Photos from my Cyberman helmet 3d print

I've had the man flu so here's a few pictures of my abs enclosure

My abs enclosure

Both the perspex and the wooden top hinge open the tape was only going to be temporary but its been so good I haven't bothered to change it

Errrrrgg The colour is all wrong!

Edit: I've been in contact with Daniel from Blueprinted and he said I could return it even though I've used a bit. It turns out its a test roll sent inadvertently, its all good.




The new roll of glow in the dark blue is a different colour aaaaarrrrrrrrr

You can even tell its an older roll

The ones I had before seemed to be the new design.

I have a bit left over on each of the old rolls so I'll try and use it despite it now being brittle and very short lengths on each roll.

I wish I'd never bought it @$40.00 aud its expensive and I'm not really wanting glow in the dark blue if it looks like this. No even sure I have the money to return it even if I could.

Skeleton Ukulele progress

Things are nearing completion for the printing part of my Skeleton Ukulele. I decided to add some tuner buttons and a printed bridge as well just for fun and am pretty happy with all the progress so far.
I keep giggling to myself all the time hahahaha .

I ordered some usb headphones with microphone and they arrived from china with plugs and not usb and a microphone that was fixed so far away fro my mouth it meant shouting to get a decent recording of my voice. Soooooooo I ordered a lapel mic that should suit my DSLR my phone and my laptop so I can record some videos with some decent sound soon and will do a video of my process.

In the mean time these pics will have to do.

The tuners came from Aliexpress I think. I'd need to check and will do so later.

I box modeled some tuner buttons to look like bones and ended up thinking some of the "knuckles" from the kids game would have been perfect so I used what little is left of my memory to emulate them :-)

Making the internal shape for the buttons to slide onto the double sided D Shape shaft was trial and error. Printed on a raft with 50% infill was going to be 100% but I forgot.........still pretty strong so not really an issue, but it does speak of my allergy riddled brain atm.

Bloody auto focus just wouldn't play the game except for this one I deleted about 5 other pics to get one in focus!

I ended up squeezing the buttons on with a clamp :-) they are designed exactly to the dimensions of the buttons and shaft of the tuners I have so there was no wiggle room and it winter here so some shrinkage was to be expected hahaha   

Here's my bridge design based of one I have laying around. Since I had to shorten the wings of the bridge I decided a bigger surface area needed to be added back so threw together this quick design. In hindsight some more crossed bones would have been more apropos. Meh next time....maybe.

Here's a group shot of everything including the spare ribs I had to print to replace the ones that broke. They only broke because there wasn't enough support used on the first prints.

In order to print the bridge I need over 3 metres of filament so that means the household 3d printing Gods needs to be looking after me, I'm gambling that there's 3 metres left and I don't fuck it up lol

I decided no to be so lazy and redesign the bridge.......it's printing now!

I printed it but realised that is would look really good if it were rounded on the bone ends more 3 dimensional if you like. I discounted it before as I was concerned it would interfere with the strings etc...........but there's plenty of clearance..........and I'm now out of glow in the dark blue pla and I was hoping to not have to get anymore, but get another colour next time instead. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr

If you're like me then you'll be wondering if this thing will sound any good. The easy answer for me is I just hope it's loud enough, as I think the sound will be there. I'm basing this on hearing a lot of unusual instruments I've seen and heard through the years along with this video from Luthier Robert O'Brian which reinforces that its the top that produces most of the sound on an acoustic instrument.

Plus I can always add a pickup if need be. :-)

Check out his cardboard guitar build https://youtu.be/_elx2OvWN58



I went ahead and made the crossed bones more 3d. This picture is just a render in 3ds Max I need to buy some more filament.

I thought I could have made the bridge a traditional Skull and cross bones but I need to stop and get on with making the neck and other projects I have waiting in the wings

Skeleton update

Woo Hoo finally getting some cable management on the printer head wires

You know how when you're assembling things and you have parts left over?
Well here's the 3d printer equivalent lol

Those spare pieces are bits that failed on prints one and two. Here's a pic of print 3 of 4 of the Skeleton Ukulele, I went back in to Simplify3d and added more supports to avoid this.....time will tell.

A rare not often see portrait picture of the cable management going on. Does anyone else want to hit people who post portrait shots when landscape was needed and appropriate? lol

Printing the new Skeleton Ukulele and printer upgrades and one accident that could have been a lot worse

I finished my 14 hour print last night and started the next one this morning only to see the hot-end temperature plummeting. I managed to get to the printer to turn it off to find a burnt out connector. 

I went into the local Jaycar and found a pcb connector similar enough to replace the one that burnt out. The board in the picture is the spare good one I have on hand.The problem with it is I'd have to flash it with the firmware and I'm not certain what a lot of the settings are.

I managed to swap out the burnt one for the new one and crossed my fingers and it was all good. It was the heated bed that burnt out so my concerns that the new hot-end may have been the cause was unwarranted. I added some higher amperage wire just in case and all seems good for the moment. There will be no leaving it alone for a while just in case.

Here is a video of the first print of the new Skeleton Ukulele being printed with the new hot-end and extruder. I show the new aluminium plate I added to the printer as well.