I’ve been working on this caricature of myself for grins and so I have a consistent model to test different paints and finishes on and I decided to randomly paint one of the prototypes I had and this is the result:

Apparently everything I touch turns into something out of a Tim Burton film, but that’s seems to be my style… I really dig the under eye bags in pretty much all of my work…

When I was in college I had multiple people tell me they could always tell me which models were mine even if they didn’t have my name on them, which I took as a sign I was a decent enough modeler to develop and maintain a style.

I also didn’t finish the head before painting it, so you can see all the layer lines of the print everywhere. I did sand off some little saggy bits under the nose and ears (I printed this without supports and the angle was a bit extreme, but I really do hate supports), but that was as much post processing as I did to this thing. Couple that with the cheap acrylic paint I was using drying out half way through painting and leaving blobs everywhere makes for a kind of weird finish, but it’s not as noticeable in person as it is in the picture.

The whole piece is 60mm tall and was printed with a .1mm layer height.

Either way, painting the head made me a) appreciate how much better things look when they’re not bright shiny orange and b) realize how much I miss doing more ‘crafty’ things like painting this kind of thing.

I’ve never painted miniatures before, but it was super fun. I also have a newfound respect for people who work for Laika painting all their stop motion heads… Mad respect.

In the future, I’ll probably end up painting more of the little heads I print for things. It’s fun and good practice as I hope to get into making and producing miniatures in the near future (part of my schemes to diversify the things I do with 3d printing).

I think I also want to experiment with products that one could paint onto a 3d print to fill in print lines without the need for so much sanding, so stay tuned for that once I have some more money

I’ve been working with a client to make molds for custom dolls and decided to print the mold on my CR-10 to see if I could print the molds for them for cheaper than Shapeways.

It turns out the resolution wasn’t quite good enough for what they needed, but as far as I’m concerned it would work well enough for most things I would consider doing.

The first image is some brown polymer clay straight out of the mold. You can see the layer lines and the Voldemortian nose, but it’s certainly not bad for something that cost 30 cents to produce.

The middle picture is after I buffed out the layer lines with my finger (and distorted a lot of the face because it was stupidly hot in the room and the clay was mushy as all hell).

The third picture is after I tried (valiantly, but to no avail) to add a nose and clean up the mouth a bit. I also added eyebrows that are more reminiscent of an angry old man than a young girl, but I haven’t worked with polymer clay in years, so shrugs? I think?

Overall…

PLA seems to be a pretty good mold material for polymer clay. With the exception of the nose area, I didn’t need any kind of release agent to keep the clay from sticking. I’m pretty sure it only stuck in the nose because I actively jammed a little piece of clay into the nose and then I couldn’t pick it out again later. If I didn’t press the clay into the nose, it didn’t seem to get filled with I put the rest of the clay in, but that’s not the fault of the mold so much as the clay in my opinion.

In the future, I might make more little 3d printed molds for polymer clay, etc… The ten minutes I spent fiddling with the face after I de-molded it made me miss traditional sculpting again.

I’m sure I’ll think of more specific applications eventually… I’m looking to radically expand my knowledge of more mediums related to 3d printing in the near future, so I might go back to polymer clay as part of that… We shall see…

In the mean time, print on my people! Print on.

These came off random prints for different aquarium nonsense (The stuff stopped sticking to the build plate really early, so I pulled off what was effectively the outlines of the stuff) and I thought it was really cool.

I save all my scrap prints so I can one day use them for something else, but these seem like they’d be cool to melt down into a guitar pick or some kind of weird jewelry or something…

I had a client contact me and commission a reindeer model for use in OOAK miniatures.

For grins, I decided to see what would happen if I printed it on my own printer. I’d be lying if I wasn’t thinking of undercutting Shapeways and printing these for her myself

I printed them on a .2 mm layer height. I could have gone for a slightly better resolution, but it was already scheduled to take 4 hrs to print and 8 hrs seemed really nuts for a simple test…

Anyway, It printed better than I expected. I had to aggressively cut supports off the antlers, which somehow stayed intact and the ears look like trash (more on that later), but I think with some finishing it would look pretty reasonable…

If I were to print this again, I would probably rip the antlers off the model completely (and perhaps turn them into little head pegs that could get glued into a slot on the head). That way, if they failed (and you know that’s where this print would fail), I wouldn’t need to reprint the rest of the body…

I also had to go through and thicken all the ears on the model because the printer just left giant holes in them. This happened on a few of my models and I just figured out why.

