clockspring3D posts
Posts: 471
Files: 959
Gothic Star Ball
Howdy, wonderful people!Ever feel like your life is lacking both gothic splendour and solid geometry? I know I do! This stylish stellated dodecahedron is just the thing for addressing this, especially this time of year where star-oriented festive decor is in fashion. So, silliness aside, what are the interesting design points on this one? Well, the real trick is how it all joins together. I wanted to avoid internal brackets on this one, since I&#...
Resolute Box Reworked
If there's one thing I've spent a lot of time on in the year since I published the Resolute Box, it's printability. These days, I have a bunch of cheap printers using default slicing profiles purely to test the resilience of designs in the face of untuned print setups. I test print, find problems, and see if there's a way to design around them. But back when I design the original Resolute Box I was printing solely on very capable,...
Skull Slide-Top Box with Screw Closure
Second up in revised designs, we have the Skull Slide Top Box. The request here was to allow the box to be locked closed somehow, so I applied a mechanism that will be quite familiar now, but in a different way.Yep, those screw closures! Except, all previous examples have had the threaded part split into two, and the ring has effectively clamped those two pieces together. Not so, this time! Instead, the threaded part just provides a place for the...
Spin Receptacles with Lids!
Hey there, wonderful people!I often get requests to tweak designs, and those requests are often really useful or interesting. Today we'll have three updates to existing designs, two for changes in functionality, and one for a change in printability. These sorts of updates often don't rate actual posts, but in this case I thought I'd share some of the thought process around it. First up - lids for the Spin Receptacle! Two more posts to...
Dice Dozer!
That's right, wonderful people, another way to roll dice, this time with an even more gratuitously over-engineered, print-in-place, support-free mechanism!Press the paddle at the back and the tray tilts forward, driven internally by a pair of geared wheels. Pinch the paddle back up against the upper handle and the tray returns to horizontal once more. Now, the whole appeal of the gearing thing goes back to the Linkage Crate. I really like hav...
Hex Dice Tower
Howdy, wonderful people!I do love dynamic things, whether it's moving gears, flowing water, or in this case, rolling dice. It's a dice tower! A modular one that comes apart, specifically. Let's look at the parts...Let's start at the bottom. You'll need one of these parts, since it's where the dice are directed out of the tower.On top of the bottom piece, we stack middle pieces, as many as we like, taking care to align the ...
Regulation Tape Caddy
Have you ever tried printing a blade? Wait, no incriminating answers, please! I mean, some thing for stationery purposes, since we're looking at another component for the Regulation Caddy System. Specifically: a tape caddy!Now, this thing works mostly quite well! The screw-in spool holder retains the spool and allows the tape to be pulled out and over the top. Angles are all arranged so there's plenty of room for a standard tape roll, but...
Regulation Post-it Caddy
Hey there, wonderful people!It's the end of the month once more, and time for a few posts, some to tie up loose ends (like this one) and others with some entirely new stuff...You probably saw this one coming! Yes, what caddy system is complete without somewhere to store post-it notes? This tray has exactly the same outer dimensions as the original 2x2 drawer-and-tray model, but is geared towards providing a home to your sticky note pads!Print...
Spin Receptacle!
Howdy, wonderful people!Are you spinning your single-axis rotating models and wishing there were more degrees of freedom? If so, this is the model for you! Here we have a spherical bowl that can rotate freely within a stand. The stand features four threaded holes, too, into which bolts can be inserted to tighten the assembly in a given orientation, but that's entirely optional. Originally, this was a tiny, tiny model that would fit into the p...
Video tutorial! Creating support-free screw connectors
That's right, by popular request I finally got a video done demonstrating how the screw thread connectors work in things like the Breezy Pi Case and the Fixer Jar. You'll find the video on youtube here:https://youtu.be/tr2YuelgF-8Hopefully that gives some insight into how I tend to construct those connectors for support-free printing - hit me up in the comments here if I missed anything, or if anything needs more elaboration :)File Locati...
