Tag Archives: FreeCAD

Crafty little stars!

3Dprinting, Crafts, , ,

My friend, Tracy Herman runs a local drop in crafting space (Knot and Purl) and she was running out of little stars that a friend had given her years ago. They were very popular with the kids to glue onto their projects. I eventually located a supplier but they were over $.01 each! So I designed my own and printed it. I’ve printed thousands by now, and she likes them better than the old ones because they are flat on the back and easier to glue.

The Original Star

I chose to make them in FreeCAD, but FreeCAD doesn’t have a “draw star” function. I could have laboriously drawn and constrained a star, but Inkscape does have a Draw Star function.
I then imported my inkscape drawing (SVG) into FreeCAD’s Draft workbench, and then converted it to a sketch.

I was then able to extrude it (pad function) and then fillet the edges

It takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes to print 81 of them on the Bambu X1 Carbon. I printed them in gold and RGB coextruded silk filament.

You can find the STL at Printables and Makerworld. You can find the source files on my github

Laser Tops!

Halloween, Holiday, projects, toys,

My friend runs a cool open crafting studio, Knot and Purl and I wanted to help her with some give-aways for her Halloween open house. I’ve always wanted better cad for laser crafting, so it was a good opportunity to experiment with different CAD methods. I first modeled it in Onshape. Exporting each of the sketches was a little tedious, but the tools were pretty nice, and it was easy to make the design parametric.

FreeCad is something that has been getting better, and I could learn how to do assemblies to make better pictures for assembly instructions.
The sources and some SVG’s are saved here.

The Sketches were fairly easy (though you really do have to think about how the holes and tabs enlarge and shrink due to the laser’s no-zero kerf.

It was easy to extrude the sketches to make the full top.

I added sliding joints to an assembly. I think the limits can be improved in a parametric fashion, but I was able to make a cool animation.

The TechDraw workbench also allowed me to export all the parts in one sheet:

The SVG export was somewhat doubled. The full figures were on a lower layer, and individual paths were duplicated on top of that. The DXF export however was perfect.

I then wanted to make a kit, and initially I edited the paths in lightburn to make little gaps in each of the outlines to make “tabs.” This is great for a file to share, but it was also easier to use the generate tabs feature in lightburn.
The last thing was to add a QR Code linking to the assembly video.

Stealth Selfie Stick for Insta 360 X series cameras

3Dprinting, Photography, , , ,

I recently had the opportunity to go to two major league baseball games in two different cities within the course of 2 weeks. I love my Insta 360 X5 (I had the X2 before) and take it everywhere. Fortunately I checked online before I went, because they forbid selfie sticks, and it would have been confiscated.

For the second game, I took the 360 camera and a small screw on tripod base as a kind of handle, but the result is a really long arm in the pictures!

I checked and they do allow walking canes. I thought, what if I made a cane into a selfie stick?

The first step was to buy a cane, and i found this one for less than $7 on Amazon. I removed the tip (ended up scratching the shaft a little by prying off the end with a screwdriver.)

I then modeled an insert that took a 1/4 20 screw and nut. (all the step files and FreeCAD source are here.)

I made a little plastic washer to go on top (e-6000 was used to glue the parts in):

It wouldn’t do to press the rubber foot directly onto the screw, as it would push it into the shaft, so I made a little cap to fit inside the foot:

And with the cap on, an ordinary folding cane…

To prove it functions as an “invisible” selfie stick, Here’s a quick pic. There’s nothing magic about the invisible part, as long as the stick isn’t too wide, it fits within the “seam” from stitching two 180’s together. You can see the handle, but then the hands are always a little fused together anyway…