Apparently, if the walls in that area of the model are thinner than the nozzle width, the printer decided it would be better/more accurate to leave a hole in the model rather than print a single layer of plastic.

To finish this dude, I’m going to try covering it with some Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty. I have no idea how well it’ll work over plastic, but I’ve used it in some cosplay horns before and it held up to me smashing the horns into a wall with my head with no visible (and the horns were made from floral foam, mind you, so I’d count that as a win).

I’m just hoping it’ll stick to the print… I’ll do another post about the results later…

In preparation for my NEW CLOWNFISH (which should be coming tomorrow… The anticipation is killing me) I’ve made some real-person covers for my power heads that are providing flow in my tank so they don’t eat the fish.

It took me 3 attempts to get one that fits perfectly. The one above is the second attempt where the little clamp arms are too long… For the next one (I have two power heads) I shortened the back ends a bit and for this one, I just tied it securely onto the back with some mono-filament.

Don’t judge me – I’m impatient and I hate wasting time/plastic for something that’s otherwise totally functional XD

One day, I’m going to figure out how to measure stuff so I don’t need to do 3 versions of stuff until I get it right. My problem isn’t building things to scale or to measurements – I’ve been doing that effectively as a living since I graduated college, but I’m REALLY bad at measuring weirdly shaped items like this pump. It’s not even that weird shaped, but somehow everything I need to measure ends up being covered in salt water and dripping everywhere while I fumble around with my measuring tank.

One thing I might do if I somehow end up with a bunch of anemones (which have a tendency to wander around the tank and get stuck in pumps) is throw some screen mesh between the power head and the plastic thing. There’s just enough space where I think it would fit…

Oh, and the bit where the water gets shot out from the pump looks terrible because of all the support material and I don’t care! If I ever decided to sell these, I’d fix it, but I just want these done and having the ugly bit on this doesn’t detract much overall from the bright orange blob of terror that’s hanging out in my tank… I’m really regretting printing all this crap in orange – it’s horrifying.

Either way, these fit the power heads pretty securely and do their job, so I’ll have to content myself for printing these in black or perhaps a sand color that matches the rocks once these degrade and I get some ABS to print the stuff for my tanks…

I’ve gone into a reclusive hole of doing things, but during that time, I did a bit of organizing in my 10 gal reef tank.

I made a frag rack, a weird giant voroni pillar thing to store my air stone and blobs of free floating macro algae that were wafting around my tank looking stupid and a little basket to store rock chips and mushroom pieces so they can attach to the rocks without being blown all over the tank.

I just learned how to make the voroni stuff in mesh mixer and I got kind of excited and I’ve been making voroni stuff all weekend. It’s becoming ridiculous…

Here’s all the stuff in the tank. The frag rack actually works and now I can make some more room on the sand bed for other stuff and the algae holder is a bit of a tight fit for all my algae (I didn’t realize I had so much) but it totally works for now. The bottom picture is a dorky little ricordea florida hanging out in the mushroom basket – I ended up taking the mesh off because it didn’t seem super necessary? I also really wanted to see the mushies.

If I were to make any of these again, I’d make a little bumper so the back of the frag rack doesn’t butt directly up against the aquarium glass, because that limits the frags I can fit in there (you’ll notice only the really tiny frags are close to the glass). I’d also use a different design for the frag rack. I think this one is super sexy, but I pretty much ripped it off another one I saw someone print on Facebook because I a) wanted a frag rack on the quick and b) didn’t want to spent 8,000 years thinking of a design. It just means I can’t/won’t sell this design

I’d also make the algae basket a bit wider and not forget to attach holes for suction cups (It worked out fine, but I could have made it fit closer to the wall if I hadn’t forgot the hole. I also had to keep it weighed down with a few rocks in the bottom because PLA floats like a champ.

