Meet your Makers experience

Last night I demonstrated 3D printing at RPL's Meet Your Makers event and everyone had a fun and enjoyable time.

Micro Kossel on display

Setup only took a few minutes and then I had curious people stopping by every few minutes.

Me setting up around 6:20pm

Mini Kossel and Cat statue on display

Micro Kossel prototype and Shapeways products on display

Me running the Micro Kossel

Chess set and puzzles

The chess set proved surprisingly popular and I'm going to be selling a smaller version in the near future.

Answering questions while working the Mini Kossel

Better product photos

So, I've just finished posting some new product photos on Shapeways and wanted to show what I used for the backdrop:

Photographic Sweep Stand

The idea is that by clamping a piece of paper with one of these stands on each end, it creates the effect of an infinite plane, a featureless neutral backdrop, perfect for closeups of small objects on a non-distracting background. Here's a picture of the barn owl with and without the infinity plane, all lighting and positioning is otherwise the same:

Barn Owl without infinity plane

Barn Owl with infinity plane

It takes about 3.5 hours to print a set of these stands (Thingiverse #106568), but for photographing small objects it is the most useful tool I can recommend.

Upcoming Events

For anyone in the Vancouver, BC area, I'm going to be presenting some of my creations and my 3D printers at Richmond Public Library's Meet Your Makers event on Thursday, May 26 from 6:30 - 9:00 pm.

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog
How did you get started?

     Probably the most common question I get asked at local events so here's my answer: I've always been curious about how things work, starting with simple Lego toys when I was younger and then moving to robotics in my teens, along with learning the basics of 3D design. Fast forward to 2008 when desktop 3D printers started to emerge and I was instantly curious. Now there was a way to bring some of the quirky things I'd designed on the computer over the previous years to life. But that was early days and building one of these machines was still more of an exercise for engineers in their spare time. I continued exploring what was possible with 3D design and then when I was visiting my local library I noticed they had a Makerbot Replicator 2 3D printer sitting on a table in a quiet corner. I asked the librarian about it and learned about Richmond Public Library's Launchpad program. After trying a couple of prints on their machine, I started looking into getting one of my own and after a bit of looking found that the best balance between cost and size was either the Prusa i3 or the Mini Kossel. September 2015 marked the month I purchased my initial mini kossel kit and by December I was designing and printing things on a fairly regular basis.

What do you Design?

For this one, pictures speak louder than words, so here's a few casual photos of some of my creations. 

GeoCat prototype

Chess Knight

Barn Owl Pendant