#3d-printing

I’ve had the Xteink X4 for a couple of months now, a £40 e-ink reader small enough to stick to the back of a phone. I’d seen a few posts about it (Khairul Selamat, Neil Brown, joelchrono, and moddedbear among them), so I got curious and ordered one.

I’ve been playing with this Pocket Sprite a bit lately. It’s a tiny ESP32-based device that can emulate Gameboy, NES and various other classic game systems.

Well I took another look at the design of my macro keys project sooner than I expected. I started over with the design of the 3D-printed part of this project, and then moved the buttons and guts over from the previous version.

After my previous macro key project back in January that used full-size arcade buttons, I was itching to make a more compact set of macro keys.

There are lots of mods and additions for the Anycubic Kossel on Thingiverse. I’ve been looking to reduce the footprint of my 3D printer for a while now as it currently shares the same desk as my PC. I came across a set of standoff legs and immediately downloaded and printed them.

I’m gradually working my way around the house, looking at little niggling problems and thinking of ways to fix them with 3D printing. Today I addressed an issue in the shower.

It’s time for more filament! That PrimaValue Natural is serving me well, but I’m in need of a change of colour. I’ve still got about 1/2 of the spool left, but it’ll be fine so long as I bag it well and stick it in a cupboard.

I went back to the drawing board with the amp design, this time with the goal to make the layout more symmetrical and to move the AUX input to the back of the amp.

We’ve got this pair of wooden kitchen tongs that have been through the dishwasher one too many times and so their binding has lost it’s elasticity. To fix this, I quickly modelled and printed a spacer to clip between the tongs, to restore some rigidity.

My wife and I like to have the radio playing all night in our bedroom. Our radio only has one mono speaker and it sits on one side of the bed which means for it to be audible on both sides of the bed one person has to have a loud speaker next to their pillow.

I bought a 3D printer back in November last year and have been steadily filling my home office with 3D-printed miniatures, things to fiddle with, and functional solutions to problems that I didn’t realise needed fixing since then.

I bought some new filament! The 1kg of black that came with the printer has lasted me about 3 months, and so it was time to buy some more.

Well it’s a bunch of buttons. This is a macro keyboard, by some description. I had a bunch of arcade buttons kicking around from previous hobbies, and thought it would be nice to put them to some use.

For the first (and definitely not the last) modification to my printer, I’ve added some LED lights. I’ve used a cheap strip of USB-powered RGB LEDs, and they’re held in place around the top of the frame with their adhesive backing and some zip ties (for extra support!)

I spent some time around new year 3D printing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) characters for a friend. His main character is an Elven archer or something. We went to looking online for models that fit the bill. There are lots of free DnD miniature models on Thingiverse to download and print.

Another Groot print.. This time for my sister (she is obsessed with Groot, and who doesn’t love plastic nick-nacks!?) These models are by dav88 on Thingiverse. I printed them at quite a small scale, due to time constraints and demoing the 3D printer to the family.

Well it could be. The printer needs more calibration. It’s colder now, so maybe the temperature is affecting things. I’ve added some cardboard to try and keep the heat in, and stop any cool drafts from interfering.

It’s my Birthday, so I’ve been printing things for other people (as a way to justify printing stuff!)

It was my friend Dave’s birthday, and he loves the Alien movie franchise. I found a nice model of a Xenomorph Guard on Thingiverse and using Tinkercad stuck it on a base with his name.

Having my printer tethered to my PC is less than ideal, it means the printer has to be quite close to the PC because of the length of the USB cable, so I’ve been exploring other options. I’ve got a Windows-powered tablet (the Chuwi Vi10 Plus that I reviewed back in 2016) that isn’t doing very much these days, so I thought why not use that with the printer?

The first practical print that I’ve done. I used Tinkercad to model this hinge pin for my garden bin to replace one that has been missing from the bin as long as I can recall.

I’ve been going a bit overboard with printing novelty models from Thingiverse lately.

I printed a Groot! Another great model from Thingiverse. This Groot model prints in two pieces, which are then slotted together.

I’m enjoying printing some great models from Thingiverse. This little elephant is an articulated print-in-place model. It prints in one piece, and then the legs sort of snap to become moveable.

Delta style 3D printers can be very fast and accurate, but to get that point you have to do a lot of calibration and “dialing in”. I’ve had a number of problems over the past week, starting with general inexperience, followed up with a failed calibration sensor.

I bought a 3D printer! I’ve gone with the Anycubic Kossel Plus with linear rails.