Making, Learning, and Exploring
Touch screens; they just dont have that nostalgic clickety-clack feel of buttons, switches, and knobs. I’m working on a 3D printed tactile toy. The first prototype is looking promising although the white overture filament I am using to print the enclosure is giving me a hard time with bed adhesion.
I would describe the final prototype as a fidget spinner on steroids.
I completely redid my design for the bounty towel paper model rocket so I could print the model upside down and get much more aggressive looking tail fins for the 3D printed model rockets.
Free Download
I had a few requests for the file so I will post them here. Over time I have found some differences in diameter of the paper towel rolls and you may need to wrap electrical tape around the base to get them to fit properly.
Click below to download a compressed file containing the models in a specific format called .3mf.
For the second iteration of the bounty towel rocket I made the fins much bigger and I made the nose cone more aerodynamic looking. In an effort to get better flight telemetry we taped two nickels to the inner nose cone in order to get the center of pressure (CP) behind the center of gravity (CG). In our case two nickels was enough for a perfectly straight flight of our 3D printed rocket into the heavens.
For the second iteration of the 3D printed Bounty paper towel rockets I’m now pushing the envelope when it comes to minimum wall thickness of the printed assembly to save weight and material as well as optimizing the print time. I cut down the size of the tapered piece for the nose cone and base that slide into the power towel roll ends. The diameter for the model engine is better but still too much of a tight interference fit for my liking. That will also require some more “dialing in”.
The 3D printed rockets are not satisfactorily stable and have a tendency to flip ass over teacup in midair. After further research I have been most recently enlightened that we need to modify the design parameters such that the center of pressure (CP) is behind the center of gravity (CG) for suitable stability. A destabilizing force is created when the CP is above the CG. the next design is going to have much bigger fins and the nose cone will have internal threads to accept a 1/4 UNC bolt (and nuts if needed) to push the model rocket’s CG forward to obtain better stability.
I always enjoyed building model rockets with my dad and sister as a kid but always found the construction process of cutting, sanding, aligning, and gluing the balsa wood fins to be tedious and take a lot of fun out of the process. Back then the hot glue gun fixed a number of model rocket fabrication shortcomings for me.
For a good while now every time I see an empty paper towel roll I see a model rocket body. I’ve been mulling a concept in my head for some time now to design and 3D print a model rocket nose cone and model rocket fins that could attach seamlessly to a paper towel roll to serve as the model rocket body. We had some empty bounty paper towels in the house so this weekend we fired up the CAD and the 3D printer and gave it a shot. The final results came out better than I could have expected!
It works! Our only problem was that we only had wimpy “A” rated model rocket engines on hand. Due to the weight of the assembly combined with the underpowered rocket engine the first two 3D. Printer paper towel roll prototypes went less than 100 feet into the air. Other than that everything worked splendidly.
My goal for the next iteration is to take the design down to the minimum 3d printer wall thickness (the internet is telling me the minimum is about 1.5 to 0.8 mm for the absolute minimum) and see how well the structural integrity of the design holds up. That combined with some “C” rated model engines should add some serious kick to our rocket power of these 3D printed “bounty towel” rockets. This isn’t rocket science (or is it?)
I’ve been wanting to add multi color printing capability to my 3D printing repertoire and pulled the trigger on ordering a Prusa MMU2S. My son has increasingly become more interested in 3d printing and helped me execute the majority of the build. I was grateful for his help. The whole build took us two long (and I mean L-O-N-G) afternoons to complete the build.
The website says you need to upgrade from the MK3S to the MK3S+ before performing the MMU2S upgrade. I didn’t mind the fact the MK3S to MK3S+ was only $49.99.
I’m pivoting over to CAD modeling and 3d printing storage bases to store the chucks for my Grizzly G4003 lathe when not in use. the concept was something with holes to accept the dowel pins face down and side grips to easily grab and lift the lathe chuck into and out of the tool chest. Simple right?
The first concept came out better than I had hoped but I see a few areas for improvement. The next interaction I am going to increase the diameter of the dowel holes to make landing the chuck ridiculously easy and to make the side grips wider and longer to it’s less tippy in your hands.
I recently upgraded my precision measuring instrument (PMI) toolbox with a lovely Mitutoyo vernier caliper and a Mitutoyo micrometer. They are sweet! Buttery smooth precision.
That being said, I still have an economy Pittsburg Tools vernier caliper acquired from Harbor Freight that has served me well in years past. Especially when you consider it retails for under $20.
I still like to keep the Pittsburg caliper on my tool wall for quick and dirty measurements that don’t require three decimal place precision. I decided to model up a bracket for 3d printing to mount it on the tool wall.
It took me three iterations to get the model right. The first prototype my mouthing angle for the angled base was off by a few degrees and the upper mounting arms were to thin and aesthetically too flimsy in my opinion.
The second iteration I was able to both add and remove material in various locations to optimize the print time down to 40 minutes.
Did I mention I hate pegboard? I hate it, flimsy and ugly! I’m on a mission to custom print every tool holder for my custom made tool wall that is finishing out nicely. After making a socket holder, I decided it was time to make some holders for my disorganized socket sets. I made one set of shallow holders for metric and one for SAE for my 3/8 drive socket wrench.
I’m trying to decide if I like having the letters in an engraved or embossed format.
Next up I’m going to design and print one for my deep socket set. after that is done I’ll make a set for my 1/4 and 1/2 socket sets.