{"id":42,"date":"2014-05-22T21:01:50","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T21:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/?p=42"},"modified":"2014-05-22T21:20:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T21:20:10","slug":"some-assembly-required-3d-printed-gizmos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/some-assembly-required-3d-printed-gizmos\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Assembly Required &#8211; 3D Printed Gizmos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The future is now. <a title=\"Replicator\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Replicator_(Star_Trek)\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org']);\">Replicators<\/a> are a reality, kind of. Okay, not Star Trek replicators, but rather\u00a0<a title=\"MakerBot Replicator 2\" href=\"http:\/\/store.makerbot.com\/replicator2\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/store.makerbot.com']);\">MakerBot Replicators<\/a>, as well as a host of dozens of other 3D printing solutions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_45\" style=\"width: 436px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/makerbot.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-45\" class=\"wp-image-45\" src=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/makerbot.jpg\" alt=\"This thing is so future. It kind of looks like an empty PC case.\" width=\"426\" height=\"284\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-45\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This thing is so future. It kind of looks like an empty PC case.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They&#8217;re so cool,\u00a0and I have no idea how they work. I think plastic is involved. And layers. Simply put, 3D printers make plastic onions. They can also make other plastic vegetables, and even some plastic fruit! In fact, if it&#8217;s plastic, it can probably make it, or at least parts of it. Some 3D printers make things that aren&#8217;t even made of plastic! Check out this 3D chocolate printer:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"904\" height=\"509\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MDEdGhE2dUk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">At the request of a friend of mine, here&#8217;s ten less-than-Earth-shattering ideas for things that you could design\u00a0with a (plastic) 3D printer, possibly! With some assembly required, of course.<\/span><\/p>\n<ol style=\"color: #000000;\">\n<ol style=\"color: #000000;\">\n<li><strong>Can-holder you attach to edge of your desk, makes knocking cans and cups over impossible<\/strong>. Or at least, very difficult. I&#8217;ve had several near-disasters involving my computer case and a mug of water sat on the wrong side of the table.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Plastic cage for putting all your un-rinsed washing up in so you can rinse it all at once<\/strong>. My water heater is a very strange and stingy heater. If you leave it running for an hour, you get maybe six or seven minutes of hot water. As such, I have to use my water sparingly. I can&#8217;t afford to rinse my cutlery one item at a time, and it takes <em>forever<\/em>. Just jam it all in a plastic cage and <strong>rinse\u00a0it all at once<\/strong>!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Folding, portable, multiple coffee cup holding device<\/strong>. Like those scary cardboard things you can get from Costa, but adjustable for cup size. It&#8217;s basically a handle attached to some cup holders that makes it so you don&#8217;t have to actually touch the cups. Brilliant for when you need to carry four<em> double-shot venti Americanos<\/em> back to work to help you get through that five hour meeting.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Small rolling pin device that you can attach to toothpaste tubes to squeeze them to the max<\/strong>. I have a feeling someone already did this, but you know what? I don&#8217;t care. All I care about is getting the most out of my toothpaste. <em>It is the one thing I live for<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Writing desk (folding, of course) that you can attach to the back of bus seats by the handle thing<\/strong>. All buses in London have a handle.. Thing. I can&#8217;t describe it, so here&#8217;s a photo:<br \/>\n<div id=\"attachment_43\" style=\"width: 352px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/LondonBusHandle.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-43\" class=\"wp-image-43 \" src=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/LondonBusHandle-300x137.jpg\" alt=\"Photo Credit: markhillary via Compfight cc\" width=\"342\" height=\"137\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-43\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">[Cropped from source] Photo Credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/56087830@N00\/4627106006\/\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.flickr.com']);\">markhillary<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/compfight.com\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/compfight.com']);\">Compfight<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/creativecommons.org']);\">cc<\/a><\/p><\/div>If there&#8217;s something crying out to have a desk attached to it, it has gotta be this thing. It would make writing down these ideas in the morning so much easier.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sunglasses with lens that you can slide into position<\/strong>. Like those <a title=\"I never clicked for this\" href=\"http:\/\/imgur.com\/DI9YX9S\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/imgur.com']);\">Deus Ex glasses<\/a>, but more manual. You think it&#8217;s a bad idea? <em>I never asked for this<\/em> [inability to come up with good ideas]. This is also assuming you can print clear plastic lens. I don&#8217;t know guys, I&#8217;m not a maker person.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hand-held playing card thrower for people who can&#8217;t throw cards<\/strong>. It&#8217;s all in the wrist, you see. I bet you could make a pulley-based gun \u00a0thing.. Basically, a horizontal hand-held trebuchet for launching playing cards. Just don&#8217;t aim it at people, okay? I nearly blinded a friend when he let me throw cards at him. I was so totally Gambit, but I didn&#8217;t want to accidentally make him Nick Fury, you know?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pint-pourer: Two pivoting brackets for holding cups and bottles, one higher than the other<\/strong>. Allows you to pour from a can at an easily adjustable speed into a perfectly 45 degree glass. Bliss. Again, awful description, so here&#8217;s a special blueprint just for you people!\n<p><div id=\"attachment_48\" style=\"width: 204px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/PintPourer.png\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-48\" class=\" wp-image-48\" src=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/PintPourer-300x275.png\" alt=\"Pint Pourer\" width=\"194\" height=\"178\" srcset=\"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/PintPourer-300x275.png 300w, http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/PintPourer.png 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-48\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">It pours pints and it took all of thirty seconds to knock up in Inkscape. What do you <i>want<\/i> from me?!