Real Driver Park

With machines and materials to test and experiment with, what better way than getting the kids involved and printing some useful and interesting objects for some spooky Halloween fun.

Custom head band for Halloween Cosplay - 

I always print out a few new things for Halloween, but this year in particular it seems to be getting more popular to design and 3D print objects for a custom twist on the celebrations.

My daughter also needed something a little different for a play. After some discussion we decided that a fascinator headband was just the thing to add to her costume. Looking on the usual 3D model repositories we could not see many at all, headbands and a few hair grips, but nothing that stood out as a useful starting point.

But what is a fascinator? Traditionally these are swirls and coils to bob about and look 'fascinating' upon ones head. It didn't take long for us to think about tentacles, and so the 'tentacle fascinator' was created with the help of Meshmixer to mash up our simple Alice band and some chopped tentacles from the rather great Octopus tentacle ipad stand by Colin Payson -



We easily set out the shape of an Alice band in Sketchup, deciding to lay it flat for easy 3D printing, and thermo-form in hot water later after printing. Thermo-forming in hot water is a very easy way to transform flat prints into more elaborate shapes that your 3D printer would find very tricky to make.


This was quite a large object, so printing it flat and reforming it with hot water (PLA) or if you print in other plastic's you may need to use a heat-gun.



My daughter was thrilled with this new hair-band 'fascinator', and as you will see with most things on this post, I now need to print another one (2 daughters...)

I have published this model up on Youmagine here if you want to use or print it out.



Recycled PET plastic's for a glowing pumpkin parade - 

My recent experiments with Refil (Recycled plastic for 3D Printing) resulted in many wonderful translucent PET pumpkins.

These pumpkins designed by Jeremy Gillick (get them here) are quick to print as a single walled object Add light and they come to life.


Refil 90% recycled PET material for 3D printing.



Flexible printing - it's even more scary!

I was also testing out the nice new Hephestos 2 3D Printer from BQ during October (blog post soon) - This machine is the most ideal printer for flexible materials I have ever used. In fact for me it's the perfect dedicated FilaFlex printer.

You can use Ninjaflex or Semiflex or almost any other rubber, urethane, elastomer you like. They all print perfectly due to the fantastic fully supported metal extruder design.








My Daughter had the fantastic idea of adding some clear FilaFlex filament to the spiders, they are now hanging all around the house.


We also printed a lot of Faberdashery Glo-bobs in various FilaFlex colours. These are wonderful little models that are designed to slide onto a bangle glowstick, the eyes glow and kids totally love to wear them.

We do need some Glow-in-the-dark Flexible filament for next year (hint, hint) ;)

Gory and Scary Accessories - 




We also printed some of the great movable 'skeletonz' (Files here) by Murray Clark on the BCN3D Sigma - they all printed perfectly in Colorfabb GlowFill (glow-in-the-dark) PLA filament - no supports required.



Not quite so scary, but a wonderful design and easy to print, the Great Pumpkin by Perry Engel is another nice 3D model - these were printed in Colorfabb Orange PLA.


Halloween cookies - 

We printed these cookie cutters out last year, they have already been used many times, and still provide a lot of making fun for kids (and Adults).


These were designed by Oogime and can be found here.



My spider print comes out every year. Printed with Faberdashery Glowbug (glow-in-the-dark) filament and a sprinkle of glitter onto the glass build surface before printing.


Related news... (Dragons).
Glow in the Dark Treasure Dragon by Andreas Boelher - Dual extruder printed on BCN3D Sigma.

The grand #DragonOff is almost at an end for this year (it will be back!) - You still have until 23:59 on Oct31st to enter. And if you have no idea what #DragonOff is - check out the hash tag on Twitter or G+



We are having some fun by exploring some extremes of desktop 3D printing. How small, detailed, BIG, coloured or modified can you print a Dragon. The queen of Dragons Louise Driggers @Loubie3D is the ultimate judge of Dragon Master worthiness. You can win lots of cool stuff from E3D and Colorfabb.

What started as a friendly challenge, has exploded into a worldwide show of 3D printing excellence. Thank you to all who entered or showed support. I'll have a dedicated Blog post about DragonOff in November after the winners are announced.


I must also mention the great 10 Halloween makes blog post by Faberdashery, well worth a read, it's what got us all inspired for ghoulish adventures into 3D printing this year. - Thank you Faberdashery!


We are all set, you still have time to 3D print Halloween - I hope you find time to have some fun.

Thanks for reading, until next time, stay spooky.

Rich.