3d Printed Door Handle Extension

Making useful and functional parts was a big reason for me getting a 3d printer. I made this door handle extension in a few minutes and thought it was such a good example of the power of 3d printing that I would share it.

I even wrote a short INSTRUCTABLE tutorial on it.

I know I post about a lot of fun 3d printed stuff ( like bikini tops or shadow casters or even jewelry ) but I also design a lot of stuff for everyday use. You know, the boring replacement knobs or obscure parts for outdated equipment. Most of the time I think it's so boring I don't bother to post about it.

After all, you can buy a new knob cheap, and who wants to spend three hours designing a replacement part for an almost dead power tool anyways? But people seem to like this project, maybe because it's a brand new object instead of a replacement part.

Check out the Instructables guide - I put all the details there. If you like this type of project then let me know and I'll post more useful (if somewhat more boring) projects with 3d printing.

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My Cup Runneth Over - 3d Printed Bra v1

Support your local makers - I'm doing my part with this 3d printed bra. Yes, that's right... a custom bikini top bra cup designed in Fusion 360 and printed on a hobby level 3d printer.

Okay, so the project started as a hat. Think "fascinator" base or mesh ball-caps. I wanted to see how different types of French curves joined together when bent. I knew different curves could result in any shape from a cone to a perfect sphere, or onion domes to flattened rounded-corner cylinders. But I had never really designed something with a variable curving shape. Hats looked like a good item to test with. Little did I know.

So I started experimenting with curves and shapes and bending --- and voila, I had my first piece of 3d printed lingerie instead. It not only  turned out better than I expected, I decided a 3d printed bikini top is way more useful and fun than a hat anyways - pretty happy with this failure discovery.

Bright pink bikini bra cup printed on a 3d printer and designed in Fusion 360. It's a bit of over designing, but it sure was fun.

I've been experimenting with heat-shaping 3d printed panels recently. Sure, I can print the model pre-shaped, an all in one standalone print. I could have easily printed this object pre-bent and ready to wear. But as I discovered when printing my mini-terrarium greenhouse, it's sometimes a lot quicker to print flat objects and assemble them.

My first experiment with heat-forming 3d-prints was a simple bowl made from a flat 3d-printed sheet, which turned out okay. Good enough that I wanted to try something more complex.

The bowl shaping experiment relied on the patterns within the perforations to allow deformation when heated. The corners in the pattern are arranged so that the surface can bend in three dimensions without significantly changing the structure. That technique worked fine, so I wanted to add a second variable to better control the shape.

I know a little about traditional pattern making for clothes. I also have some experience shaping and heat-forming foam panels into costumes and props for cosplay. So I figured heat shaping PLA wouldn't be that much different.

I also wanted to use this series of tests to better understand just how curves affect the final shape. I have Fusion 360 and Meshmixer and several other programs that could take the final shape and create a cutting pattern for me.

(I had to print a couple of quick failed experiments before I remembered that I needed to use those traditional pattern making skills though. Not always the smartest cookie on the shelf.)

But the software makes most of the decisions when I use those techniques, and I really wanted to understand how to do it manually. I think when I understand pattern making better I can probably force or at least suggest settings for the programs to give me better patterns.

This is the first experiment that gave me the smoothly varying curves I was after. It was a very simple pattern, but it was also the first time I used splines (aka French curves) instead of simple arcs. The result is a lot closer to a single, flowing shape and less like the segmented domes I got when I used simple arcs and lines.

That's when I decided to declare, "This is now officially a bra." Well, half a bra... okay just one cup. But still, it's a much more body-friendly form than anything I had created before.

Also notice that the decorative-infill pattern is simple. It is NOT designed to flex and deform. That means this sheet of plastic reacts to bending in a manner very similar to that of paper or non-stretchy cloth. It's really just the way the two curves join that makes the final shape so much smoother.

If I combined the deformable-mesh technique from the bowl experiment with the spline-curve edges from this experiment, the plastic sheet should begin to behave more like cosplay-foam or stretchy cloth. Then... print it in flexible filament to actually make it comfortable to wear. That's the next phase of experiments.

