Book End Designs: Part 1

I recently came up with an idea for creating book ends. There are so many designs out there already but I was most interested in exploring the ones that have a metal “tongue” embedded into them. I posed the question “Could I create this style of design with a single 3d printed part?” If so, I could simply 3d print a book end and then cut out a bit of sheet metal for the “tongue”.

If the tongue is bent into an ‘L’ shape it can be easily inserted into the 3d printed housing.

After figuring out the tolerances and coming up with different examples, this would be a reasonably easy design to reproduce and it would be more sturdy than a 3D printed book end would be on its own.

The first design I created was a Roman Pillar:

A cross section view of the pillar shows the ‘L’ shaped tongue:

3D Printed: Miniature Sword Holder

a 3d printed decorative sword holder

I created a simple miniature sword holder in Fusion360 that works great for any little letter opener or other similar sword you might want to display.

Additional features of the model include some basic design variations to adjust the length of the base, the blade / hilt rest positions, as well as their width, and height.

Digital Creators Club: Animation Project

I’ve been hosting a small lunch club for the last 4 years at Seaquam. It started as just a few students interested in learning about 3D printing but has evolved into a small 3d animation and modeling studio. This year we decided to create a demo reel of our work around a common theme: food!

Of course I agreed to make an animation too. Here’s my contribution to the club’s demo reel. I limited myself to only working on it for 10-15 minutes every Wednesday at lunch.

The full reel is still being edited by one of the students and will be posted soon.

Lightsaber Wall Hooks

Laser Cutting Project

A good friend of mine needed something to mount his lightsaber over his desk. Happy to have an excuse to use the laser cutter I offered to help. I asked for some basic dimensions and then quickly modeled a hook that could be easily cut from acrylic and assembled in two parts. This could also be done with 3D printing but I think the acylic has a much more refined look.

The final look turned out quite good! But I would use thicker acrylic next time. 3/16″ is just a bit too thin and I had to re-cut because it cracked when I tried to join the pieces.