Looking for a “Christmas present for the family” I thought a 3D printer might fit the bill.
It was this YouTube video that persuaded me:
Best Cool Things to 3D Print in 2022
And in particular, I was surprised by how mechanically intricate the prints can be, with interlocking and moving parts. So, I bought one of these:
And have been slowly learning what it can do.
We eagerly searched the Thingiverse for fun prints:
a print from the thingiverse: articulated human figure
And started figuring out how to design our own.
I found a simple way to build 3D models via the online tool Tinkercad:
my Tinkercad creation: stackable “twist together” discs
While this was more than sufficient to get started, I found myself drawn to the much more sophisticated Blender:
my blender creation: articulated chain
After using Blender for a while I became interested in the possibilities of programmatically generating models. I was pleased to find that the STL file format is extremely simple, and I could easily write code to generate them.
I’ll share more about designing models, including code, in a future post!
Being used to creating software, I really enjoyed the mix of on-computer and real world provided by 3D printing. You use powerful computer-based tools—but in the end, what you print has to deal with all the limitations of the real world, including working out how far you can push the limits of the printing process.
So far today, 2024-11-25, feedback has been received 2 times. Of these, 0 were likely from bots, and 2 might have been from real people. Thank you, maybe-real people!
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