And yes, there should be more experiments with 3d-printed fabric and clothing coming soon. But understanding the traditional methods of pattern making is still an essential skill. For instance, my 3d-printed chainmail is pretty flexible. But to get it to fit properly at any large scale, like a vest or corset, I will still need to create differently shaped pieces of the mail just like you would with old-fashioned cloth.

The pattern in Fusion 360. You can see the different types of curves on every edge. Sure, it's 3d, but the principles are the same as used in traditional clothing patterns.

So no matter which direction I go, I must get better at pattern making. Right now, I have my hands full just with this, but I can already tell it's going to be a fun journey.

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Four Seasons in February

Nature, my old and dear friend... what's up with you lately? I know it's the shortest month of the year, but do you really need to get all four seasons into 28 days?

A local pond showing all four seasons at the same time. The right half is still frozen solid at the shadow line of the trees. But the grass is beginning to green and there is a distinct pink tinge of fledgling buds on the tree. And as I walked the perimeter in shirt sleeves the ice cracked loudly as it settled. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the experience, but I don't know what to expect next.

First it was a deep cold that froze the lakes and streams. Then it was floods. Then some snow. And now we are expecting temperatures in the seventies.







And today you went from sun and a gentle breeze to thick fogs rolling for near zero visibility. I spend a lot of time outdoors enjoying your beauty, so I have clothing and gear for any of your looks.

But not knowing if I need ice cleats and hand-warmers or Bermuda shorts and flip-flops is kind of confusing me.

You know, never mind. I will just try to get out and visit you regularly and enjoy or time together. You do whatever you need to do and I'll find a way to discover the joy you provide.

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T-Shirt Haiku from DIY Scraps

Create poetry with up-cycled T-shirt scraps. Turn your old tees into one-of-a-kind works of individualized art.

Someone donated a bunch of old T-shirts for my (failed) attempt at making 3d printed templates. So I found myself with lot's of tees that didn't fit me/ I slashed a few in my experiments, but I still had lots left over/

I figured I could make a few hoods and scarves and pillows. But what could I do with all those free swag tee shirts from 2014? Too bad I couldn't just use elements from each of the designs and make something new.

Or wait... maybe I could. I do have scissors and I do have fabric glue. Heck, I even own a sewing machine if I wanted to get serious.







So I sat down with the scissors and a bag of old shirts during the Olympics and started cutting out words from the front and back of 20 shirts.

It was a perfect task. Unlike most of my hobbies I could start and stop with no ill effects. I didn't lose my train of thought, the tee didn't dry, crack, sag or over-process in any way.

I enjoyed the parts of the Olympics I wanted and the holes in the tee shirts stayed just as they were and when I came back I just started cutting again.

What I thought would be a tedious task turned out to be a lot of fun. In fact, I think it helped me enjoy the Olympic events even more.

Nervous about whether your fave is going to make it into semi-finals - well cut apart some tee shirts.

Your favorite might be getting knocked off the podium - make the cuts extra ragged. Heck the more ragged and nervous looking the better, just makes it look really hand made.










Of course making the scraps into a work of art is another story. Once I realized that I could never color coordinate or match sizes or fonts - well then it became fun again and I had some flashbacks to my teen tears and rebellious designing. Shew, this adulting in design thing had messed with my sense of freedom and spontaneity.

So this was a good, I got a sense of fun back, made something fun from discarded clothes, and even found a bright-sided silvered-lining to the filed craft-knife experiments. This was a fun win.

Of course my short poem writing skills had also atrophied. But I listened to some music, realized the lyrics actually made no sense and if they could do it then I could do it, I composed three amaze-balls poems in just a few minutes. And I think I got back with my teen self here as well.

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What's Inside an Old Humidifier

What's inside an old ultrasonic humidifier, and is there anything worth salvaging? The short answer is YES, lot's of fun stuff in there.

Someone donated this old ultrasonic humidifier for us to tear down. I hoped we could get the speed control and maybe a fan out if it. But I didn't know if everything would be on a single PCB and therefore difficult to salvage. Luckily, all the main components were separate and the PCB only supplied the power.

So we wound up getting a bunch of good components that we can re-use. We also got some nifty tidbits that will be good for prop building. Check out the short video to see what we found...