The shrooms would probably do well with slightly higher basket edges (the ricordea keeps jumping ship because it’s weirdly boyant, but I’ve got it smushed in now…), but this one works totally fine if you don’t put huge rocks in it.

In terms of the plastic choice…

PLA has been shown to degrade in aquariums, especially in areas of high flow, and that’s what I printed these in because it’s all I have. Considering these were mostly just experiments/prototypes, I’m kind of ok with that. PLA is otherwise aquarium safe.

A better option would have been to use ABS, because that won’t erode in aquariums and is used in a bunch of other aquarium stuff (like abs bulkheads which I’m finally done installing in all my tanks). Hatchbox ABS can apparently be printed without any fumes according to a random dude on Facebook I talked to who has a small business selling 3D printed stuff for aquariums.

Some people also use PETG for their aquarium prints, but there’s no long term research done about it leaching anything into tanks or degrading as far as I’m aware of.

Here’s a unsolicited picture of my Duncan coral, which is one of my favorite rubber-looking things to photograph

I really need to clean all the algae off my glass…

WITHOUT ANY WARNING TO PEOPLE

Apparently they got rid of some of my favorite materials, randomly renamed others for no apparent reason and just… Why??? Some kind of notice would have at least been nice so I could have updated my Etsy listings before people started ordering stuff in materials that no longer exist?

Here’s the official announcement that can be found on the Shapeways Forum

Hi everyone!

We are so excited to announce the release of updates to our materials portfolio. Available, starting today are:

• Silver: Antique Finish
  • A unique finish that gives a rugged personality to your pieces
• Full Color Sandstone: Matte Finish
  • A smooth and matte finish for even bolder colors
• Steel: Matte Bronzed-Steel Finish
  • A subtly rustic finish for industrial chic pieces
• Professional Plastic (previously known as HP Nylon Plastic) is available to sell in your Shapeways shops

To make for a simpler, more user-friendly creation process, we have also updated our Materials Hub. Along with lovely new end-product photography, we have now broken our materials in to benefit driven categories which will help guide you to the right materials for your projects. The new categories are:

• Strength & Value
• Professional Finishes
• Industrial Strength
• Scale Replicas

We’ve done some renaming of our materials, more details on that can be found here in our updated Materials Naming Guide. We’ve also begun updating our Model Upload and Checkout flow to make it easier to pick your materials and finishes.

You may also notice some changes to the material offerings; as part of this refresh process, we decided to say goodbye to some of our less popular materials including:

• High Definition Acrylate (instead try our Black HP Nylon plastic or Frosted Ultra Detail Plastic)
• Acrylic Plastic (instead try our Frosted Ultra Detail plastic)
• PLA (instead try our Strong & Flexible plastic)
• Metallic Plastic (instead try our Gray HP Nylon plastic)
• Elasto Plastic (instead try our Strong & Flexible plastic)
• Castable Wax
• Matte Gold Steel (instead try our Polished Gold Steel)
• Matte Bronze Steel (instead try out Polished Bronze Steel)
• Porcelain

If you have purchased or sold any these materials in the last 6 months, you should have been notified via e-mail. If you have any of these materials enabled in your shop, your products will no longer be offered for sale in these materials. If your product was only enabled in one of these materials, it will now be listed as public, but not for sale.

Shapeways is ever-evolving, and we will continue to focus on providing the right material solutions for your projects.

We can’t wait to see what you create with this updated experience!

So how’s everyone else’s morning???

Remember that snail shell I mentioned in my last post?

It actually turned out REALLY well.

Ultimately, I decided to stop printing random shells until I get my hermits and see what size they actually are, but I think I’m gonna have a lot of fun with this… I might even make some shells for bigger hermits just because there’s more creative freedom I just need to find people with hermit crabs so I don’t have 800 random shells sitting around…

After the random skull shell, I decided to see what exactly the printer could handle with miniatures, just for grins. I’ve been wanting to print one or two little human models through Shapeways to see how they’d turn out (it’s good for the material reviews and such) but they always fail their manual checks… And if I can’t do it on Shapeways, I’ll try it on my own printer! Their loss

Honestly, I was really surprised how well these came out. I printed the black cat model I made a while back at 1″ and 2″ high with a layer height of .1mm, and I feel like I’d be reasonably comfortable printing miniatures in the future, provided they didn’t need to use many supports (with none obviously being preferred).