<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n<li><strong>Claw device for eating finger foods<\/strong>. Okay, fine, for eating chicken wings. This also might exist, you can already imagine people who just flat-out refuse to touch food for fear of making it dirty, but still want to eat delicious ribs. I guess a more elegant solution would be disposable gloves.. But hey, we&#8217;re dreaming big here!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Beard stencils<\/strong>. Little bits of beard-shaped plastic you stick to your face and shave around to get the perfect beard. I wish I could grow a beard, but alas. I&#8217;m doomed to live the life of someone who can only grow a soul patch and a pathetic excuse for a moustache.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n<p>There&#8217;s an awful lot of cup holder-related stuff on this list because I have\u00a0<em>no<\/em> imagination and I\u00a0love the fact that liquids can be stored in such convenient vessels. If we didn&#8217;t have cups, we&#8217;d have to hold our coffee with our <strong>hands<\/strong>, and that would be <em>awful<\/em>. So why not make them even more amazing with a bit of cheap plastic and some ingenuity?<\/p>\n<h2>First Steps<\/h2>\n<p>In a stunning display of benevolence, I have deemed you all worthy of receiving the same wisdom I just received from Google twenty seconds ago. How do you even get into 3D printing? I guess the first step is the most obvious: You have to acquire a 3D printer. There&#8217;s an awful lot of them out there though.. How do you pick which one to splash out on? And after you get one, you actually have to\u00a0<em>design<\/em>\u00a0your wonderful new gizmo. Let&#8217;s look at these really briefly (for reference, these &#8216;First Steps&#8217; are meant to be just that: What&#8217;s the <em>very first thing<\/em> you might think of doing to move forward with\u00a0a particular idea? Sometimes, they&#8217;ll also be about what I learn while figuring out the first step, or maybe even some info about the first step itself!):<\/p>\n<h3>Which Printer?<\/h3>\n<p>This is not an easy question to answer. It&#8217;s so hard, and I&#8217;m so unqualified, I&#8217;m not going to answer it. Instead, here&#8217;s some things you should keep in mind when picking your printer:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Price!<\/strong>\u00a0These things get\u00a0<em>expensive<\/em>, my friends. You&#8217;re looking at up to \u00a32,000 for a high end piece of kit, maybe as little as \u00a3200 or so if you&#8217;re okay with putting it together yourself. Some are even cheaper, but that old adage still holds true: You get what you pay for.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Size!<\/strong> The size of the printer itself limits the size of the objects it makes. They are\u00a0<em>not<\/em> TARDIS (which is the plural of TARDIS, FYI), so if you want to make some seriously big things (or big parts), you&#8217;ll need a larger printer. I believe the technical term for the maximum build size is the\u00a0<em>build envelope<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Quality!<\/strong> Some printers are naff and make naff quality objects. Some aren&#8217;t so naff, and make great gizmos! This ties in with getting what you pay for, really.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.3ders.org\/pricecompare\/3dprinters\/\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.3ders.org']);\">big ol&#8217; list<\/a> of printers and prices courtesy of the people at <a href=\"http:\/\/3ders.org\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/3ders.org']);\">3ders.org<\/a>! Knock yourself out.<\/p>\n<h3>How do I design my wonderful creation?<\/h3>\n<p>You thought picking (and maybe building) a printer was hard? Well, now comes the fun part. Look forward to spending a ton of time learning a piece of 3D design software and making sure the final blueprint is 3D printer compatible. I&#8217;ve heard something about &#8216;non-manifold surfaces&#8217; being a no-no.. So yeah, that&#8217;s the sort of terminology you&#8217;ll be hearing regularly. Hope you brushed up on maths before you started!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a little more &#8216;qualified&#8217; to talk about 3D design software, because I did a tutorial in Blender once and it turned out so well I stopped using Blender. For real though, Blender is cool! I&#8217;m just not cool enough myself to use it. Here&#8217;s a few bits of software (free and commercial) you might use to do your designing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blender.org\/\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.blender.org']);\">Blender<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; Free and open source, Blender is so amazing you can make whole\u00a0<a title=\"Sintel\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.youtube.com']);\"><em>films<\/em><\/a> in it.<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"AutoDesk\" href=\"http:\/\/www.autodesk.co.uk\/\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.autodesk.co.uk']);\">AutoDesk software<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; These guys make 3ds Max, AutoCAD.. Real hardcore solutions. There&#8217;s also the hobbyist, super-cut down product <a title=\"123D\" href=\"http:\/\/www.123dapp.com\/\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.123dapp.com']);\">AutoDesk 123D<\/a>, which is free and I understand, pretty okay!<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"SketchUp\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sketchup.com\/3Dfor\/3D-printing\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.sketchup.com']);\">SketchUp<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; In a similar vein to AutoDesk, SketchUp is a company that makes 3D design software. And similarly, they offer a free version of their product called <a title=\"SketchUp Make\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sketchup.com\/products\/sketchup-make\" onclick=\"javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http:\/\/www.sketchup.com']);\">SketchUp Make<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once again team, I can&#8217;t vouch for any of these. If this is your first time reading about 3D printing, you now know exactly as much as I do about the whole process. But maybe you&#8217;re interested enough to actually give it a go? If so, you&#8217;re a braver (and probably richer) person than I. Good luck, and remember me when you&#8217;re selling toothpaste tube-emptiers by the truck load.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The future is now. Replicators are a reality, kind of. Okay, not Star Trek replicators, but rather\u00a0MakerBot Replicators, as well as a host of dozens of other 3D printing solutions.\u00a0 They&#8217;re so cool,\u00a0and I have no idea how they work. I think plastic is involved. And layers. Simply put, 3D printers make plastic onions. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gizmos","content-columns-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mjdarby.net\/ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}