Posts filed under ‘3D Printing’
Sommas on 3DPrint.com
We’re a 3D Printing Family now!
My husband has started learning 3D Modeling as well. He’s been experimenting with OpenJSCAD with a little bit of Blender. Two weeks ago, our very first 3D Printer arrived– a MakerGear M2.
Interestingly enough, our first projects on the printer were both dice-related. I used my model for the “Elements of Harmony Die” to learn about bridges and various print settings. Meanwhile, Ryan designed, printed, and constructed himself a Pachinko Dice Machine. It caught the attention of none other than 3DPrint.com. Not bad for a first 3D printing project! Not bad at all.
If you happen to watch the embedded video in the article, you’ll get to see our youngest son demonstrate the machine. And if you look really closely, you’ll spot my left hand in some of the photos. : )
Enjoy!
Maker Faire Nova 2015 – Takeaways From My First Maker Faire!
This past weekend, I had a booth at my very first Maker Faire! The Nova Mini Maker Faire in Reston, Virginia. My booth focused on my 3D Prints made with Blender (for 3D Modeling) and Shapeways (for 3D Printing).
Me and My Booth (Photo by Ryan Somma)
I was interested in knowledge sharing, so I had a monitor displaying a Giant Prezi of Death of screenshots of my modeling techniques in Blender. I also had on hand a variety of prints I had done through Shapeways:
- Library of Congress Ornament (in Gold Plated Steel, Stainless Steel, and White Strong & Flexible Plastics)
- Schrodinger’s Cat (in Full Color Sandstone)
- Custom Woven Heart Cameo Ornaments (in Full Color Sandstone)
- Occoquan Vapor Ornament (in White Strong & Flexible Plastic)
- Breastfeeding Pendants and Charms (in a variety of Plastic and Metals)
- Relay for Life Standing Cancer Ribbons (in Purple Strong & Flexible Plastic)
- School Bus Wine Stopper (in Gold Plated Steel)
- Glowing Cthulhu Pumpkin (in Orange Strong and Flexible Plastic)
- Dial-O-Lantern (in Orange Strong & Flexible Plastic)
- Elements of Harmony Die (in Stainless Steel)
A Bunch of my Shapeways Prints Ready to Go to the Faire
Since I was giving a speech on “3D Printing without Owning a 3D Printer” in the afternoon, I also had a small section of my table dedicated to compliment that speech and to let people know that they could 3D print that day without owning a printer or knowing a thing about modeling.
Small “3D Printing without Owning a Printer -OR- Knowing Modeling” Section
Finally, I had a special guest at my booth– an employee from the one and only Shapeways! I had a section of my booth set aside for his handiwork as well.
It was an absolutely fantastic time and as with all first experiences, I learned a little along the way. Here are a couple of Do’s and Don’ts I came away with.
DON’T Be Intimidated!
At the informational meeting, the organizers stressed that they want Makers of all levels. You didn’t have to be an expert or a professional. Reinforcing that concept, the NoVa Mini Maker Faire kept posting a badge saying, “We are All Makers” and they mean it.
I was somewhat nervous about not the attendees, but the other 3D modelers. I’m still relatively new to 3D modeling, so at times leading up to the event I had a wee bit of “imposter syndrome.” I was mentally preparing myself for someone coming up, sniffing arrogantly, and saying, “Oh, I see you are using the Boolean Modifier. Don’t you know that makes messy meshes?” : )
But the environment of the Maker Faire isn’t like that at all. People are enthusiastic, people are curious, and people are very very very nice. It’s like the Comment thread of Instructables.
Speaking of Instructables, there’s actually an Instructables out there for “Your Own Booth at the Maker Faire“. A great resource for knowing what to expect! : )
DON’T Be Afraid to Reach Out to Related Vendors
Leading up to the Faire, I emailed both Shapeways and 3DHubs to let them know what I was doing. In both cases, the companies were excited and supportive and sent me giveaways for my booth! So I had some nice stickers and postcards for people to take!
