Eggs

Preface: We’re not allowed to have heating elements in our room. Or microwaves. Or heat sources except hair dryers and irons of various sorts.

Oops: Roomie, who is fantabulous, has a tea boiler. I have a box of eggs.

Mad Science: Tea is basically hot water, right? Heat water, drop in egg, have hard boiled egg for [meal].

Ending well: Of course not. The tea boiler has no controls on it other than the plug. No timer, nor temperature.

Conclusion: It takes slightly longer than 10 minutes to achieve a hard boiled egg, dropping them in is a bad idea- one gets egg drop soup, not a hard boiled egg, and tongs are really useful.

I do not own tongs. Or a spoon- had to borrow Roomie’s, who, unlike me, is prepared to live in real life.

The tea boiler is kinda like a pitcher with a heating element. This is the first egg, surround by egg dropped soup.

The instructions said to let them cool in water. Doing so.

This is the first one again. It didn’t cook completely, but was firm enough to be considered done and it was delicious.

…yep

Brain Corals

Not really brains, not really corals. They’re adorable brain corals!

I decided to make these after my visit to the exhibit at the National History Museum. When I saw the exhibit, my mind exploded, to put it mildly. I also wanted to jump into the display and become one with it. The nice lady wouldn’t let me do that. (aww)

This is the first one. It was so adorable I had to make many many more.

This one was nearly impossible to photograph. Too much white. It’s also less fluffy than it looks, even though I used the softest yarn ever.

This one is really coarse despite being made of chenille and eyelash yarns. It’s also nearly a perfect sphere (under these conditions).

My dad asked for this one. I need to do some in other bright colors.

The camera washed this one out really badly. It’s as saturated as the sunburst above, just not orange.

And I made some kelp. Kelp are lame and not really kelpy.

I created these by making a four or five chain loop, doing as many single stitches through the loop as I could, three or four double stitches through each of the singles, and 3-5 doubles through each of the previous doubles, and 3-5 singles in those doubles. The second row of doubles OR the outer row of singles can be optional. It really depends on the density of the yarn and how much time you want to spend on these. I’m a very good crocheter, so I can do one of these in about 20minutes, but if you’re a n00b or haven’t crocheted in a while, they could easily take an hour. They also use up a LOT of yarn, so they’re great for using up scraps from old projects.

They are quite similar to the beaded hyperbolic flowers I made a while ago, because of all the same reasons.

Janus

I’ve got two faces now!

Not yesterday, but the Saturday before, I went to the 3rd Ward for their Maker-a-thon, hosted(?) by MakerBot. I spent most of the day there (and the rest on the train *eyeroll*) getting in the way, getting photographed (apparently I’m photogenic? Or maybe it’s just my hair.), and sitting on a table talking about printed things. It was awesome.

The far corner of the room had a middle sized geodesic dome set up in it, with a 3D scanning apparatus set up inside. The scanner involves a Kinect, a laptop and a clot of clever about which I know nothing. They guy running the scanning was kind enough to scan me, and then upload me to Thingiverse so I can be printed.

And lo! I am printed:

We don’t look very much alike, but that’s made up for with the extreme coolness of this.

It can’t be seen in this picture, but the printer exploded my nose badly. As that was one of the last things to print, I saved the print with a little deft knife-work (and ruined any resemblance of our noses). Dad says he’s found the bug in the code that causes that error and has reported it.

My current projects are proliferating, but I’m working on learning OpenSCAD by modeling a zipper to print. The replicat is on hold, as are the goggles that I’ll use the scan of my face to get a custom fit on.

Printing Brass and Painting Plastics

Dad printed me another huge cube as a test run for his new set of calibrations. It printed perfectly, except for what we think is a thermal shock through the middle of it.

The shock can be seen in the right middle flange as a small crack.

Dad printed a bunch of knots to test the overhang capabilities. They’re about the size of the end of my thumb. I decided to clean one up and turn it into a necklace or something.

The back one really is smaller! These have been cleaned up a little with a knife.

