Friday, April 29, 2016

Headphone hanger

I've been hanging my headphones from a twisted paperclip.  Can't buy this anywhere because this cubicle system is outdated.  The company probably bought these walls on craigslist or ebay.  So the cubicle walls have slots that you can hook onto, if you can fit it in the slot.  That's how the bookshelf hangs.  Anything else, you have to pin to the cloth or use little magnets, neither of which is strong enough to hold the headphones.  It's probably been in use for 2 weeks now.  I forgot to take a picture before bringing it to work.
 

 

Saturday, April 23, 2016

3rd time's the charm

Finally happy with the peacock feather. Happy with the eye, happy with the pattern of the individual tines (right word?)  1st one is on the right, 2nd try is middle, 3rd attempt is on the left.  I'm bringing #3 to work.  I'm really liking how springy it's turned out with the bit of PLA down the spine.  Only takes 30 minutes each!

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Peacock feather

I was testing out a concept.  Using flexible filament for the peacock feather.  I did have to use PLA on the back of the stem because it was too floppy.  This will go to one of my home pens, then I'm going to give it another shot when I get some time.  I think I can improve on the "eye."  Really happy with it, though.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Flexible filament

On a whim I actually bought some flexible filament when I ordered extra heater/nozzles.  That was a mistake!  I knew better that but I really wanted to try flexible material.  I am so disappointed in the quantity which I misread or misunderstood  for $12 + shipping.  It's not the color that was shown on the website and I measured a foot short.  Okay, color isn't a deal breaker, I just wanted to try out the properties, but the quantity isn't enough for a real project.

So Friday my (side work) client put the project on hold, so I knew I was going to have a long, boring, rainy weekend at home because mom & I are in the 2nd week of a cold and it's supposed to rain for a week.  I'm over the cold but not the cough.  On the way home on Friday I picked up  a roll of flexible 3D filament for $36, 3 times the price of sample filament.  I have a couple projects in mind that need the qualities of what I thought was flexible filament -- not exactly what I thought.

Ugh, it was a rough start.  I thought I was going to need a real 3D printer and water-soluble support filament to do anything with it.  Then I thought I broke the pen -- the motor part that pushes material to the heated tip -- whew.  No, I was just experiencing typical issues with flexible material.  When it's hot, it's a lot softer than I expected.  Then it takes longer to set up, meanwhile it sticks to anything it touches.

Here's formerly "Nekkid Barbie's" best side trying on some flexible filament.  I'm afraid she has a new minor burn scar from the heat on her butt, looks more like rug burns.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Running again

My pen is working again.  While I was waiting for parts, I got the bright idea to get a heat gun.  You've seen my practice snitch before, now it's truly a golden snitch.

I've shown my practice rose before.  I still can't get a good picture of it, even though the heat gun helped make it rounder.  At least I found a purpose for it, it's now a pen topper, too.

Not pictured well (in the back), a stand-alone spool holder.  I was previously in the middle of this project when the pen broke, so I was able to finish it.  Getting back to my feathers, that black one (left) came out really nice, but this style was supposed to be with the clear filament to be a "Sugar Quill" so I re-did it (middle).  Not that you can tell from this picture, the black one came out better.  But now I don't have enough black filament to do the style that was supposed to be black!  I've shown the golden feather before.  It is awesome, except it was supposed to be red.  I ran out of red (sigh).  Good thing I have lots of pens.  I still have to stick the clear one onto a pen.