Kaetemi

Testing Shapeways' new Full Color Sandstone

Kaetemi — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:18:00 +0100

Shapeways has recently updated the Full Color Sandstone process, to be more reliable and give more consistent colors. I had some samples printed, to compare them with the old FCS, and to run some tests on them. Close up, detail pictures, as well as several destruction videos, are available in the thread on the Shapeways forums.

If you're interested in having things like this modeled for you for 3d printing to your design, feel free to contact me.

魔法少女VOCALOID3

Kaetemi — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:07:00 +0200

Character illustration I made based on the new i-style project Vocaloid 3 character design from http://i-style.surpara.com/.

Gameduino

Kaetemi — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:09:00 +0200

My Arduino + Gameduino + Ethernet + SD + NESController setup...

Gameduino Emulator Open Sourced

Kaetemi — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:14:00 +0200

I've written an emulator for the Gameduino open retro gaming hardware, and made it open source.

You can grab the source code from http://code.google.com/p/gdemu/

"Gameduino Emulator" running the sample apps (Games, Retro)

Light Decoration

Kaetemi — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:12:00 +0200

A light decoration made from milk cartons for a school assignment.

New Room

Kaetemi — Sat, 07 May 2011 18:13:00 +0200

Moved to a different room.

Cube Puzzle

Kaetemi — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:09:00 +0100

A cube puzzle made out of 3mm PS sheet using, a knife, grinding paper, and some tetrachloroethylene, for a school assignment.

Exclusive 3D Printed Figure for Tsunacon 2011

Kaetemi — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:03:00 +0100

This is the exclusive figure I digitally 3d modeled for Tsunacon 2011, a manga/anime convention in the Netherlands, held last month on the 30th of January. The figure is of Tsuna-chan, the mascot character of the Tsunacon convention. It was printed by Shapeways on a ZCorp full color printer.

It's based on the artwork of the Tsuna-chan winter version made by Roos:

Some of you might notice the overly obvious references to certain popular characters.

Shapeways infuses the ZCorp prints with XLAform to improve their strength. Unfortunately, at this moment, this process still causes some slight off-white yellowish tinting, depending on the size and shape of the item.

They interestingly included a misprint, that was not properly processed during the infusion, with the package, together with the reprint. It shows less off-white, but there's light spots on the surface. There's also a lot of the XLAform stuff visibly remaining in some places where it's more difficult for it to get out, as you can see in the following picture.

Figure on Thingiverse

Kaetemi — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:32:00 +0100

A while ago, I made the first figure that I initially released on Shapeways available in bust format on Thingiverse. I was interested in seeing how different printers compare to each other on various details and features in the shape.

Here's some pictures of what people have made so far.

The first one was printed by TheRuttmeister on a MakerBot.

Another one printed on a MakerBot, but this time printed by Skimbal, upside down at double scale.

The top of the head shifted a bit for some reason or another, but otherwise it looks quite decent.

Avantime printed one on a commercial printer, the Envisiontec Ultra.

Those machines have some fine detail quality.

And Schorhr printed one on his new PP3DP. The print failed halfway.

He also made another smaller print on the same machine.

For those of you who want to try printing the full figure, it's available over at 3DMarvels.com, where you can also find an interesting selection of various other people's designs. The smaller bust version can also be ordered and downloaded from Shapeways, if you do not have a 3D printer, but want to see what it looks like 3D printed in real life. In the near or far future I will release a complete figure on Thingiverse as well, whenever it is that it is ready.

Global Game Jam

Kaetemi — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 11:07:00 +0100

Last month, January 27-29th, I was at the Global Game Jam in Antwerp (http://globalgamejam.be/).
The team I joined made a game where you have to build your island village into the sky to protect the inhabitants against the flooding water.
You can download it here: http://globalgamejam.org/2011/stacking-island
I did some modeling and textures for the props that the buildings are created from.

More keychains

Kaetemi — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:35:00 +0100

More keychains in different shapes.
Available as co-creator template at Shapeways.
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/kaetemi?section=Gadgets

Tsunacon Keychain

Kaetemi — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:16:00 +0100

Exclusive keychains I made for Tsunacon (a manga/anime convention in the Netherlands) of their mascot.
They were sold at the event, and will be sold at the Tsunacon stand on other related conventions in the Netherlands and Belgium as well.

Santa Girl 3D Printed in Color

Kaetemi — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 17:55:00 +0100

I printed out another figure. This one is printed by Shapeways as well (http://www.shapeways.com/model/190101/_santa_girl__figure__full_color_.html), in their "Full Color Sandstone" material (which is basically stuff printed by a ZCorp machine with some additional post processing for extra strength).