ABS plastic (what we print in) dissolves in acetone or methyl ethyl ketone (MEK).  This is after dipping it in MEK for slightly longer than not at all (too long!), panicking, dipping it in ‘Barbie Goo’ (the ABS/MEK solution used to prep print beds), attempting to blow out the film that filled up all the gaps (and generally failing), and then dipping it in clear MEK.

Holding it is tricky- if you have any contact with it, that spot with look different than the rest because it didn’t come in contact with the MEK. So I hung it by a hair. The dip into the Barbie Goo bonded the strands of hair together with plastic. You can see it in the picture because the ‘threads’ are pink, instead of more or less invisible.

The difference is alarming. The one on the left has been cleaned up with a knife, the one on the right has been abused with MEK.

I tried painting it to look like wire. It didn’t work as well as I hoped- it looks like metallic paint on plastic. The paint did not stick or cover well because the plastic is so smooth. I will sand the next one (after making it Perfectly Smooth with the MEK.)

Companion Cubes

I have a deep and unhealthy emotional attachment to them now… and people keep trying to take them from me! :(

I’ve been playing around with making companion cubes on dad’s 3D printer. I used emonk‘s version for the middle and biggest ones and gianteye‘s version for the smallest. I printed the middle one first and discovered that the top didn’t have enough ‘pixels’ to render the heart well.

A day, a 1.5 scale, a printer glitch and 50 minutes later, I had a palm sized one.

The heart on the top turned out much better and the sides are just as wonderful.

Jackson suggested that print one that the big one could fit on top of diagonally like the middle on did. That would take *forever*, so I printed an EVEN SMALLER one. The bottom failed quite a bit- the support structure didn’t stick to the build platform and then the bottom fell out while it was being printed. The sides are pretty good but the bump on the top is poor. It has no hearts because the printer doesn’t have the resolution, especially on the top surface, for that to work well at all.

Here’s the bottom of it.

And the three of them together! aren’t they cute?

From left to right, Inara, Kaylee, and Jackson. Yup.

Replicat.1

I’m working on a logo for ReplicatorG because because they are sadly without a logo and because I need to get my hand in with 3D printing. I styled my replicat after the github octocat.

This is the ‘heightmap’ for the cat. Black is low and white is high. I created this from a pen and ink sketch scanned with the lineart option in xsane, which is the best thing ever for scanning black and white things. I’d like to say that I just imported this into blender and had it work. *flail*

What I did:

• create a cube (or use the standard cube) and scale it (S, X/Y/Z) into a roughly square plate, 6 blender units on a side
• select the top face
• apply This Tutorial to it.
• export as .stl
• import into SCAD and scale to be Big, because blender outputs are small, apparently
• print!

The tutorial is really good. However, it should be noted that the ‘Use texture as heightmap’ bit occurs under F5, instead of F6 as implied by the instructions. I also had to scale the texture to fit the top face of the cube (instead of having one small cat or many many small cats). Mind blowing amount of detail here, but what I had to do was adjust the Map Input (F5, Map Input) thing. If you need the texture bigger, make the size:number next to the XYZ grid smaller in all the dimensions that you want it bigger.

Screenshot! with no useful stuff in the button bar at all!

And the finished product!

ISN’T IT ADORABLE

Button Holes

So I made these spats and silly me doesn’t have a button hole attachment and Mum is making a quilt so I can’t use her machine to make button holes until she is done. Foo. Something must be done about this. Ebay! Ebay has stuff! I get my father to make a bid (and consequently buy) for me a buttonholer. And a box is sent in the mail to me. And then Mum asks my Aunt Mary if the treadle machine has any attachments in it’s draws, and it does, and a box comes in the mail. I like getting boxes in the mail.

The buttonholer doesn’t work. :0! What now? Take everything apart, of course!

Warning: Protect your work surface and your clothes. This will get oil and grease everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.

Symptoms: The needle only catches a few of the stitches but the buttonholer works perfectly otherwise.