SD Card Caddy
You can never have too much SD card storage!Hi there, ever-supportive, wonderful people! Yes, it's a modified version of the 1x1 caddy that has slots for SD cards! The fun part of this design was keeping it looking consistent with the existing open-topped caddy designs by making sure the top of the insert was square, and not a trimmed-down rectangular thing. When I first developed this idea, the SD slots were in the inner, not the outer part,...
Cog Caddy!
Howdy, wonderful people!Hooray for gratuitous cogs and moving parts! :DSo, this is where that caddy with the hinged lid ended up! As expected, we have two cogs rather than three, and you'll notice they're big now, too! As large as possible within the confines of the lid, in fact. Apart from the fact that it looks cooler that way, it means the cogs turn more easily, with less unwanted tilting.One thing that did change along the way was the...
Overcomplications! :)
Howdy, wonderful people!Making things complicated is great fun, but it isn't always easy...It's that time again - let's look at things that didn't turn out quite as planned this month! First up, that thing pictured above! It's a phone stand, believe it or not, and an intentionally convoluted one. All those moving parts are intended to drive a simple angle adjustment. Two sets of planetary gears, sides that fold together, captu...
Regulation Caddy Drawers!
Drawers, drawers, drawers! But first, names!Welcome back to caddy land, wonderful people. So, a few days back I posted up the first round of Regulation Caddy designs, which included two sizes: 1x1 and 1x2. Now, this was not the best naming, because the latter was not twice the size of the former, it was 1.5 times the size. So, I've added an actual 1x2 version:It's there with the pastel blue inner, and it's called 1x2. But, but, you...
Regulation Caddy System
Hey there, wonderful people!I'll often design in ways that distract from the fact that something is 3D printed, but not this time! This desk organiser is made to be noticed and questioned! Where did that come from? Why is it so complicated and why does it need bolts and such to hold parts together...Yes indeed, this is a modular arrangement, and the clamping mechanism to hold parts together is intentionally intricate, with two separate bracke...
Unified Vault! (or, Vault Box Re-Hinged)
Hey there, wonderful people!I got half way through explaining why this wouldn't work, and then realised that I could indeed make it work! :DThis design may well look familiar! Yep, the Colossus Vault and the Vault Box are the ancestors of this, but they differ in a key way. You see, the Vault Box has a lid separate to the box itself, specifically so that the box can have a flat base. The Colossus Vault, on the other hand, has a hinged lid, bu...
Closed Branch Tube Segments!
Howdy, wonderful people!Remember the Branch Tube? Well, it was pointed out that it could be really useful to have segments with closed bases that could still screw together, allowing a series of individual chambers to form a tube. The existing base would of course allow segments to be closed off, but there was no way to then attach further elements. Until now!You've probably already got the idea from the pictures above - there's now an in...
Pinion Box!
Howdy, wonderful people!This was another concept that bounced around for ages before finally taking form - basically a rack-and-pinion style guide rail. The paired cogs on the lid mesh into rack gears that are inset into the box body. Really, though, I'm just a sucker for gratuitous cogs turning around :DThe box printed in the photos here is a fairly short one, but the dropbox folder contains four different heights - see below for dimensions....
Clamshell Case Requests!
Howdy, wonderful people!Custom clamshell case requests are open! :DYou'd think I would already have all the boxes I need, right? :P I have a vague list of things to create cases for, especially things like screwdriver bits and small tools that currently rattle around in the bottom of drawers. However, I'll gladly procrastinate from measuring such things up and take requests for new clamshell case models!First, what are the Clamshell Cases...
Well, that didn't quite work :P
Hey there, wonderful people! Another month has sprinted by already in a blur of extruded plastic! So, let's look at some stuff that didn't quite work out.Fixer Jar - Secret Hinged Door!First up, that hidden door, above! It works perfectly, prints in place, and really isn't obvious when looking at the model. The downside is that it doesn't hinge up quite as far as I'd like. It's usable, and the model is up on dropbox for an...
Clamshell Custom Cases!