It looks like the humidifier had gotten hit with a power surge. But this thing was sturdy and it still sort of worked, if very weakly. There was almost no mist or air coming out of it. Once we cracked the case we could see why. The surge had run in and fried the AC components. It's surprising that it still worked at all, but it made it easy for us to decide to salvage it instead of repairing it.

We tested the salvaged components and they all worked fine. My two favorites are:

• An all-in-one power switch with speed control and LED indicator complete with housing
• And a magnetic reed switch type sensor along with a floating circular trigger magnet.

Both of these still worked perfectly. We also got some nice heat-sinks, some JST connectors, a small cage fan and several oddly shaped items perfect for use in cosplay or prop building,








Knob and Controls
The speed control is perfect for an Arduino project. It has three completely separate circuits going into the same housing to control three functions. There's a high current circuit to the on/off switch, a mid current to potentiometer, and a light-duty circuit to the LED.

I also noticed that they were using the potentiometer more like what I think as a rheostat. Even though the potentiometer has three tabs, they were only using two. But the tabs are accessible, so we can always add the traditional third line of the circuit.

With this configuration, you can turn the project on, then control an analog input with a single knob. The LED can be pulsed or blinked to give visual feedback.

And it's in a great housing that's really easy to mount into any project. It's circular and flat, so no weird shapes and curves to match. Just cut a hole, a big hole, into any enclosure and you have a very nice control panel - sweet!

Water Level Sensor
My other favorite find was the magnetic reed switch and magnet combo. This sensor is already on a slim PCB with a handy JST connector. And the floating ring-magnet is already sized to trigger the switch.

That's going to make using this as a water level sensor so much easier. These sensors and magnets are cheap to buy, but configuring them can be a hassle. When they come pre-matched and sold for use in fountains the price goes way up. So to get these for free was a pleasant surprise.

Overall, I'm very happy with the haul from this old humidifier. And the video was fun to make so I might start recording more teardowns. We have a room full of donated items, a huge random collection of semi-junk to tear apart and explore - loads of fun for the whole family - and much better than experimenting with items that still work.

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Making a 3d Printed Bowl with a Hairdryer

Fun 3d printed project with none of the technical hassles. People sometimes shy away from 3d printing because it looks so complicated. I wanted to make something simple that people could play with and easily customize, a little something that they could hold in their hands and shape with nothing but a hair dryer and some light pressure.

Plus, if people can touch it and control it, shape it with heat and get comfortable with the material, then they might be more interested in learning about 3d printing. It's not so scary once you realize it's just regular plastic that has been heated up until it can be bent and sculpted. That's why they call it "thermos plastic" after all.

Expando changoooo...  take a simple home hair dryer a to a thin PLA 3d print and you can shape it and bend it into any form you want. The best (and worst) of both worlds.

So you can see where the lines started to string and the lip got deformed, but that's mostly from a lack of control with the hair dryers.

I knew that thin 3d prints could be reshaped with a common hair dryer, so I designed a simple lattice that I could print really quickly.

I have played around with these types of lattice structures before. I've made them out of paper and craft-foam and even cloth. So I knew a few shapes and cutting patterns that expand nicely when they get deformed








I hoped that the 3d prints would expand and shape nicely, and more importantly, I hoped that they would hold there shape and remain sturdy once they cooled back down.

The paper and foam versions are fun to play with,  but they don't hold their shape when released. They collapse back into a flat sheet. It's fun to make accordion shapes that you can stretch and twist and bounce, but I wanted the lattice to keep it's shape.

So 3d printer plastic (specifically PLA) seemed like a good bet.

It started life as a flat sheet.

Then it got heated and pressed onto a sphere to deform the lattice.

And it worked really well. The PLA did stretch and expand much like the craft-foam, but it held it's shape perfectly when it cooled down.

There are some issues I want to work on. You'll notice that the print became "stringy" and the edges are warped. I printed the lattice so thin that the individual "print lines" acted as strings and I turned the hair dryer on high, so the strings became so flexible they actually got blown around by the air. I wanted them to separate and expand uniformly, not like a wild hair day. Even the edges got softened and deformed.

The fix should be easy. I can print the lattice thicker, I can use a lower heat and blower setting - or I can even put the lattice into a toaster oven and let it gently drape over a form from the force of gravity.

