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3D printing
(28 Feb 2014 at 21:51) |
Recently I have been doing some 3D printing, mostly for fun, but also for fixing things and optimizing my life a little. It's really pretty awesome to be able to go from an idea to a physical object in an hour or two, and to make stuff that's completely customized to its use. Here's my page on Thingiverse, the social networking site for 3D printing models. I have a few other things I've made that aren't uploaded there. I started with CAD software, which is super good for precise parts (and really fun; if you have never used modern CAD software and think you might like it, you should try it. It's almost as fun as learning to program was, for me), but recently I've been learning Blender, which is an excellent open source 3D modeling tool. It's much better than I expected (usually open source software for media, like drawing or music or video, is pretty disappointing). Last weekend I made this toy:
It's the Golden Idol from Spelunky, printed here at miniature size. While I'm gushing about software I like, Spelunky is so good. If you like hard platformers, you should play it. Even though it's a roguelike, the adage that "Spelunky has a robust leveling system -- it's just inside your heart" is really true, and I've been playing for months and still haven't beaten it the hardest way. Anyway, I can just make my own treasure so no big deal. Here's a timelapse video of it 3D-printing. |  |
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| Awesome. The "Thingiverse" site reminds me of the other site Shapeways, which will print models for you and ship them to you (of course it isn't free) or allow you to sell the object online so that other people can pay to get it 3D printed and then optionally give a small amount of profits to you. |
| Yeah! Shapeways is really cool, though if you have access to a 3D printer then it's more fun to make them yourself. :) |
| There appear to be some forward timejumps in that video. They're near 0:22, 0:29, 0:40, 0:43, 0:51, 0:57. Can you explain these? |
| Oh yeah, I didn't mean any funny business, I just skipped some parts to refocus/aim the camera, and because there's some maximum file size that my DSLR can record in one shot, and I was afraid of going over by trying to shoot the whole thing continuously (I think print time was like 80 minutes). It more or less looks just like that during the gaps too. :) |
I see.
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| BTW I beat Spelunky the hard way now. |
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