So a while back I talked about using OpenSCAD to tack on support struts to tough builds, giving them a better shot at printing properly.  My printer’s still not fully calibrated yet, but as you can see, despite huge overhangs, this steggy printed out just fine with some support struts.

But the process of dragging the pegs around in OpenSCAD was a bit tedious, so I worked up a quicker way to place them: Blender!  By creating a separate object with all the posts placed and aligned, OpenSCAD only needs to do a single union operation to merge the posts to the model, and an intersection to flatten the feet to the right height.  Here’s an example of what I mean– I colored the posts blue so they’d be visible:

The model could probably use a fifth post in the center to hold everything up, but the important thing with posts seems to be that they are wide enough to print solidly, and close together enough that the plastic “bridges” from post to post easily.  On my machine and in my climate this is a little under a centimeter– you might try building a bridging test object to see what works best for you!

3D Artist magazine has announced a creature creation competition to win a 3D printer, and a new crowd of designers from the visual artistry side of 3D are arriving!  3D Artist also provided a link to a tutorial for preparing your models for 3D printing which covers manifold geometry and the practice of shelling to save print material (not quite as important on printers with material as cheap as coils of $43 a kg ABS), as well as a link to the skeinforge home page.

Some more help for those of you going for maximum printability:

* Avoid “overhangs” of greater than 45 degrees (except when you can get away with them)

* Learn a bit of Noodlemancy (although with modern extruders small details aren’t quite as tough)

* Learn from the masters

* Make sure you’ve got STLs, any helpful model files or documentation you can think of added in!

How easy it is to print your model won’t just be important in the contest (it will) but it’ll also play into whether you start seeing your model pop up on desks, shelves, and dashboards around the world after you upload it!

Bre recently posted this on the MakerBot blog, and it seems appropriate to repost here:

Here at MakerBot, we make open source hardware and we freely share digital designs for our products on Thingiverse.com. As a business, we strive to be a model for the bold companies of the 21st century that embrace sharing. You can download the design files for the things we sell on Thingiverse.com.

We created Thingiverse to be the digital design sharing utopia of our dreams. Thingiverse.com integrates with open licenses that encourages Thingiverse users to let others copy and change their work so that others can stand on their shoulders and create the products of tomorrow and the solutions for the next generation. Every day I look on Thingiverse and say “Wow!” when I see the new things that have been shared. People who upload designs to Thingiverse are my heroes.

Things, and digital designs for things, are very different than other types of media. Copyright doesn’t work the same way on things as it does with music, movies, and books. If you’re into exploring the intellectual property landscape of things, you need to read “It will be awesome if they don’t screw it up” by Michael Weinberg.

The Pirate Bay announcement of a new category for digital designs is interesting because it’s another place where people can share digital designs for real things. As a technology, torrents are particularly great for super mega giant files because they distribute the downloading load and I’m curious to see what kinds of things will begin to show up in that category. Because The Pirate Bay takes a bold, no-holds-barred approach to sharing, I’m sure there will be controversies as companies and people who long for the proprietary days of the 20th century come to terms with the raw power of contemporary sharing technology. Cue squeaking of the world’s tiniest violin.

In the contemporary age of sharing, those who share will be the leaders of tomorrow. The sharers will be the ones who will emerge in the 21st century as winners in the rapidly changing innovative landscape. I’ve consistently advised individuals and companies to push their comfort level and share more. If you have a company that feels threatened by the idea of someone sharing digital designs for your products, I suggest you join the sharing community and share those design files yourself on Thingiverse.com.

First and perhaps most importantly, the phrase “3D Printing Troubadours” is wonderful.

Second, this is the sort of inventive approach to available technology that changes the fundamental mechanics of the world.  How clever is it to drive around with a 3D printer, actually running in the back seat of your hybrid electric car, selling your prints and telling the story of 3D printing?  Awesomely, that’s how clever.

This is a project I can’t wait to see more of.

The picture of this outstanding build pretty much says it all.  Dual extrusion, with soluble support on one print head means you can do any overhang you please.  Water soluble PVA is actually more expensive than the plastic you print on top of it, so when designing your support network you may want to economize a bit.

The good news of course is that modern extruder designs are very sleek and can fit onto small bots, and even at that price support is less than ten cents a cubic centimeter, and the PLA itself is less than four, so “expensive” is kind of a value judgement…

Thingiverse has just been re-launched and is even more awesome! Thingiverse is a powerful sharing platform for digital designs where all the content is free and the future is bright.

Back before Thingiverse.com, people were able to download music, movies, and even books, but there was no place to share and download things. Then Thingiverse, a universe of things, was created in 2008 and digital design has never been the same.

Thingiverse users share their digital designs for real things and become superstars to the other users on Thingiverse. Every day, Thingiverse has new things community members have shared. It’s truly amazing. There are thousands of things on Thingiverse, and millions of people visit the site to be inspired by the creativity of Thingiverse users.

And today, there’s a new and improved Thingiverse!

• It’s easier than ever to share your digital designs and be a superstar
• A new front page giving top billing to the latest featured Thing
• A new look and better organization for Thing pages and User profiles
• Simplified Thing editing – it’s all in one place
• Improved search and navigation make it easier to find what you’re looking for
• On the backend, we’ve improved the architecture so everything works smoother.
• Refined features for attribution and derivatives
• A thing can now have multiple ancestors – bring on the mashups!
• “I Made a Derivative” button makes it clearer what to do when you make a derivative of another Thing
• Post those beautiful photos of your prints with the “I Made One!” button
• The backend of the site has improved to make sharing easier.

Check out the new Thingiverse now! Don’t let your creativite work suffocate with loneliness on your hardrive. Get your designs off your computer and up on Thingiverse. Share your designs today!