And I could make a simple frame to hold the edges so that they don't deform while the center of the lattice gets all rubbery and stretchy. Lots of ideas to play with.









This is just a simple bowl. But the same technique can be used to create jewelry like bracelets and necklaces. A more advanced maker could create hats and other fashion accessories. Those 3d printed arm and leg braces that you've seen, well they are often heat formed for the final fit.

And individual parts can be "welded" together to form larger pieces. So the brim and bowl of a hat could be printed separately, formed to the user's liking, then be combined into a finished hat.

More importantly, most people are comfortable drawing a flat 2d design. And they have bent various materials for years with their bare hands.

With this technique anyone can draw a simple 2d pattern, print it out in minutes, then heat form it into the shape they want. Once they do that, maybe they will want to start doing the same thing in 3d.

Just another way to gently introduce people to 3d design... muhahahaaaaa.

Also made a bra, or maybe a hat, with this technique.

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DIY Solar Heater - It Really Works

I've read about these for years so I finally made one - and it works - 120F heated air within minutes of getting put into the sunlight. It's simple to make, easy to use, super rugged and best of all, it's almost completely free.

Basically, it's stacks of aluminum cans that have been painted black You punch a hole in each can so the air can circulate, then caulk them together into long tubes. Put the tubes into a box with a clear cover and insulation and you've got yourself a free solar heat collector.

Whoa, this thing is heating up quickly. I could feel the warm air rising up from the openings in the top of the cans and the thermometer confirmed it, Not bad for a stack of old aluminum cans.

I did the first few steps, made the tubes and spray painted them matte black, then stuck them in a window to test. I'm impressed enough with the results that I think I will make the box for them. The tubes heated up the air to at least 120 degrees in a few minutes. (Might be higher, but that's as high as my thermometer went.) The cans are just warm to the touch and the air rises gently from the openings in the top. So they're comfortable to the touch with no danger of burning or fire, yay.

The tutorials and associated forums have all kinds of details and suggestions to make these heat an entire house. The best type of glass for maximum light transmission, the correct hole size for best air flow, the best type and thickness of paints for maximum heat gain etc.

But I'm not going to cover an entire wall with these or heat my entire house, so I'm just going to improvise without much concern for maximizing efficiency. I have some speaker cabinets I gutted and some scratched plexiglas.  Perfect for a small experimental version.

I will probably just heat a small storage box with it or maybe create a warm place for the wandering neighborhood felines. I probably won't bother adding a fan or even a auto-closing vent since I'll just be letting some warm air into an otherwise unheated space.







This will be a good excuse to use up these scrap items, finally get them out of my way and make something that's actually useful all at the same time.

Like I said, I've known about these solar collectors for years. But I had always lived in warmer climates where cooling was more of a concern than heating. And buying the lumber and glass made it too expensive for a toy project (spend 20 to save 5).

Now, however, I have access to both cool weather and donations at the Maker Group. Suddenly, I have all kinds of materials at my disposal - too many sometimes, like "I need to clear out this entire room" quantities of scrap materials.

I do have some experiments I want to try. Does putting gravel inside the cans affect heat generation and retention? Do metal screens work just as well - there are tutorials that say they do. What about old floor tiles? I have half a box of broken tiles Can I paint them black and use them as collectors, or maybe use them to store the heat overnight.

Looks like we've got six more weeks of winter, so I've still got time to experiment.

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Slash and Run - I Think I'm Done

I've slashed several tee-shirts over the last few days and I think I've finally gotten this whole 3d printed template idea out of my system. Can't really call it a success in traditional terms, but I found out a lot of things. More importantly, I squashed a nagging idea from years back that wouldn't go away until I actually tried it.

I seem to be writing more about this failed attempt than my more complex (and successful) projects. I will return to writing about the highly technical detailed successes soon, but I just felt like I needed to document a silly project once in while.

I think it's because I know there are other makers out there who do the same thing. We all do it, follow an impulse even though we know it might not be the smartest design choice. It's part of the creative process. So continue to play with useless things, make bad choices and try to fix them. Because somewhere underneath, there's a reason you are working this set of problems - sit back, buckle in and enjoy the ride.

Okay, so the template worked fine. But it definitely wasn't worth all the effort.

