I’m experimenting with multiple mold-making techniques. And it’s exciting to me be able to translate designs in basic PLA on an A1 Mini into more robust materials like concrete and rammed earth.

However, one of the drawbacks of prototyping in concrete, cement, plaster, or stabilized earth is that your prototypes are inevitably going to be unusable in one manner or another AND made of massive, non-recyclable materials. The experimental process creates heavy trash.

Along the way I realized that I could experiment with multipart mold designs while making bars of soap instead. By using “melt and pour” bulk soap on Amazon I could find what works and what needed further optimization before designing for silicone or concrete.

Obviously, I’m not making concrete bars with the same mold designs. But, the lessons about layer line transfer, overhang design, planned post-processing operations, and relief zones translate.

Other positive results: -each casting costs less than a Dove bar -materials don’t need to be purchased 90lbs at a time -it can be used for its intended purpose whether it turned out perfectly or not -it literally lets me wash away the sins of prototyping

Thought I would share in case anyone else was curious about mold making but was intimidated about starting.

The dots in my bar of soap are oven-dried cold brew coffee grounds for exfoliating and I added a 1/4 teaspoon of lavender essential oil in case someone wonders.

Needed to clean out my slow draining sink. I designed and printed this barbed tool. Works impressively well so I figured I’d share. Model link - https://makerworld.com/models/1189143

Needed a way to store partially used tubes of caulk so that they weren't laying down and rolling all over the place or tipping over because they're unbalanced. 3d printer to the rescue!

A simple watering can. Looked for ages to find one I liked and that was pretty as well as functional and had the right size. This one is perfect for my needs. Found it on Maker World https://makerworld.com/en/models/733944-watering-can#profileId-665713

Wanted a clean mount for my Pi. 5 minutes in CAD with some calipers and 20 minutes on the printer and I have a solution. Fits 90 mm standard VESA mounting holes

This is my functional print of a bookstand—really happy with how it turned out! Holds books, glasses, even a coffee. Simple, clean, and super useful! I really enjoy it😊

Yes, I have tried weighing them. Looking forward to many comments telling me to weigh them anyways.

What is a poka-yoke? Poka-yoke (ポカヨケ, [poka joke]) is a Japanese term that means "mistake-proofing" or "error prevention".

At my job we have a product which needs a small screw in each package. During our assembly phase we have been having problems with inaccurate screw counts in our build kits. One too few is no big dealwe can just grab an extra, but one too many leaves an extra at the end of the assembly and throws into question everything that has already been packaged and sealed. Did we miss a screw in a package or have one extra to start?

Yes, I have tried weighing them. Because they are so tiny, a scale sensitive enough to consistently get an accurate count is effected by the large overhead fan in our shop, the scale can never settle for a sampling process. When we have just gone with the total weight of the required screws there is too much variance in individual screw weight which makes people question the count if the total weight is off from what is written down.

We are sometimes needing multiple exact 30-count batches of screws per hour, and hand counting can lead to mistakes and honestly is not that great of a use of people's mental energy.

After many iterations this is the design I have settled on. It is fairly simple to operate right at the point of use in or inventory, it is "counting without counting" in the sense you just need to make sure each hole is filled, and it gives a very quick and easy visual confirmation you have the correct amount. I'm sure many folks will say it's faster to count or why not just use a scale but for our usage this has been a much faster way to ensure the proper count every time and has saved us lost time and materials downline correcting a simple counting mistakes.

This was a small weekend project - replacing the glove box hinge in my Impreza that snapped when I replaced the cabin filter in the cold.

I was able to model a copy of the hinger that I felt was similar enough for me to move forward with the project. So I sawed off the broken hinge with a hacksaw. I was greeted with the three holes under that part. Unfortunately my model was designed with the assumption it was flat under this, though I wanted to take a break from modeling so I just made a small rectangular block to go in that hole. I glued it in and let that part cure first, then I sanded the hole thing flat the next day.

Finally, I glued on the actual hinge piece. I let it cure for a day, and this morning I put it in and it fit perfectly! I'll add the models to this post when I'm back at my PC for anyone who needs it. Cheers!

Remodeled our bathroom and decided to try printing an air vent cover so I modeled this one. I added magnets to the face so I can change it out/ clean the vents if needed.

Couldn't get it all to fit nicely so I had to split it and decided to make it an accent.

I designed and printed these a couple of weeks ago. The cooler saw a week of heavy use after these parts were installed. No issues to report. I printed them with ABS and 100% infill @ 0.08 layer height.

STL:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7001600

Made a little attachment for thrle doorpull strap things in the Citroen Ami and Opel Rocks-E EV's. They're too hard to hold on to for many people. This makes it way easier.

https://www.printables.com/model/1252434-amirocks-e-doorpull-handlegrip

This is the most complex thing I’ve modeled from scratch so I’m pretty proud of myself

I was a big fan of these new aftermarket indicators, but they sat so low into the body that you couldn’t really see the indicators unless it was dark or you were looking at them dead-on as the fairings were covering most of the light.

To fix it, I made a simple riser to lift the base of the indicators up to just under the top fairings. Now the whole thing is visible and it’s such a big improvement. Really happy with how it turned out!

