Saturday 15 December 2018

Stick Blender Splat Guard

I bought a cheap $19.99 Stick Blender (Big W) to primarily make my own home made healthier mayonnaise using free range eggs and either Olive Oil or Avocado Oil.

This guard was in response to my first use of this particular brand. I'd used one before but it didn't cover me, my t-shirt and kitchen surrounds in oil and egg yolk resulting in a 20 minute clean up.


Here's a link to the recipe I found, that claimed and delivered, a thick creamy mayo.

https://nourishedkitchen.com/avocado-oil-mayonnaise/









I got out my design pad and measured everything, then designed something that would sit flat on my printer bed for printing and not need any supports. Mainly because I was going to print in 3DFillies PLAflex so I could design in a slit in the lid, so I could fit and bend it around the stem of the blender.




While I have any number of print bases like Ultrabase etc I'm not that keen to swap print surfaces as that entails a Z-Stop adjustment and I really didn't feel like doing that. :-)

My regular bed is some Borosilicate glass with some pei glued to it.





The print turned out quite nicely...................after the 3rd attempt lol
It seems my math skills and ability to measure things and do it to a shape on half the of profile design to then lathe around 360 degrees was clearly lacking :-)
If you add 3 mm on one side the total width ends up 6 mm larger and while I understood this before I started I still got it wrong twice.

The container has a pouring spout that I needed to allow for and a lip around the top I took advantage of to make the lid clip onto.





Pei and flex material get on so well you actually have to put an intermediate layer of something like glue-stick so you can remove your print after it has finished printing.
While I did this getting the print off was difficult and left a mess on the print itself which I washed off with warm water. Due to my impatience with everything, the first layer didn't turn out as nicely as I wanted. It was acceptable to me as this is for my own use and if you know me you'll know I don't fuss so much over visual details and am more interested in nice practical design.

That's not to say it isn't a part of my goal but it also isn't the end all, or be all, of 3d printing as far as I'm concerned.






The lip snaps on with a satisfying click and is close enough to the lip to fit well and still allow spill free pouring. 

Note:- You couldn't pour the mayo I made, this stuff could fill cracks in plaster, it was so thick  ;-D







You can see the split where you can bend it to fit onto the shaft of the blender.





It has yet to be used in a real life mayo making frenzy but I'm pretty confident that all the cleaning and the load of washing machine clothes and Tea towels has been a lesson that not all stick blenders are the same or even act the same. The other one I once used, required you to lift the blender way too high to make such a mess but this one doesn't really need the same kind of lift to do the same job lol





For something that only cost $20.00 aud  and will only get used occasionally I'm pretty happy with everything now!

Link to the stl here

Thursday 29 November 2018

3d printed and airbrushed Raspberry Pi Case - Part 1

Based on the Raspberry Pi 1 case design in the link below, I redesigned a Raspberry Pi 3 case as it seems the Series 1 case's link to MyMiniFactory no longer works. It also is out of date and doesn't fit the new Pi's.

https://www.fabbaloo.com/blog/2015/7/30/design-of-the-week-raspberry-pie-case?rq=raspberry%20pi

Designed and modeled in 3ds Max.
Sliced in Simplify3d v4.0.1
Printed in 3d Fillies pla+ Green https://3dfillies.com/plaplus-filament-175mm-1kg/


The mesh needed to be manifold so the long process of weaving the crust as one solid water tight mesh began.
I avoided trying to boolean the sections together for just about every reason you could reasonably think of.



The hump or raised centre section was added using soft selection and a FFD modifier






The weave and the outer edge were bought together and Booleaned into one mesh
and while it isn't shown here, because at the time I was too deep into my process, it was then sculpted into the shape I wanted.

I just used simple box modelling techniques for most of this and added turbo or mesh smooth modifiers to get the rounded soft pastry look :-)

Called box modelling because it all starts with a box........no less.






A bottom was made for the top in Fusion 360 and imported back into Max to be mated with the top.









My logo was added on the bottom to satisfy my ego :-) and to help prevent someone passing it off as their own work. Something that the long long hours put into all of this, wont let me tolerate :-)





Here you can better see the sculpting and smoothing to remove the boxiness of it all









3d printed and airbrushed Raspberry Pi Case - Part 2

I used 3ds Max for most of the modeling and design.




Forgot some settings and had a hard time removing supports lol
Fits like a dream :-) now...........!














Because I was painting these (There were 6 of them to allow for mistakes) I printed them in 3d Filles pla+ Green  https://3dfillies.com/plaplus-filament-175mm-1kg/ as any colour would do.

You could easily have used white or another light colour that would match the top coat but I have years of experience painting things and knew I could cover the green.















A combination of Beige and grey Primer Filler were used to undercoat and fill the layer lines. I found the beige was a little better for this. I started with the grey then switched to the beige.