I say this because I ripped both of the characters off the base (along with their feet I might add) when I was taking the supports off. It may have been better to print the little base separately so the supports were just attached to the build plate, but either way, I hate dealing with supports, especially on such tiny prints.

On the larger, 2″ model, there was also some weird blips where layers got left off (on the arm bending up towards her face and presumably on the legs because they broke off on the same later unlike the smaller model which broke at the thinnest part above the boots) but I really like how the hair turned out (on the parts where it printed well).

Once she gives me orthographics or sketches of her character, I’m going to model and try printing a little D&D miniature for my old roommate and design it in such a way so that it doesn’t need supports. Hopefully it’ll turn out really well, but only time will tell.

Today I’m just torturing my printer with weird prints that probably shouldn’t be printed on an FDM printer to see what I can do in the future.

I’m getting some super tiny hermit crabs for my little reef tank over the next few days and my evil scheme is to try and 3D print them some weird shells (mostly because I couldn’t find any actual shells locally and I’m looking for creative ways to procrastinate from the other things I should be doing).

This morning I made a few random basic shell shapes in Maya… In the process, I learned about the wonderful world of animation sweeps, which are pretty darn lovely. At some point I might make a little video about how I made the shells, which was pretty easy once I found a reasonable tool… Anywho…

I arbitrarily selected the middle shell, threw it into Cura and tried to print the sucker. The first print failed, so I re-oriented the model and that worked better (and by ‘better’ I mean ‘flawlessly’; I printed it with the point facing directly down…).

3D printed shell that’s too large for the snails in question…

The supports came off pretty darn well, but I made the shell waaaayyy too big since the snails apparently like shells that are .5-.75″ big and this one was at least 1.5″ big, so I scaled the print down 50% and reprinted.

The little shell detached from the build plate when it was about 70% done, but it does at least look like it’s a better size…

I’m finally being forced to try out new methods of sticking things to the build plate besides skirts….. Brims are my choice of the day because the only time I’ve ever tried to remove a raft from a print I couldn’t do it and I’ve been salty about that for literally years.

Since I also got *super* bored watching the same shell print over and over, I decided to spice it up a little bit and add a random skull I made a while back.

Skull Snail Shell!

You better believe that if I’m going to randomly fabricate my own crab shells, I’m going to do something with them that nature can’t, or what the heck is the point… If I were printing shells for larger hermit crabs (which I probably will one day), I think it’d be really cool to print them with skulls and barnacles all over them, then hand paint the suckers. Or perhaps I could just throw a succulents all over the shell.

As I’m writing this, I have the little skull shell printing at .1mm layer height, which kills my soul to wait for, but whatever… All the other ones were .2mm layer heights.

And, in case anyone was wondering, these shells seem pretty strong. I squeezed the big one in my hand as hard as I could and I could barely get the opening to bend, let alone the spiraled portion of the shell. I tried the same thing with the smaller one and stabbed myself hard enough with the point that I desisted, but I’d be surprised if anything short of a rock falling on the little snails could hurt these shells (and all my rocks are pretty much sitting directly on the bottom of the tank, so I don’t really see that being an issue unless malicious intent is somehow involved).

Cura Preview of Skull Snail Shell Printing

And with that, I leave you with this random Cura preview of how the skull shell will print… It’s about 33% done now…

p.s. Why the heck is Cura adding random layers of print in the middle of the shell?!?!?! I designed that to be hollow… wtf

I finished modeling some reindeer for a client XD

All 3 of them only took me about 8 hrs. Yay for getting more efficient!

You can check out the rotatable model on my Sketchfab: https://skfb.ly/6yRQA

3D models of reindeer I made for a client.

I’m hoping they’ll send me pics of the prints once they’re printed (via Shapeways) and also after they’ve been covered in fur (flocking, which I somehow never realized came in any non-tree colors).