straightening your filament

(kym) One of the biggest problem i have with my bowden tube feed extruder is plastic that has kinks or bends in to, this gets stuck in my feeder and causes the filament to grind.
So taken from the idea of a wire straightener , here is my filament straightener.
i haven’t had any grinding problem since starting to use it.
I find that after slicing my object, I then know how much filament is needed and then pull that amount through and then back and recoil it on the spool.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30733

When using semi translucent plastics, running them through the straightener will turn them slightly white as is bends the plastic. But this colouration goes away after the plastic has been heated.

 

Adding color to your print!

First of all, Montreal Mini Maker Faire was a real success. Crowds of adults and children show interest in 3D printing. I hope with this blog to fill up all the info our public is looking to get, please feel free to comment on the posts if you have more questions.
Coming to us, as you see in this picture, our Ultimaker doesn’t have a dual extruder, which means it can print only one color at the time.Although it’s easy to paint on the printed models. (click on pictures to enlarge)

 

 

 

Another example of how is used paint over 3D prints.

Modeling with tinkercad, what a wonder!

Before we even got our Ultimaker, Morena participated in a contest to win a Makerbot doing some modelling for a chess contes in tinkercad. “I found this free online software incredibly easy to use and I had lot of fun sculpting the canadian animal Chess set for children!”

To see, tinker or print these model, check out here. Morena has also shared on thingiverse all the single models of the animals. Richgain made also a video about printing out the moose. Check it out!

a frog choose our printer

(Kym) There are tons of different reason in what moved each person to buy a 3D printer, so I want to share my story, how all of this took life.

I was into electronics since a while, and wanted to get a printer as prices were starting to get accessible for small starters, but I knew that a 3D printer doesn’t just print as a desktop inkjet printer. The choice available increased since 2010, now there were a number of models on the Market for personal use 3D printers. But organic models at the time were quite limited online, so it was hard to see a use of it for figurine making and art.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18479

So Morena had an idea: she modeled a cute red eyed tree frog with tiny angled legs, so to test the smoothness, the resolution, and the ability to print on low degrees angles small parts. She asked other users to test it for her and let her know the setting they used.
We liked a lot the one printed by Bluebot, who is a users of Ultimaker. I checked all the documentation about this machine, and so this is how I decided this was the printer that I wanted. So I put an order and waited patiently for it to arrive.

A printer that updates itself

thing:28487

Taylors Gregs Wades MK6 filament feed for Ultimaker  thing:28487 + thing:20850

A good part of thingiverse community has developed many new pieces to make their printers more functional, troubleshooting their problems and sharing the models online. I made a modification as well of a piece to fit my personal exigences (Pink part on top)

thing:13625

Fan Duct for Ultimaker (owen) / CC BY-SA 3.0

Desing, extrude, print!

Morena is having lot of fun creating new useful objects with her designs. Rightfully, as she’s a 3D modeler by profession, even if normally only for digital cartoony characters.

“Here the first 3 animals converted to cookie cutters!
We’re starting experimenting since a while and I have to say it’s much harder then expected. Other than the tecnical difficulties that the machine and softwares brings,  I needed to make a number of versions to understand how to make a functional design for good cookie cutters (thanks Kathrine for sweets cookie alliance).

<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" about="http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:23295"><span property="dct:title">Tree rings holder</span> (<a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName" href="http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:23295">MorenaP</a>) / <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">CC BY-NC-SA 3.0</a></div>

Tree Ring Holder cc MorenaP; thing 23295