2 full cans ended up being needed to get the layers covered, with plenty of sanding in between.






The final colour was a beige automotive acrylic lacquer that was close enough to what I was after for my base colour. 3 cans of paint so far. Two undercoats and one top coat.






I rendered the top of the design in 3ds Max and scaled it to the correct size.





I then glued the paper with some spray adhesive to some card stock.



Then I drew around the inside of the raised sections that would get the darker colours
and cut them out with a stencil knife with a No 11 blade in it.






I printed the size of the width of the "pie" on the A4 paper, because I kept forgetting it :-) 102.3 mm






I then scored the card and folded the wings down to form a tent above the case so as not to touch the cases themselves.






I then airbrushed a combination airbrush water based acrylic paint and some ordinary acrylic artist paints I already had here. This allowed me to mix up any colour that I needed to.







There were about 5 or 6 colours used in the end to get the look I was after. The first 3 colours were all freehand painted without the mask and quite randomly applied.

The next 2 colours I used the mask to prevent paint from reaching the places I didn't want any of the darker colour to hit.






So working from lightest to darkest with creams and yellows and umbers and browns I built up the pastry to look nicely cooked and even a little over cooked.

The last and darkest colour was hand painted freehand with my airbrush.






When everything had dried, it was going to need a clear coat. This was always something that was going to happen as the water based paint over the lacquer was never going to adhere all that well and was going to wipe off during handling. Not easily, but over time if left un-coated.

So I used some picture varnish designed to go over both types of paint to protect artwork. Luckily I had this from other art projects.

There are some paints designed to do this and used a lot in the airbrush industry, but were way too expensive and I only needed a small amount so settled on this instead.






Here they are with a raspberry Pi fitted inside one of them. I had originally increased the scale of these by another 1% to make sure the RPi3 would fit comfortably.

The test fit prior to painting was fantastic so I plowed on ahead "Mr Plow!"

After they were painted they were much more difficult to fit in the cases. I suspect the 3d prints were still off-gassing and shrinking while they were waiting for paint and also were contracted even more by all the coats of heavy paints that followed.

The RPi3 still fit, but need to be patiently fitted into the case.










I have kept one of these for myself, one went to a friend who let me borrow his compressor after mine decided not to work

All the others are destined as Christmas presents for close friends that have supported me.over the years.










Monday 6 August 2018

NASA Logo for 3d Printing



The picture below of the logo as stls joined in 3ds Max and coloured to show what it will look like after printing.

I traced the logo in Inkscape and took it into fusion and made 3 layers or colours for the stls.
The white base layer takes the shape of both the blue and red to both support and provide the white in the background.

The red swoosh may be a tight fit but the Blue will print as a whole and will remove in sections so print everything and lay it out prior to assembly and gluing.

EDIT:-
This is pretty big and will need to be scaled down to fit a lot of 3d printers. I tried it at 30% in X and Y but kept the Z height at 100 as it is also very thin. I will change it at some point. :-) I still haven't had a successful print from it and suggest you try and print it doing filament swaps for maximum chance at not throwing it across a room lol

So print the white then swap filament to blue and print that. The red can still be done separately and fitted in after. You will need some knowledge or do some research about doing a filament swap. My failures were due to my old printer playing up, so I need to finish building the other 2 I have 90% done or to buy a new one as I suffer from chronic laziness lol

This was just me Richarding around with tracing bitmaps etc so dont be surprised if things aren't as they should be.






Download the stls here:-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0jcx54gik615kcc/Nasa_STL.zip?dl=0 
A hole drilled in the centre could mean you could fit a clock mechanism.

Thursday 28 June 2018

4. Turntable Stand - Tripod - Completed

Finally its done and I'm very happy with it ;-D

Some thoughts on making it:-
1. Print time for the stand tripod about 9 hour + depending on your settings.
2. The leg holder is about 1.5 hours, depending on your settings.
3. Sanding the nuts on the front and back helps getting them to fit (for me) sanding two edges also helped.
4. The other pieces, like both Turntables, are documented in previous blog posts.

Stl files for this build :-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9vxr56qkfgxcd9/Turntable_Stand_Leg%20Clamp.zip?dl=0

Link to the blog post about the Turntable builds 1 of 7
http://lukethier.blogspot.com/2018/05/desinging-and-making-turntable-for.html
Files for the Turntable themselves:-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z26afzy1mpyvbql/2018_Turntable.zip?dl=0





Disassembled for storage.





Assembled




;-D Pretty pleased with myself (Pictures of me laying in bed with my arm around it smoking a cigarette are nothing but vicious rumors)





With the legs withdrawn in halfway so as to make the area needed by the base less








Next to the inspiration for this build




The start of some inception