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.

This year the Open-Source and maker Community Hub, centered around RepRap 3D Printing has a great line-up of companies and individuals you would be very foolish to miss.

First if you have not already registered for the show, you can get a free badge and entry into the show by signing up here, it's well worth pre-registering as it avoids the queue at the NEC.

The show is on for two days starting September 30th at 9:30AM - to 17:00PM

The Main Open-Source RepRap Community Hub all of Stand J42 


If you want to meet up with me or anyone else please come to the show and visit J42 and the surrounding stands, it always great to see people from the maker community, talk about projects, ideas and generally discuss 3D printing in all it's glory and spectacular failures.


Shouting out a few companies close and around the community hub, sorry if I missed you off this post, (Just too many awesome companies to mention everyone) I do plan to visit every single exhibitor at the show to see what's new and interesting.


E3D (BigBox and LittleBox) - will be on stand J41 with what they tell me is the all new and improved BigBox 3D Printer design - looking forward to seeing the changes and print quality. Obviously all the great E3D hot-ends and materials will be on display and to buy during the show.

RepRapWorld is opposite the Community Hub, On stand J39 - Designers of the Megatronics electronics, and many other very cool things for RepRap 3D Printers - do give them a visit.
BCN3D Technologies is next on Stand J37 - you really do not want to miss the fantastic Sigma dual 3D Printer, it's just about the most impressive dual carriage printing FDM machine for the price you will see at the show.


Recreus and the Amazing FilaFlex materials are on H47 - I have been using a lot of FilaFlex recently, it's really great TPU material for 3D Printing. Steve wood of Gyrobot will also be demonstrating a rather fantastic program for auto-generation of custom Filaflex insoles. That's well worth a visit.



MatterHackers are at H42
InnoFil3D - H40
Rigid Ink - H38
We Do 3D Printing J35
Floreon J34
BQ - G42

Kuehling & Kuehling H32 - Probably one of the most business-ready capable FDM based 3D printers in recent years.

Mass Portal G30 - I was blown away in Berlin by this little Delta printer - it manages some of the finest looking prints I have ever seen.

Filament Print - H41
Cinter - G40
3D Print UK - G36
STRUCTUR 3D Printing - H36


Look out for many others scattered around the show -


The 3D Printing Association - G51

3DFilaprint - C39 - Selling all manner of materials for 3D printers.

BuildTak - B22 - build platform sheets that really work well.

ColorFabb B36 - Some of the finest 3D printing filaments available.

German RepRap - E35

Hawk 3D Proto - H14

Markforged -G39

Mcor Technologies D14

Ultimaker J24

And so many more....


I am looking forward to see the Formlabs FORM 2 3D Printer - recently launched. Still quite a lot of money, but they are setting the bar for Desktop SLA based Resin printing in my opinion.
Formlabs are on D44

Another interesting development in the SLA market will be Photocentricgroup, launching a new LCD based SLA printer (low cost) and offering both daylight and UV based resin formulations.

I'm imagining their LCD based printed just uses daylight resins, but I will find out more and update on this and anything else I discover.




Hope you can visit us at the Community Hub, looking forward to another two days of highly interesting discussions with all of you.



I'll have more updates (and Intro video) on the new OpenSLA project too. Please join and contribute to the Google+ Community over here.


Thanks for reading, until next time.

Rich.