Figuring out the angle on something like this is challenging as nothing on a wheelchair is level of perpendicular. Using a spirit level to create a constant, the rest can be traced and then measured in CAD software.

Fun design... The cellphone holder was placed so it can act as a torch for when power goes out.

I did not design the clamp part.

Remodeled our bathroom and decided to try printing an air vent cover so I modeled this one. I added magnets to the face so I can change it out/ clean the vents if needed.

Couldn't get it all to fit nicely so I had to split it and decided to make it an accent.

I’ve made this cute little tray with a cup holder. They are stackable and easy to print, even in two colors.

There are versions with a little fun illustration but also one without one.

https://makerworld.com/models/1289981

I’m glad to share it with you. 😉

My cat is a massive and the top platforms of a secondhand cat tower we got for him were too wobbly, so I designed and printed stabilizers.

I wanted to fit a second RTX 4000 Ada 20GB GPU to my AI dev rig, based around the Fractal Ridge case. The Fractal Ridge has a room for triple-slot GPUs, and includes a riser for a single PCIe 16x slot, along with an extension piece. So put of the box, only a single GPU is supported.

I bought the C-Payne bifurcation adapter (https://c-payne.com/products/pcie-gen45-bifurcation-adapter-fpc-cable-x8x8-2w-2u-60mm) to split the motherboards' x16 slot into two x8 slots. My RTX 4000 are single slot blower style, so only take up a single slot, but I still wanted to leave a slot space between them, hence that specific bifurcator. The little extension riser board that Fractal supply is removed.

I wasn't happy leaving the GPUs floating around in the case only restrained by their expansion slot brackets. There is place to screw in a brace on the back of the cards (like how Dell do in their workstations), but that still didn't solve the issue of things moving around when plugging in and unplugging them from the bifurcation adapter, so I decided to build a base-plate to mount the C-Payne bifurcator onto the Ridge's riser plate.

FreeCAD was awesome for this - most of the time was spent setting up planes in the correct locations. I can't believe how far FreeCAD has come, and far fewer crashes that when I last used SolidWorks back in 2013/2014. I used the regular Creality slicer to print on my Creality K1C printer with PETG, which took around 2:30 hrs.

I put a little cut-out in the baseplate for the bifurcator to drop into, with some pins to hold it in the correct position. In the end I stuck it down with double-sided foam tape. The flexible PCIe ribbon is free to sweep around without bending too tight.

The outermost upstand on the side of the baseplate allows the use of fan-mount screws to hold it down through the Ridge's 140mm side fan mounts. That's the only downside - you sacrifice the 140mm side fans, but there is still room for 80mm fans at the top of the case, but it doesn't look like I need them anyway since the top of the case is so open.

If I was doing it again, I think I would use nuts and bolts (or put in some threaded inserts) to mechanically hold the bifurcator in place, but with double-sided tape and the GPUs screwed in place, it's all solid anyway. Either that, or make the mounting posts a bit wider so that they form a compression fit on the holes in the bifurcator PCB.

Overall, I'm happy with this, my first full design + print.

I couldn't find a simple cap for 2" PVC so I made one, or two. I don't know if this would work for actual plumbing as I'm gonna use the pipe as a storage tube.

Round, https://www.printables.com/model/1255949-round-sch-40-2-pvc-cap

Square, https://www.printables.com/model/1256313-square-sch-40-2-pvc-cap

Check out this tongs holder I drafted and printed. It fits perfectly with the small trash cans we use to collect kitty poop. This updated file has holes to allow for water drainage.  

I used Solidworks to draft and Bambu Studio to print on the Bambu Lab A1. You'll need supports enabled to accommodate the lip that hangs on the trash can.

This is my first original design and print. Please let me know if you have any suggestions/comments on the design, on the post, or anything at all. I'll answer any questions as well.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/1282795-tongs-holder-attaches-to-trash-can-8in-203mm#profileId-1311221

Recycling and upcycling are topics I really care about, and I always felt a bit guilty throwing away spool cores. ideas started flowing. The result? A modular and flexible platform that not only reuses spool cores, but also gives new life to transparent toy packages.

sCORE UP - Spool CORE UPcycle display system.

Hope you like it.

I engine-swapped my Kawasaki KZ200 and the new engine doesn't support a cable tachometer. I'm in the process of designing a new speedometer mount, but in the meantime I thought I'd try to convert the tach into a clock. Originally I wanted to reuse the tach markings and have the needle move from 0 to 11 to indicate the time, but I decided that for now that's above my pay grade. It would've distracted me from actual motorcycle projects for far too long anyway.

A lot of 70s and 80s Japanese motorcycles use the same Nippon Seiki gauge sizes, so there are likely hundreds of junk gauges out there that will work with my model.

Printables link: https://www.printables.com/model/1255847-motorcycle-speedometer-tach-desktop-clock

I was really surprised when I went looking for a toothpaste squeezer that they were all so over complicated, used crazy amount of filament, had long print times, or stupid faces/text added to them.

It took me less than 2 minutes to measure and mock up this model, which takes about the same to print. 5 minutes if you include heating up the printer and running pre-print calibration.

Only uses 2.6g of filament

Send STL?: https://www.printables.com/model/1254888-minimal-toothpaste-squeezer