I’ve mentioned before, perhaps too many times, about getting involved in 3D printing, but it’s served to keep me busy during the lean winter months, and I’m slowly picking up some design skills. I’ve joined a few online repositories for such things and have uploaded a handful of designs, such as the long lens grip that I use regularly – it helps a lot, believe me. And a couple of designs were just for printers themselves, small upgrades or enhancements. On the analytics page of an account, you can see how many views, likes, and downloads each design receives – on one of the websites, this actually earns you points that can be used towards purchases in their store, so hey, fine.
On a whim one day, I altered someone else’s design (this is common and even encouraged) for an aircraft altimeter – their intent was for flight simulators, but mine was much more frivolous, mounting on the back of one of the printer motors and ‘gaining altitude’ as the printer fed filament into the extruder; all it took was attaching the needle post to the back of the hub extending from the motor, while the dial was simply run off the laser printer. It required perhaps an hour to redesign, about the same to print, and I liked the effect.
For giggles, I uploaded it to the online repositories for anyone that had the passing interest. It was silly, but the communities are fond of tchotchkes.
What I didn’t expect was for the damn thing to explode in popularity, exponentially above anything and everything that I’d uploaded before.
That’s it on top, blowing away the long lens grip, the deep lenshood, and even the printer display mount (which I also consider a great addition to my own printer.) It’s been up for 20 days, while all of the others have been up for months.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t be so surprised; there are only so many photographers on such sites, but everyone is interested in enhancing their printers, though it’s a stretch to call this an ‘enhancement.’ And for a lot of printer designs, the back side of the motor (any of the common stepper motors used) doesn’t face in a useful direction. But hey, if it’s popular, I’m not arguing. I’m not gonna bring it up at my high school reunion (or even attend,) but it’s perfect for, you know, a blog post…
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For those who have the interest: