by I’m back! What did I even print last…? Oh yeah, printer upgrades. I’ve been really busy… for a good reason! You’ll have to read till the end to learn why 🙂 During my hiatus, my printing have gone from more fun based items, to more practical and functional items. Let’s go through them!
Cats, Man’s Favorite Demon Spawn!
Cute, cuddly, and straight up ANNOYING! Yeah, they have a lot of weird habits that drive their humans nuts. Our cat Newton loves to come into our room in the wee hours of the morning and swat at our window blinds. Screaming while he does it mind you…
What he is really going after is the blind cord, the little plastic bits at the end. In attempt to fix this, my wife bought some cord winders. They wrap the blind cords up, keeping them high and out of reach.
Problem was, we didn’t buy enough to cover all the blinds in the house. We were too lazy to buy more so we just kind of dealt with it. Eventually I was getting fed up and itching to print something, I found the exact winder on Thingiverse.
My laziness has paid off! Saved a few bucks from driving to the store or ordering some online. A few hours later we had more cord winders than cords!
And thus, my wife and I are able to sleep soundly. Or so we thought… Lets just say that the cat wasn’t the only reason we were not sleeping.
Don’t let Your Hands get Booked!
The second print is a one handed book holder. No longer will I be stuck reading at awkward angles while trying to drink a beer on the couch. My thumb will no longer ache from squeezing the book spine, trying to get the book wide enough to read it. Essentially, I will not be bound to using two hands to read.
Another gem I found on Thingiverse! I ended up printing out two of these, one for each floor of my house. Got to keep that lazy train rolling! I mean… during this time… my hands were getting quite full.
Speaking of Books, Lets make them Fancy!
The final print, is something that I actually made! My wife has a scrap book hobby and has acquired a collection of them over the years. One book per year to be exact. Except for 2020, nothing happened that year.
With her collection, she wanted a way to showcase it. Perusing around Thingiverse, I went looking for a book stand. The prints I ran into are either too complicated or too simple. I printed out what I thought was the best one and it didn’t’ sit right…
Constantly seeing the book sitting on the shelf, awkwardly, I finally got fed up enough to just model the print myself. I whipped out my caliper, fired up blender and cued the music.
Blend it up in Blender!
In the past, I’ve royally screwed up measurements. So to be sure and accurate this time, I decided to model the “holding” bits first and print out quick samples to test.
The first couple drafts came out well, taking 20min each to print. Once I got the right grip and how much I wanted the book angled down, I just needed to add supports. Not like print supports… like a foundation for the holder, so a sneeze from across the room doesn’t knock the book over.
With the foundation ready, now it was time to wrap up with balance. I needed to create a second grip and a support bar to help balance the load.
And with that we now have an official book stand!
Soooo, where is the picture of the book holder in action? Is he not going to show it?! This article was a HUGE waste of time!! Oh there is a reason I save this one for last 🙂
Gimme that Drum Roll!!
Because he’s been the reason I’ve been so busy. The reason I haven’t been getting much sleep. The reason my reading went from two hands to one. And the reason I made him a special holder for his special book.
Everyone, give a warm welcome to my son Vincent Richard Sarnelli! This little guy came into my life February, 2022. He has been my world for the last 3 months and I’ve decided to now share him with my world 🙂
That being said, he is going to be a great source of printing ideas. I can’t tell you how many toys this little dude is going to have made!
As is turns out, PETG, TPU and PLA are all kid safe! Relatively, I’ll have to wait till he is a little bit older and not shoving everything in sight into his mouth. There are many more prints to be made, and many more articles to be written!
Stay tuned and thanks for coming by! 😀