What did I learn from all this?:

The 3d printed templates did work, but they are more trouble than they are worth

Any time saved during cutting was destroyed in the printing process. If I saved two minutes per cut tee-shirt, I would have to do a lot of shirts to make up for the hour of printing time.

PLA can be cut with a craft blade, and it will get cut after a few uses. Every template got nicked. especially after I started thinking "Hey, I got the hang of this." Not good for high volume, speedy production work.

The "clamping action" derived from using a top and bottom plate didn't help at all. A single template on top worked just as well. At least I cut the printing time in half,

Using medium pressure and multiple strokes of the blade made the cleanest cuts. Trying to cut the cloth in one pass only worked with the sharpest, newest blades - and then only sometimes. It was more likely to drag the cloth instead of cutting all the way through.

The cloth dragged and stretched even when I had a slot in the bottom plate. I had hoped I could puncture the fabric and slice quickly the rest of the length. It didn't work, slashing with the edge of the blade wasn't any more effective than overly forceful use of the blade tip.

Any line shorter than an inch reads as a hole, not a slash. Tiny, intricate patterns just looked like there were a bunch of random holes.

Any slashes closer than 10mm looked like strings. Using 20-50mm spacing made it look more like what I wanted.

Well that clean precision look didn't last very long did it?

Got reminded that tee-shirt material stretches quickly and the clean cuts I made quickly turned into a blobby mess after a short wearing. All that work for five minutes of precisely cut look - then it turned into a tangled mess.

Got reminded that simple slashed in denim jeans are not very effective decorations. Denim does hold the shape of the cuts, so you need to cut an "opening" instead of a simple slash if you want the pattern to be seen. The slits might open up enough to be seen after  a few days of wearing or a good washing or two. But actually cutting sections out to make larger holes worked much better.







After all this designing and printing and testing I arrived at some conclusions:

Cutting the templates with a laser-cutter or CNC would be much quicker and, using chipboard or metal, would result in a sturdier product. I knew this already, but I only have a 3d printer, so I used it.

Maybe I don't need a template at all. I thought it would save me time and it did, but a minute a shirt isn't that significant.

No-one cares about perfectly spaced and cleanly cut lines for the level of designs these templates create. These are simple shapes, not complex lace patterns. And the cloth distorts so quickly the improvement disappears after a few minutes.

Just use a pair of good scissors or get a rotary cutter. They will work just as well as the templating system did for designs that are  this simple.

So was this a failure? Absolutely! I wasted several hours going down the wrong path. And worse yet, I knew it was the wrong path when I started. So why did I do it? Well, history I guess.

Like I said before, I had tried cutting tee-shirts when I was much younger and I didn't like the results. They were sloppy and ragged. I wanted clean, precise cuts. I kept thinking, "If I could only create template it would be much easier."

That idea stuck with me for years, so when I got a 3d printer I decided to try it. I tried it even though I knew a laser cutter or CBC would be a better solution, and even though desktop laser cutters are cheap these days.

I even knew that the cheap scissors I used back then were not appropriate for cloth. Now I own good scissors and can easily make clean cuts in any cloth.

And these days, there are the new rotary cutters that slice through several layers of cloth so cleanly and easily even I can do it.

But you must understand, I had once had an "IDEA" and that thing had stuck in my head for a decade or more. I must bring it out into the open and battle it on the physical level or it would always be bouncing around in my brain taking up space and time that could be used for something useful.

So I did it.

Now I can rest.








So no, this exercise wasn't a failure at all. It was a necessary step for a certain type of warped designer-mind. I won, I killed the silly notion and I have proof of my victory It was a lot of work, but now I can move on to other ideas.

It wasn't a brick wall, it was just a reflection of something else.

And the project wasn't a total loss. I got some other ideas during the process. One involves open flame torches, metal plates and old jeans. Another involves heat bending flat 3d shapes. If either idea works like I hope, evenly a little, I will share the results.

My final thought - get a frikkin laser cutter if you want to do this kind of stuff - that's what they are made for and why they've become so popular. Slap a tee-shirt on the platter and cut out any shape you want in a matter of seconds. If you want to do a lot of tee-shirt and other clothing modifications, invest in the equipment best suited for it. 

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