Shapeways Swag
And then get this! The Community Advocate from Shapeways, Michael, came down to our faire and helped with the booth. As busy as the faire was, it was great to have an extra voice there. He brought a good sampling of products as well which only further showcased the capabilities of Shapeways and 3D Printing!
Michaels Works the Booth
Similarly, I had a great experience prepping for the “3D Printing without Owning a 3D Printer” speech. I found everyone to be very generous with questions I had. From NovaLabs to the Virginia Tech Northern Virginia Center MakerLabClub to Ara’s Hub (through 3DHubs) to PrintedSolid, everyone was happy to help me with information. Don’t be afraid of looking like an idiot. If you have questions, ask!
DO Stage Your Items Ahead of Time
We staged everything ahead of time on my Mom’s dining room table. This made it very easy for us to know what else to pack (extension cord, monitor cables, mounting goo, tablecloths, signs, packing tape, etc).
Staging on the Dining Room Table
DO Ask for Help
My forte doesn’t lie with decoration, so I recruited my Mom. She instantly had suggestions for tablecloths, how to display the Christmas ornaments (a metal tree she had in her room) and a little dark cove to showcase the glowing Cthulhu Jack-O-Lanterns (a collapsible grocery crate she had in her car). Not only that, she was a key supply gatherer. I mentioned I needed something to sticky to mount my signs. The very next morning, I woke up and found some sticky goo in my staging area. My Mom was a big help.
My Mom Found a Way to Make the Cthulhu’s Glow
I also recruited my friends Britt and Chris to help with the booth during my speech. With that, I really underestimated their work load. I pitched it as warm bodies watching the booth, but pretty much everyone that assisted me that day (my husband, Michael from Shapeways, my Mom, Britt and Chris) was busy the whole day. Chris, Ryan, and Michael did a lot of talking and question answering. Britt and Mom did a lot of kid-wrangling. : )
I also recruited people to help me with some first hand research for the “3D Printing without a 3D Printer” talk. My Mom designed a puppy through Pupworkshop. My sister-in-law drew an angel we printed via the Shapeways’ 2D to 3D App. Finally, my three year old even accrued a personalized 3D object by making a Color Me Teddy.
My Mom Makes a Puppy Through Pupworkshop
My Three Year Old Designs a Color Me Teddy
DO Enjoy the Free Feedback
Like most Shapeways shop owners, I have Google Analytics enabled gathering data about my referrals and traffic. But you know what is even better? Watching people’s eyes light up. Watching people revel in how beautiful the Library of Congress ornament is or laughing when they get Schrodinger’s Cat. You get instant feedback on how people are responding to your designs.
And some of the lessons may be surprising. Over the holiday break, I was playing with Python scripting for Blender to make customized Cancer Ribbons. I was thinking people would like an interface to order ribbons “In Honor Of” or “In Memory Of” their loved ones sort of like Relay for Life Luminaries. But watching the response at the Faire, if I do put time towards automating something through code, I may want to focus on faces for the Dial-O-Lantern. That got an overwhelmingly larger response at the faire.
DO Know the Event is Family Friendly
The Maker Faire is family friendly, which meant we were able to bring our boys. At times, I had a cute accessory as I worked my booth.
Vicky Works The Booth with Dyson
Both boys had a blast, but definitely DO Ask for Help. The faire was so busy, it was crucial to have extra hands to take the boys around the faire and, at times, thwart their efforts of escape. : )
Sagan Watches a Groot 3D Print
Helpers Entertain Kids Behind the Booth
Ryan Returns Disgruntled Runaways
DO Have An Activity for Kids
Related to the Family Friendly aspect of the event, do have an activity for kids. In my case, I went with a contest for the Dial-O-Lantern! My faces actually started as drawings, so we invited kids to draw faces for a new Dial-O-Lantern. We’re picking six winning faces (We have it narrowed down to finalists right now!) and sending each winning child a print that includes their face. This turned out to be a good activity. The amount of entries exceeded our expectations (and makes selecting the winners a tough task).