Howdy, wonderful people!Let's talk history....Sometimes I end up making really practical designs. I love my ridiculous adventures in gears and articulated lids, but I can't deny that using 3D printers for actual practical purposes is pretty great, too. Of course, sometimes the ridiculous projects, like print-in-place hinged lids, get refined away from their tricky roots and end up as elements of printable, robust designs.And, that's t...
Fixer Jar Drawer, Archimedean Ball Hatch, Wacom Pen Case, Arduino Cases!
Howdy, wonderful people!I've bundled a bunch of things into this single post, just for a change :) Hmm, maybe some contents are in order:> New Fixer Jar parts - a hidden drawer, false bottom and an interior lid.> Hinged hatch for the Archimedean Ball> A rugged case for Wacom pens> Arduino Mega and Uno enclosures.Let's get to it!NEW FIXER JAR PARTS!Secret compartments are great, and I really do need to make more of them. But right now the ...
Sprocket Box!
Hey there, wonderful people!Yep, it's another ridiculously convoluted one! This print-in-place cog-driven box features two big sort-of-herringbone sprockets, an oddly-curved lid and a design that makes me squint and turn my head sideways trying to remember which bits go where. Actually, the first thing I did when pulling the final version off the printer was to try to open it from the wrong side :)The main feature of this one is also where th...
The Fixer Jar
Hi, wonderful people! :DIt's no surprise to anyone that I like assemblies! This box is made up of an arbitrary number of segments attached to each other via guiding elements on the top and bottom of each segment, and via big knurled screw retainers that hold the layers together.Oh, and the lid is a big screw-out thing, too!The idea behind this one was to allow the box to be arbitrarily tall - just keep adding parts until you're happy! Or ...
Hinged Pi3A Case! And some thoughts on Arduino cases
I have to admit I'd forgotten there was even an A-footprint version of the Raspberry Pi series of boards! The B version is so incredibly common, after all. But the A is particularly useful for for 3D printing, since it's everything one needs for Octoprint. So, here's a case!I've intentionally adapted the original Pi3B case (though with a bunch of modifications) rather than the Breezy case since the use cases for this thing are unl...
AA-AAA Battery Crate
Hey there, wonderful people!It's spam time again! Early on, I did try consolidating things into individual posts, but it made it too easy to miss releases, so spam it is! I often have a couple of things reaching completion at the same time, mostly because that's how test printing works out - things printing in parallel overnight or during the day end up kind of synchronised that way.But on to the model: it's the 24AA box reworked to h...
Archimedean Ball
Actually, it's a trucated icosidodecahedron, but I opted for a more poetic and rather loose choice of name instead. It's huge!Hey there, wonderful people! One last one before the clock ticks over from the 31st to the 1st, and it's a big polyhedron. I'm not sure how these things keep getting bigger and bigger, but here we are! I remember not long ago being concerned that the truncated icosahedron was too big. And the rhombic triaco...
Battery Boxes and This Month's Disaster!
Howdy, wonderful people!Okay, so I'm being a bit melodramatic with the word disaster, but I did indeed have a design that fell by the wayside in favour of a more robust and practical solution. And that solution is the one you see here, for storing AA batteries.This one's called the 24AA Battery Crate, and as you might guess, it holds 24 AA-sized batteries. And it's a print-in-place design with a hinged lid with a ninety-degree angle i...
Camera Connectors Aplenty!
Howdy, wonderful people!Well, it's the end of the month already, and that means trying to get ongoing projects wrapped up wherever possible. There's still stuff on the Pi case to-do list, but here are a bunch of things that should help with camera positioning, and it includes an adaptor to work with the Breezy and Hinged cases! Let's take a look...Swivel ConnectorsRotate the camera arbitrarily with these swivel connectors! I've bu...
Golden Rhombus is Easier to spell than Rhombic Triacontahedron
I hadn't even heard of rhombic triacontahedra before a comment on the Cuboctahedron model sparked my interest! It's a polyhedron made up entirely of identical rhombus faces, and those faces are in fact golden rhombi! Nerd out on polyhedra on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_triacontahedronFor our purposes, all you need to know, is this:a) There are 30 faces, all the sameb) There are 20 vertices where 3 faces meetc) Th...
