I have a friend who goes by the nickname Tuna.  He does really cool work with concrete which you can check out at ecoconcreteconcepts.com.  He was really interested in the work that I've been doing with 3D printing and I told him I was going to make him a tuna.  Initially I was going to make flat puzzle pieces that assembled into a three dimensional model.  But I just couldn't get things to look the way I wanted, and I was running short on time to get this thing done.  I went to Thingiverse.com and found a good model called 3D printable blue tuna. 

The original file was only half of a fish and it wasn't really optimized for printing.  It was also smaller than what I was after; something that you could put on a desk.  I cleaned up the model, integrating what were originally discrete components into a single solid watertight model using Google SketchUp.  I also learned a new trick to mirror the half fish that I had in order to make a complete fish.  Using the "Flip along axis" feature in SketchUp, I was able to make an exact opposite copy of the original.  I printed this using 3mm glow in the dark ABS and the results were pretty cool.  Tuna really liked his fish.  I have about 5 hours of re-design work and 6:32 print time.  #Abstract2Actual 11:32

Thanks to ELIJAHXXL for the original design!!!  My remix of this original design can be found HERE

While printing a second VR headset, this time on my Airwolf3D 5.5, the hot-end broke in two. :-(  I wasn't monitoring the printer at the time, and looking at the remnants on the printbed doesn't tell me much.  Somewhere the Z axis alignment was off, the print head smashed into a part on the bed and broke the print head in two.  I don't know how many hours of printing I've done with this hot end, but it has been quite a lot.  I think 5 or 6 kilos of plastic have run through it in the last 10 months.  I've been wanting to upgrade this to the new Airwolf3D  Jam Resistant hot end, so now's my opportunity.  Here's what the hot-end of the extruder is NOT supposed to look like.

A friend of mine is doing some cool work with Augmented and Virtual Reality  (AR) (VR).  He was going to use Google Cardboard to make a VR headset for demonstration purposes, but when he found out I had 3D printing capability, he asked me for help.  He sent me a bunch of design files from Thingiverse.com, and asked if I could make the OpenDive model.

OpenDive is a really nice looking model created by Durovis.  It sliced nicely, and printed in about 8:30 on my Prusa i3.  I couldn't wait for lenses from Amazon, so I found an old junk pair of binoculars, and scavenged a pretty good pair of lenses from them that fit in the goggles.  Focal length is off a bit, but at least it gave me a rough idea of how these things are going to work.

Next step:  download the Dive City Roller Coaster app on an iPhone and take a ride.  These things are COOL!  I also downloaded Protect The Planet from the windows app store and played this VR asteroids game onmy Nokia Lumia 1020.  All you do is move your head to shoot down asteroids.  Here, the focal length of the lenses is a problem, because you can't see the whole screen.  But still, it was really fun to be able to move my head and look around in space, and shoot asteroids.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can do with these things.

OpenDive VR Headset.  #Abstract2Actual 8:45

I could not get the Taulman Bridge Nylon to print well on X3REX printer.  It has a .5mm nozzle, which I can't get the Nylon to flow consistently through.  So I decided to print the Gyrobot hand body on my Airwolf3d v5.5 machine which has been printing Taulman 645 Nylon very successfully.

I loaded the print file, and everything was going along swimmingly until ... (play scary music here)  about 85% of the way through a 16 hour print job, I realized that the 5.5 machine does not have the build height required for the hand.  The height of the hand is 114.9mm and the max build height on the this machine is 104mm. :-(     I let the print continue until the printer got to 104.9mm and I killed the print job.  The hand was complete enough for testing out, but the guides around the index finger joint were missing, so there is the possibility of the finger sliding off to the side.  Another shortcoming of the 5.5 machine is that there is no control over the bed temperature: it is either on, or off.  That normally isn't a problem with ABS since it heats up to a maximum temperature of about 100C.  But the Bridge Nylon has a recommended bed temperature of 70C.  above that, the glue cooks, burns the nylon at the base of the print, and curls up.  So I'm going to have to go back the the X3REX and figure out the settings for Nylon.  X3REX is RAMPS 1.4 controlled, so you can precisely set the bed temperature.  I also have a .35mm nozzle for the Airwolf JRx hot end on X3REX. I'll install that nozzle and use the 645 Nylon slicer config that works so well on the 5.5 machine.

Aside from the base layers getting burned, the Taulman Bridge Nylon printed pretty nicely.  I did notice some layer separation up around 58mm from the base.  I'll have to play with the configuration a bit more to figure out how to solve that.  Maybe a less dense fill rate.  It is possible that this type of printing is just not suitable for the design.

Flexy-Hand #Abstract2Actual: 71:51 and counting