Doodling in 3 dimensions - initial thoughts and findings
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| Packaging and first doodles |
3Doodler is a kickstarter project I backed so have been super excited about how it works but waited patiently till December before starting to play and encourage friends and family to use it as well - seeing the way they use it is also inspiring. As my friend pointed out, it's just a printer nozzle. Well, yes it is but the experience is so unexpectedly different. Firstly, your hand is not as steady as a 'traditional' printer (albeit one that is only 1 year old!). This can pose problems if you think of drawing in the same way as you have watched the printer work (i.e. lattices and layers). However, the freedom it offers makes it more than just a nozzle. Also, you can do this on a cork mat and spin it around to get movement like a pottery wheel.
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| Ship made by Max |
We tried both PLA (better for the environment) and ABS (less good for the environment) 'ink'/plastic with the pen. ABS is better for building up (i.e. vertical lines without having to layer plastic as printers do).
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| One of the doodles turned out to be long enough to make a string. |
PLA is better for stencils - though I saw JiP make a series of lattices and then stick them together for a 3d pyramid - it's what we use in the 3d desk printer and is brittle when not layered. ABS is very springy and stretchy- as you can see we used it as a string for baubles for a handmade Xmas tree.
The things I would like to try include
- Adding details to other objects (3d printed or otherwise),
- Using the surprisingly springy properties of this material,
- Trying to do a 3d still life.
- Mixing materials (e.g fabric, solder etc.) would be of the most interest
- Using a robot arm on it to see if I can get more control on it and also, because it would be fun though you'd lose the free-flow drawing aspects. Just typing this out has made me prioritise this one.
Sewing bags and looking for patterns
I had been making lots of totes following this craftsy tutorial as Xmas presents (and some for me). The lady says her 9 year old daughter can make it. Having been quite bad at needlework, it took me a lot of time and swearing. But once I got into the swing of things it was better. Unlike in the tutorial, I used plain fabrics with colours that suited the folks who were getting them and added fabric pens to the gift.
I spotted this 1 hour bag (took me 3 hours naturally)
which pushed me out of my comfort zone as it includes curves, wading and magnetic snap buttons which are AMAZING. As you can see, I haven't quite got the hang of the curves yet. Oh, and I'm not a fan of sewing wadding but resentfully acknowledge its worth.
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Playing with making bags (straight lines!) made me realise that there are only a few patterned fabrics that I like and are affordable. Plus, I would like to personalise them. Though I had explored making wearable tech I discovered a few hurdles along the way. I need to get better at stitching and electronics first.
Which made me open to the ideas of printing on the bags.
Inkodye by Lumi
Luckily, a couple of years ago, I attended Kinetica Art Fair 2012 where mindsetonline were exhibiting. Upon browsing their site for ideas this Xmas, I came across Inkodye. It seemed to be what I was looking for in terms of exploring making interesting things on fabric and other materials.
Today's experiment was just that, an experiment, using the guides. We used transparencies for printing out the photo and 3 small plastic spoons worth of blue dye. It was a very cloudy (and a bit rainy day) so the table was left inside by the glass door - which did not help. What the guides also don't convey is how stinky the stuff is.
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| Initial layout of photo and objects |
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| After 30 mins |
Next time:
- Will use a roller brush rather than a paintbrush to coat the ink evenly.
- Masks and working with the windows open should help alleviate the smell
- Try it on unvarnished wood
- Transparencies may not have worked - may try darker pictures or stencils.
- UV light flash is probably best used in the dark
- Work on a brighter day
- More ink?
- Mixing inks to create more colours
The details in the leaf and some of the net came out but the photo only had some details come through.
Looking forward to a sunny day when inspired and not busy. May have to wait some time for that.
As an aside, in anticipation of this ink and the ability to use UV lights I received this brilliant gift - a UV flash light from Maplins - just an excuse to solder, really. I doubt it made much difference today as it was used in the light on the net bag.Raspberry Pi and physical computing
When we attended the Mini Maker Fair in Elephant and Castle in 2013 (last year!) I had a go at this workshop on 'Web-based physical computing with Raspberry Pi'). Now that I have access to a Pi, I decided to do the 'tutorial' again and play. At the time of the fair, it was the first time I had played with a breadboard so my thoughts were not on the software side.
Connected to the Pi, I found it quite tricky to work with it. So, I had help and used this book to use my laptop to control it. Then I found the program that went with the tutorial quite limited and hard to amend quickly so I wrote my own program in python to interact with the LED and switch and blink SOS or prompt user for 'dots' or 'dashes'. Since the idea of a morse-code LED messager seemed a bit dull to me I gave up and looked for a way to interact with the LED/switch in a web app.
I discovered that GPIO pins are not what they seem (22 when using node and GPIO library provided in the tutorial, 15 for 22 in GPIO library I used first in the simple python script and 22 in WebIOPi) ! Thankfully, the book helped.
WebIOPi was fun as it seemed to open up possibilities and the tutorial I used was easy to follow though the web page styling was really tricky to amend. I didn't follow the tutorial entirely. Instead the user would enter the number of times the LED should blink in a text box or just press the button on the screen as a switch for the light. To be frank, the outcome was also boring but doing the tutorial got me closer to thinking about connecting some of my devices to make something fun or useful.
Next time:
- Project with an interesting device
Something to consider for the future though.
These projects have meant I can play some more in 2014.