The result looks pretty decent, and the figure is quite heavy... It's about 16.5cm high.

I went a little overboard on shading in the texture (which I shouldn't really do, but it's just for testing purposes here), and this resulted in some black spots which seem to blend out quite a bit, so that's something I'll have to avoid, other than that the colors turned out roughly as I expected them to be.

Anyways, here are the pictures! :)

Speelgoed onder spanning: Definitief prototype

Kaetemi — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:21:00 +0100

De uitwerking van het kindertafeltje in hout. Kan ook als kastje of nachtkastje gebruikt worden. Stevig genoeg om op te zitten.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Kaetemi — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:53:00 +0100

Pictures of 3d print will be posted as soon as the print arrives.

Available from http://www.shapeways.com/model/190101/_santa_girl__figure__full_color_.html.

I have an Arduino

Kaetemi — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:29:00 +0100

So, I recently bought an Arduino. It's a programmable microcontroller board for prototyping circuits. I got one of Sparkfun's kits, which has some random cool stuff in it as well, such as a bend sensor, a fancy soft slider, and LEDs.

The circuit in the above picture is a digital-to-analog converter, more specifically an R-2R DAC, with some LEDs plugged into it. There is PWM output available on the Arduino, but it didn't seem to run at a high enough rate for getting some sound out of it. I rebuilt this with the serial-to-parallel IC that also came with the kit, 10kOhm resistors, and a transistor. There were just enough resistors in the kit.

The green wires go to a speaker. Near the green wires is an orange wire that goes to an analog input of the Arduino, which is used at setup to map the actual voltage at that point to all the possible digital values, because the transistor isn't very linear in it's input/output relation. Works good enough.

Ordered a few hundred more resistors, a bunch of ICs, and some more things, to try out some more stuff.

Personalized 3D Printed PC Fan Grill

Kaetemi — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 19:08:00 +0100

Here's something for customizing your good ol' PC, personalized fan grills!

Links: Personalized Fan Grill 80mm, Personalized Fan Grill 92mm, Personalized Fan Grill 120mm, Fan Grill 80mm, Fan Grill 92mm, Fan Grill 120mm

Video review by CCReviews:

#12: Kaetemi fangrill - 3d-printed (by Shapeways)(CCReviews)

Message from the future

Kaetemi — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:55:00 +0100

So, last week I received a package that's dated next week. It contained a sample part from Stratasys printed on a Fortus machine. Looks pretty good and feels very strong as well.

"Stratasys Fortus Polycarbonate Material" sample part (3D Printing)

Full Color 3D Print Color Palette

Kaetemi — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:58:00 +0100

One problem with printing stuff in color using typical CMYK printing ink, is that it's often difficult to get the exact color you want. This color palette shows the color and grayscale range of the fullcolor prints offered by Shapeways. It contains a full hue gradient, to black, to gray and to white, as well as a black to white gradient, and the different base colors seperately. By scanning this color palette, and scanning another color on the same scanner settings, it should be possible to match the right color. The data available on the color palette should be enough to write a small piece of software that interpolates the entire color space in the print, and then get the required on-screen RGB for printing a specific scanned color in this material, which is something I'll work on in the near future.

One thing that is somewhat noticable, is the slight yellowish-ness of the white color. Plotting the hue values on the hue side a bit, shows how yellow/green is very saturated, while inversely the printed cyan is not as saturated as the original onscreen cyan. Note that this plot is heavily dependent on scanner type and settings, so observations may vary.

If you want to see for yourself what the colors look like, you can get one too.

Figure Prototype Stand

Kaetemi — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:21:00 +0100

Another thing I'm working on at the moment. This is a figurine stand designed specifically for prototype figures. It basically allows you to place pretty much any figure on it, by having pins that can be moved to different positions of the surface. The purpose of this is, obviously, to save money, as I won't need to print any stands for prototypes of unfinished figures.

As this is still a work in progress, it still has some issues. More specifically, with the printing of the pins. It seems my idea of having flexible pins didn't turn out that well, for two reasons. The first issue being that it seems 1mm pins have a fairly high printing failure rate. Interestingly Shapeways included the failed prints together with some extra ones that are properly printed. In the picture are supposed to be eight pins. The second issue, is that the pins are too flexible this way, and therefore don't hold on to the figure properly.

So, what I'll do next, is try to print a set of solid pins in the range of 1 to 4mm with difference of 0.1mm between each (making a nice total of about 30 pins), and see how that turns out.