at an angle to match so that it didn’t leave noticeable gaps on one side.