Dial O Lantern Contest
Working on a Dial-O-Lantern Face
Playing with Dial-O-Lantern
Drawing Faces
Yikes– Just a Snippet of Our Entries
DO Check Twitter
Although you are getting first hand feedback from your booth visitors, be sure to keep an eye on Social Media as well. I got a HUGE thrill walking between buildings when I saw that the Editor-in-Chief of Geek Dad appreciated and tweeted my Schrodinger’s Cat. Geek Dad! We have Geek Dad books on our bookshelf!
I also found a fan of the “Elements of Harmony” Die through Twitter as well. : )
DO Have Business Cards / Contact Info
The day before the faire, I actually picked up some quickie business cards from Staples. And here’s the thing. I designed those cards assuming there would be a lot of leftovers. At the top and bottom I included lines for every millimeter. Why? When I’m designing 3D models, I am constantly measuring things and getting out rulers to gauge how big I want to make something. But rulers are also popular with my boys, so it seems they are frequently misplaced.
My Millimeter Measuring Supply…aka Business Cards : )
So I figured if I was going to have a bunch of unused business cards around, I might as well make them handy. And although I do have a few I can use for measurement, I don’t have nearly as much leftover business cards as I expected! I was very surprised by how many business cards people snatched up.
DO Make It Easy For People To Learn More
I printed QR codes for pretty much everything. My presentations were both put online (Prezi and SlideShare respectively). I used BufferApp to “live tweet” links during my talk (Hat Tip, Jess Hedstrom). I coordinated with the Nova Mini Maker Faire so all the links from my PowerPoint were easy to find on their blog. You want people to learn more– make it as easy as possible!
Those are my take-aways from my very first Maker Faire. It was an absolutely fantastic time. I can hardly wait for next year!
You can read more about the NoVa Mini Maker Faire on their blog at http://www.makerfairenova.com.
More of our photos from the event are on Flickr.
Ginormous #Blender #3DPrinting Prezi for #MakerFaireNova
Looking for that ginormous slideshow from my “3D Prints Using Blender and Shapeways” booth from the NoVa Mini Maker Faire?
It can be viewed and downloaded at Prezi:
http://prezi.com/ymqlgwjxt9sc/
Other Recommended Resources
Downloading Blender
Blender.org
Recommended Blender Tutorials
- Blender Basics
- Modelling with Curves
- Modeling a Velociraptor
- Texture Mapping in Blender
- Modeling a Pumpkin in Blender
Recommended Shapeways Tutorials
More Details on My Projects
Links from “3D Printing without a 3D Printer” #MakerFaireNova
Did you miss the “3D Printing without Owning a 3D Printer” talk at the NoVA Mini Maker Faire or did you not catch a link you were interested in? The slideshow can be found on SlideShare and here’s a quick listing of the highlighted resources.
Projects The Require No Printer AND No 3D Modeling
- Pupworkshop
- Shapeways’ 2D to 3D App
- MixeeLabs
- Color Me Teddy by Rithstore
- Custom Ring Creator at Freakin’ Sweet Apps
Tutorials on the 2D to 3D App
Finding Models to Print
Companies Specializing in 3D Printing
Finding Local Printers
Exhibitors with Printing Services That Are Here TODAY
Note: Virginia Tech Northern Virginia Center is having an Open House for their MakerLabClub tomorrow, March 16th from 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Do you have additions to this list you’d like to share with your fellow makers? Comment and/or tweet to #3DPrinting #SansPrinter #MakerFaireNova
Printing Everyday Episode 26 – Vicky Somma
From breastfeeding to the White House, I’ve had a most unexpected 3D Printing journey. In February, I got to chat with Jess Hedstrom on her Printing Everyday Podcast. If you haven’t had a chance, definitely check out her show. Hearing all the stories of the personalities involved in 3D printing has been fascinating.
