I don’t think of myself as a 3D Print Designer - I’m just a guy who owns a good 3D printer and likes to use it to solve problems. Every month I find a problem or two for which 3DP is the right tool in my kit, so I’m not going to create a new project here on CH for each and every one. That would be insane. Instead, I’m creating this catch-all project and I’ll report them all here.
I originally started printing on a MakerBot Replicator 2 back in 2017, which was the printer available in the maker lab I used, but I’ve owned a Prusa MK3S+ of my own since January of 2021, and that’s now the only printer I use.
As a longtime user of Blender for animations, live action special effects, book cover design, etc., it was my obvious choice when I started 3D printing too. And while I still use it for visualization, and sometimes for modifying STL files that I get from somebody else, I have since moved on.
My design tool of choice is now OpenSCAD - an open source, constructive solid modeling tool that is both free and available on all OS platforms. Instead of having to learn a bunch of fiddly interactive tools, I much prefer OpenSCAD’s simple, logical programming-style interface.
For slicing, I stick with PrusaSlicer. It’s excellent, I’m familiar with it, and it works well with my Prusa printer.
And lastly, my sharing platform. I was on Thingiverse until it took a crap-dive, but I quickly pivoted to Printables (also by Prusa :-) and I haven’t looked back since.
One of my kids is a biologist studying frogs, and their partner has a passion for insects. So when my frog-nerd got a new phone and couldn’t find a case they liked, I had an idea. Why not create a custom “couples case” just for them?
What followed was quite an adventure to find an efficient and reliable way to print multi-color (and multi-material) veneers with my single-extruder setup, but I’m delighted with the results. And more importantly, so are the kids.
Whether it’s under my desk or in a storage box, a tangled mass of wall-wart cables always get my blood boiling. So in the interest of delaying my stress-related demise, today I came up with a solution.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I need a system for storing little parts efficiently, and to me that means three things:
all parts are organized into collections of similar items
all parts are stored securely, with minimal risk of spillage or cross-cubby contamination
Each collection is easy to find, easy to put away, and requires zero gameplay (think Jenga or Towers Of Hanoi) to access
Many existing storage solutions tackle numbers 1 and 2, but number 3 seems surprisingly elusive, so I set out to solve it myself. And my motivating requirement? The first box you touch should always be the box you need.