Month: December 2017

Bought my son a Switch for his birthday so I decided to make a little something to go with it. It’s a stand for when he’s not got it docked. Yes, I know the Switch has a kickstand but this is more fun.

http://ift.tt/2BU3Aqv http://ift.tt/2BIT5nx

I just joined the club

Yesterday, I finally decided to join the 3D printing club after lurking for a while. I decided to start pretty small and purchased a Monoprice Select Plus. $100 off and free slow boat shipping. They said that it would come next Tuesday to Thursday. It showed up at 10:45 this morning.I obviously can’t promise this sort of service to everyone that buys one, but I’m impressed. http://ift.tt/2kTOuXw

How the gear saved Christmas

We have a snowman statuette that has a small village and moving train with Santa sleigh inside. Here’s how it looks. When you turn it on, houses light up and it starts playing random Christmas tunes.Sadly, the train didn’t work and neither did Santa as it’s attached to the same platform. So I’ve decided to try and fix. Getting it apart was really difficult, as it was never intended to be serviced. Everything was doused with glue and I had to break away a few of the figures as they were in the way. I also had to cut some of the lighting wires, which were really a pain to solder back together afterwards.Eventually I did manage to take it apart and I quickly found out what was wrong; one of the gears had broken/missing teeth. The broken pieces then got stuck inside other gears as well, making it even worse.This is where owning a 3D printer really paid off. I used a caliper to get the exact dimensions of the broken gear so that I could design a replacement. Here it is printed next to the broken one. And here you can see it inside the mechanism, it’s the one in the bottom left corner.A quick test verified that this was indeed the main cause, as the train was now turning perfectly. After a few more hours trying to put everything back together, it’s working flawlessly now and I couldn’t be happier.I’ve made a short video of it in action, both at day and night. http://ift.tt/2CLlto3