P.S. That picture you see on the Printing Everyday post. That was me trying to get a cute picture of myself, my kids, and my 3D printed creations. I like to caption it “Some things are harder than learning Blender.” : )
Bridge to Terabithia and 3D Printed Dice
What does the Young Adult classic Bridge to Terabithia have in common with amazing 3D printed dice? Both of their creators really knew how to capitalize on their brain’s downtime. They were still challenging their brains even if they were roped into menial or repetitive tasks. Since I’m a working mother of two little boys, I am definitely familiar with limited free time. As a result, I found these two quick quotes to be particularly inspiring.
Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, Chuck Stover’s Botanical Dice
Katherine Paterson, the author of Bridge to Terabithia, on writing with small children.
And then, of course, you can’t be a writer unless you actually write, and it doesn’t take as much time as people think. You know, the number of people who say, well, I’m going to write a book when I have time, they’re never going to have the time. And I started writing seriously when I had four tiny children. Well, I mean I had one tiny child, two tiny children, three tiny children, four tiny children in just over four years, and that’s when I began to write seriously. And I figured out that a lot is going on in your head when you’re changing diapers and washing clothes and doing all those things that have to be done. And if you’ve got 10, 15 minutes a day to sit down and write, you’d have a book by the end of the year.
Source: Beloved YA Author Katherine Paterson Shares Wisdom
Chuck Stover, the force behind Made By Wombat 3D printed tabletop RPG acccessories, on his former factory job
It gave me a lot of time to think about design during the day because of the repetitive nature of the work. Kind of put half of my brain thinking about design questions and the other half to work. Then I would come home after work and get onto Sketch-Up and work on designs until I passed out.
Source: Episode 15 of the Printing Everyday Podcast
Open Source – Adjustable Face Jack-O-Lantern (The Dial-O-Lantern)
Believe or not, my favorite 3D printing project is not my Library of Congress Ornament that won the White House 3D Printed Ornament Challenge.
My favorite project (so far— it tends to change each time I receive a new model) is my first moving parts project! One of the great things about 3D printing if you can have separate parts print in their respective spots. My first “moving parts” project was a little Jack-O-Lantern for my kids. With three sliding parts that print completely assembled, my boys can chose between three sets of eyes, three sets of noses, and three sets of mouths to configure what face they want. I’m totally in love with it… maybe even more so than my kids. : )
Because pictures don’t do it justice– a quick video demo! : )
I recently published an article on Instructables going over my design decisions and my modeling process in Blender.
And of course, if you don’t have a printer of your own and you covet a “Dial-O-Lantern” of your own– you can order a print from Shapeways.
December Excitement – 3D Printing, CBS, and the White House!
I had some extra excitement this holiday season. My 3D Printed Library of Congress Ornament was one of the winners of the first ever White House 3D Printed Ornament Design Challenge.
My ornament was one of five from the contest selected to be displayed in the East Wing of the White House and it’ll be part of a Smithsonian collection as well. I was thrilled to see a photo of my ornament on whitehouse.gov. Whitehouse.gov! And then as thrilled to see it on the front page of the Smithsonian 3D site.
My Ornament on WhiteHouse.Gov!!!
My Ornament on the Smithsonian 3D Site!!!
I thought that would be the extent of the excitement, but I had no idea. The next week (December 8th) a crew from CBSNews came by our house to do an interview. The boys stayed home from daycare and after the interview the camera man even let Sagan see the camera. I also answered some questions for the Library of Congress for their blog and print magazine.
Sagan Meets TV Camera
Excitement over, now, right? Nope! Then I received an exciting email from the White House. The Office of Science and Technology Policy to be more exact. They invited me and one guest to come and tour the White House and see all the decorations. After we passed all our background checks, I got to take that striking husband of mine on an epic date! I love impressing that man (he’s the whole reason I made a Library of Congress Ornament in the first place) and what better way than taking him to the White House? 🙂 And better yet– they displayed the Library of Congress Ornament… oh, in the White House Library.
White House!!!