Diagnosis: The hook isn’t catching the thread.

Prescription: Move the hook closer to the needle by moving the whole bobbin race towards the needle a hair. Or, in my case, 15 thousandths of and inch.

In order, the throat plate and the bobbin race are removed and then the counterweight and the drive gear at the other end of the shaft are loosened so that they side. Note the relation of the counterweight to the bobbin race before taking it all apart. You may also have to clean the schmutz off the drive shaft. (and oil it too!)

Now, drop the shaft back in, and slide the bobbin race back into place. Peer into the bobbin race (from the front of the machine is pretty good) with a flashlight and turn the bobbin race by hand to see where the hook (the finger that snatches the thread off the needle to make a stitch) comes in relation to the needle. The needle has a little divot above the eye where the hook should come through. The needle side of the hook should be in line with where the edge of the needle would be if the divot wasn’t there.

This picture is from the side, showing where the hook should be in relation to the needle when the needle is just starting to come up. There is a quiz on this later.

If the bobbin race can’t be moved far enough to make that happen, the bushing that the bobbin race spins against must be moved. There are two options- hit it, or assemble a drawbar to pull it into place. Hitting it is really attractive because it requires so little set up and is so quick. Don’t do it! You can’t control how far the shock will move the bushing (and you can’t move it back if it goes too far) and you’re hitting the bearing surface. The drawbar sounds like work in comparison but all you need is a bolt, a socket wrench head that fits over the end of the bushing to rest on the machine, tape, a nut a washer, and a small bushing (or another washer) to bear against the big bushing. The bolt should fit through the bushing, the socket head, the nut, and the washer. The nut should fit the bolt. You will also need a wrench for the nut and an implement to hold the bolt (screwdriver, wrench, whatever depending on the kind of bolt.)

Assemble the parts thisly, with the tape over the threads of the bolt to prevent scratches inside the big bushing. The socket head is a 7/16ths inch.

Put the drawbar through the big bushing with the nut and sock head on the inside of the machine. Make everything finger tight. Mark the nut so you can tell how far you’ve turned it. Turn the nut until you feel it get tight- the distance between fingertightness and the bushing moving. Now turn the nut about three faces. Make sure that the set screw on the bushing has been loosened. Take the drawbar out, put the bobbin race back in, check to see if the hook is in the right spot. If the hook hits the needle, but the drawbar in the other way, and turn the nut half as far as you did the last time. If it’s too far away, reassemble the same way, repeat. When it’s right, put everything together, and it will work.

I did indeed run around the house screaming when everything worked.

Do-hin-gus

I *just* printed my first thing on The ShopMaster’s Thing-o-Matic.

I started it out in google Sketchup, just doodling around pretty much, exported it to .stl, sent it through SCAD, and thence to the printer!

And it printed! (for 11 minutes)

There are so many things wrong with it that I can’t even start but IT IS MADE OF SO MUCH WIN

Hyperbolic Beading

I totally stole this from Jade.

This is a 4 layer hyperbolic plane. By the second layer, it couldn’t lie flat, and by the 4th layer, the time required to complete a layer was getting on towards infinity. I think I spent about three hours on this thing.

I ran out of dark blue beads (I thought I had infinity. apparently not!)

Vi Hart is here.

Watchpocket

…because I can :D

I designed and added this pocket after I made the vest. It would have been much easier to make if I had known when I made the vest.

These are the patterns I used to make the pocket.

The one on the top left if the intricately folded model I used to make the pattern below it. I cut the fabric from the lower left one. The one on the right, once trimmed of its faux-pocket, become the pattern for the flap.

The pocket fits under the flap of the bigger pocket to hide horrible stitchery.

And the watch in the pocket. It has its own flap to keep the watch in- it fell out several times during Cabin Fever when I had the pocket without the flap- and to further hide my bad stitchery.

So much of my stitchery is bad on this because I had to try really hard to not sew the big pocket shut by contorting the vest, which made it difficult to sew in a straight line.