Getting Photographed with my Ornament in the White House Library
I Was So Busy Pretending to Give a Press Conference… I Almost Missed the First Dog in the Background!
My Special Guest in the White House Library
I made some modifications to the model so it would be printable in Shapeways Steel. The price point is high (over 70 USD!), so I thought it would be something only I would get, but almost immediately some anonymous stranger on the Internet ordered some. I do have to admit, the Nickel Polished Steel and Gold Plated Steel does look awfully nice. (The plastics look great too).
Library of Congress Ornament Printed in Shapeways Gold Polished Steel
I ended up on Michelle Obama’s Instagram. My ornament made a cameo on The Today Show. Someone actually used my name as a hashtag. Get this– I went to an informational meeting for the Mini NOVA Maker Faire and the organizers there knew who *I* was! Crazy!
Me on Michelle Obama’s Instagram
As the holidays neared, though, I hadn’t heard anything about that CBS segment, so I just assumed it got cut for other news. Then as we were sitting down to dinner on Christmas Eve, my brother got a call from my Dad’s old boss.
“I just saw your sister on TV.”
I had Facebook friends all over Virginia post that they had seen it and the CEO of the biggest customer I work for saw it in Morgantown, West Virginia. The CEO! He’s no Ryan Somma, but I like impressing him as well. 🙂
My family was able to catch a later showing of the segment on WUSA9, so I got to see my relatives see me on TV. I haven’t been able to find an online video, but I did find a writeup on the WUSA9 website.
My Family Watching My Ornament on TV on Christmas Eve
So yeah. Exciting way to end 2014. Now we’ll see what 2015 brings! : )
Open Source – Library of Congress 3D Printed Ornament
My latest 3D printing project is a Christmas Ornament inspired by the Library of Congress. It is currently one of the 20 Finalists in the White House 3D Printed Ornament Design challenge. Since the challenge was hosted by Instructables, all my step by step instructions of how to model the ornament in Blender (and the downloadable .STL file) can be found up at Instructables.
Inspiration and Rendered Ornament
Image on the left is by Carol M. Highsmith and in the Public Domain.
The ornament can also be printed at Shapeways.
Open Source: Making a School Bus Wine Stopper with Blender, Shapeways, and Niles Bottle Stoppers
My mother drove a school bus for 24 years. During the school year she called Friday and Saturday nights “Wine Nights” because she could drink a glass a wine and not have to worry about getting up obscenely early the next morning. Well, after 24 years, she retired, meaning every night could be a wine night!
To help celebrate, I wanted to get her a school bus wine stopper. Oddly enough, there seem to be an absence of products that combine “school bus driving” and “alcohol.” : ) Luckily, that’s exactly the niche 3D printing and Shapeways is for! I designed and 3D printed her a customized School Bus Wine Stopper.
From Model to Reality
I’m still new at 3D Modeling and Blender and by no means an expert. But for what it is worth, here’s how I made my School Bus Wine Stopper a reality with Blender, Shapeways, and SS Niles Bottle Stoppers. Maybe something out there will be helpful to your projects!
Recommended Best Practice – Don’t Recreate the Wheel If You Don’t Need To
With 3D printing, you often pay by the volume for the material. With that in mind, was it worth it to me to pay more to print the stopper portion? Bottle stoppers on the internet were just a couple of dollars. It would cost me more to custom-print that portion. Purchasing a pre-made stopper also took some risk out of my process as that was one less piece I had to worry about sizing right and fitting with O-rings and all that. An added bonus is the only material (as of this post writing) at Shapeways that is “food-safe” is the ceramics and I knew I wanted my stopper to be in steel.
I purchased Bottle Stoppers from SS Niles Bottle Stoppers. It was already a proven product and manufactured in FDA-grade food-safe stainless steel. They have many different types of stoppers to choose from for different applications. I used the 302 product which included a 3/8” stud.
#302 from Niles Bottle Stoppers
Recommended Best Practice – Plan Ahead
It really really really helps to know what material you plan on printing in and what it’s limitations are, so you know your measurements from the get go. Shapeways has detailed design recommendations for each of its materials. For my mother’s wine stopper, I knew I wanted steel. I knew from the breastfeeding pendants that it feels solid and sturdy. I also knew the gold plated steel (which happens to be school-bus appropriate yellow) is gorgeous. A rigorous review of the steel materials properties page had me mentally poised that all my walls, all my engravings, etc would have to be 1 mm deep and wide. Knowing that from the very beginning was immensely helpful for the design.
I took measurements of existing wine stoppers and the stopper I ordered from Niles Bottle Stoppers so I knew my dimension of my bus right away. Although it is easy to scale things in Blender, I still recommend knowing your base object size right away. Here’s why– if you do all your engravings and additions and then you size your object up or down– you’re also mucking with the sizes of all your details. So if you had a compliant 1mm engravings and you size it down to 75%, suddenly, you have engravings that are now too short and you’ll have to fix them all.
Recommended Best Practice – Naming Your Objects
My day job is programming and I definitely know the benefits of naming your form elements. I found the same thing to be beneficial in modeling in Blender. I ended up with dozens of objects for my windows and doors and headlights. Keeping the default names of “Cube.001”, “Cube.002”, “Cube.003” would have been tedious to keep up with, so I made sure to give them more meaningful names.
Naming My Objects!
Process – The Bus Base
I started with two “cubes” that I scaled to make the body of my bus. I selected them both and went to Object->Join to fuse them into a single object.
Joining Objects
I wanted to round the corners, but I didn’t want to bevel every single edge, so I got to learn about setting the Bevel Weight for specific edges in order to control how each edge was going to be beveled.
Setting Bevel Weight
And then I went under Modifiers and added a Bevel Modifier.
Bevel Operator
Process – Engraving Versus Embossing
With my details for the bus, I had a couple of choices, I could engrave my windows and doors into my bus base so they were set into the bus body, or I could raise them out of the bus base. At the time I chose engraving. Why? I’m a cheapskate. With the steel pricing at the time, the amount of material was the biggest factor in cost. Everything you engrave out of your design, that is less material and saves you money!
Process – Hollowing the Object
And speaking of saving on material cost, my bus is hollow underneath. There are different techniques to hollowing objects out. With this project, I simply made some smaller cubes and used the Boolean Modifier (more on that below) to subtract them from the bigger bus.
Hollow Bus
Process – Boolean Modifier Crazy!!!
After that, pretty much of the rest of this project was all done through the Boolean Modifier. I did a LOT of subtracting of objects from each other. A lot of it.
The Boolean Modifier is pretty easy. You click on your Base Object and then you click on the Modifiers icon. You select Boolean. Then for Operation, most of what I did was Difference (Subtracting one object from another). Then you select your second object.
Boolean Modifier!
Remember above when I recommended naming your objects? Here’s a situation where is it’s helpful. You aren’t sifting through dozens of “Cube.001”, “Cube.002”, “Cube.003”. Naming your objects makes it easy to pick the right one to subtract.
All my windows, doors, stop signs, were just outer objects with smaller, inner objects subtracted from them. For example, let’s take the school bus door. That was a big cube with two smaller cubes subtracted from it:
The School Bus Door is Just Cubes, Scaled and Subtracted From Each Other
So in the above photo, I start with three objects—a large rectangle and then two smaller ones. I use the Boolean modifier to “Subtract” the two smaller rectangles from the larger one and I end up with my school bus door.
With my end result intended to be steel, I made all my engraving lines 1mm thick and 1mm deep.
Does it look hard? Well, as proud as I was of my handiwork, it’s not hard. In fact, after I finished my modeling, I discovered this technique of making your object out of a bunch of little objects is prominent in a 3D printing tutorial for CHILDREN. CHILDREN! So if I can do it and children can do it, you can do it. : )
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Quick Tip on Object Sizes And a quick tip. I initially made this mistake and I’ve seen others on the Shapeways forums make the same miscalculation. When you are making your object sizes, it’s easy to think, “Oh, my minimum wall requirement is 1mm, so I want my outer object to be 1mm larger than my inner object.” That’s not necessarily the case because you are likely making more than one wall. Take, for example, my cylinder to hold on to the Wine Stopper stud. My outer cylinder has to actually be 2mm wider than my inner cylinder– because I’m going to have TWO walls. I want them both to be 1mm thick for steel.
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Continuing the Boolean Modifier craziness, once I made all my windows and doors and headlights and grill lines, I used the good ole Boolean Modifier again to subtract (aka engrave) those items from my base bus body.
And the same went for the text at the top of the bus.
Getting Ready to Engrave My Text
| Quick Tip With Engraving Text—I’ve found it to work better if I convert my text to mesh and then extrude it. The normals of the faces work out better for the Boolean Modifier Difference operation. |
Process – Fixing Thin Walls
When I was ready to try my model out on Shapeways, I went to File->Export and saved it as an STL file. When I uploaded my .STL to Shapeways, however, their checks indicated that I had some thin walls with the “A” in my engraved text. I fixed that by manually moving vertices around and uploaded a new model.
Fixing the A
Math – Making the Stud
I’ve only been 3D modeling six months or so and I’m finding math to be quite valuable. A good example of this is fitting my bus on the stud for the Niles Bottle Stopper I purchased. The stud itself is 3/8” in diameter. I work in millimeters, so I just used Google to figure out the conversion.
Converting Inches to Millimeters, Thanks Google!
So basically what I wanted was a nice little cylinder to fit over that stud. If I was going to error, I would want my hole to be TOO big. I could always fill it with adhesive or Gorilla Glue. I didn’t really want my hole to be too small and put myself in a situation where I would have to drill it (or rather ask my husband to drill it) to make it fit.
Now, looking at the material page on Shapeways, I noted steel does have a margin of error.
Steel’s Margin of Error
3/8″ == 9.525 millimeters. To calculate the margin of error, I multiplied that by 0.01 (1%) and added 0.1 to it (per their accuracy statement). Since there would be TWO walls (one of each side of the cylinder) that could affect my fit, I multiplied that by 2.
The meant I would probably want to increase my cylinder opening by 0.3905 mm to account for possible margin of error. I went ahead and rounded up to 0.5mm just to be safe (And again—I would rather my hole to be too big than two small)
Behind the Scenes Glimpse of my Notes
I decided my hole would be 10.025. So my inner cylinder had a diameter of 10.025. I wanted my walls to be 1mm thick, so I made my Outer Cylinder 12.025 in diameter (remember there are two walls). Then using, you’ve guessed it, the Boolean Modifier, I subtracted the inner cylinder from the outer one.
Outer and Inner Diameters
So get this—either I had beginner’s luck or my math was solid. My steel school bus arrived and the stud attachment was PERFECT. I had to tap it gently with a hammer to place it on the bottle stopper stud and there it has stayed nice and snug. No adhesive necessary! Score!
Note: If you are modeling for Niles Bottle Stopper #302 and you plan to print in the Strong and Flexible plastic, you may want to choose different diameters. I’ve found the plastic to fit looser and require glue.
Prototyping and End Product
Before diving into the more expensive steel, I did print a version of the School Bus in cheap (and fast) White and Strong Plastic. It looked great (other than I shorted my Mom’s service years by 1), so I changed “23” to “24” and ordered a version in Gold Plated Steel. It arrived just in time for my Mom’s last day of school!!!
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Prototype and Final Product
And the end product was a hit! I think I got myself one notch closer to being my Mom’s favorite child. : )
School Bus Wine Stopper
And if you happen to covet a School Bus Wine Stopper of your own, you can order one to be printed from Shapeways (I have the Personalize option turned on too). Also, I’m a big believer in Creative Commons, so feel free to download the model for your own projects. Just don’t forget that Attribution clause! 🙂
Happy Modeling!
TGAW 
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