Week 21, 2019 – Improving your Space-Life through technology

It is well-known that I take my life as a professional imaginary spaceship pilot a little too seriously. Like “4-point harness on my computer chair” seriously. And while I certainly liked the old version of the harness, it was missing something; It was just a little too simple.

I’m not sure I’ve talked about it before, so I’ll take a minute here before moving on… I was originally planning on making a 4 or 5-point harness from scratch, and actually designed my own cam-lock release mechanism, but my 3D printer at the time simply wasn’t up to the task, and the prototype’s flimsiness really dissuaded me from the idea.

It was a little while after this that I found a 4-point racing harness on eBay for under $30…cheap enough that I wouldn’t trust it with my life, but in my case, it’s just a prop. I replaced all the plain nylon webbing with proper seatbelt-weave webbing which looked much better, and added little pull straps in red. All the new stitching was also done in a contrasting mil-spec bonded nylon thread.

Finally I 3D printed a knob to go over the release lever…which required filing off the protruding lever, and drilling holes in the face of the cam lock plate. For the last added touch, I cut some paint-mask vinyl on my Silhouette Cameo 3, and used that to paint markings on the knob.

It did the job and I rather liked it, but now that I have the new printers, I wanted to give it another go. I recreated the original knob I had designed for a far earlier incarnation of the project and printed it in some bright red eSUN PLA+

I think the results speak for themselves. 😏 At some point I’ll probably do it again, just to add the arrows back in as actual 3D printed inlays. Though I should probably also prime, sand, and paint it next time for an even more polished look…not that there’s anything wrong with the raw print…especially when viewed anything but up-close.

Week 38, 2016 – A weapon fit for a dirty wasteland scavver

Hey! A post EARLY?! Surely a sign of the apocalypse.

And Probably Faster, too…

So I’m currently working on this wonderful Fallout 4 Pipe Pistol by lilykil. I’m still in the process of printing it, after which will follow the sanding and priming, and finally the painting and weathering!

I’ll update this post with additional 3D printery as it happens, and then make a new post once I get to the painting stage.

Week 37, 2016 – The End of a Spool…

Sorry for the potato pics, but it is pretty convenient just being able to snap pics from a phone and upload them to the blog when it’s for unimportant stuff.

One spool down!

One spool down!

Well, it’s taken well over a year and a half, but I finally reached the end of a spool of a filament.  Until now it seems I’ve just used some of each of my 40+ spools.  But I’ve settled on Push Plastic light grey for printing props, because it just prints so nicely, and it shows up great on camera…so it wasn’t long before I used up my first spool.

Luckily there's more where that came from!

Luckily there’s more where that came from!

So I’ve been working on some Fallout 4 stuff. Fusion Core, Fusion Cell, etc.  The Fusion Core I found was the wrong size, like obviously so… It needed to be like 33% bigger, so I upsized it, and printed it in several pieces so they could all printed oriented in the best way.  The Fusion Cell is just sort of…wrong.  I’m going to have to model my own, again.  After this I plan to finish my 10mm before I move on to bigger and awesomer things.

Original Fusion Core, rather small!

Original Fusion Core, rather small!

Fusion Cell

Fusion Cell

Upsized Fusion Core, original Fusion Core, and 'Purified Water', for scale. (Sorry, no banana!)

Upsized Fusion Core, and original Fusion Core.

I’m going to have to sand, glue, and spot-putty the fusion core sections together.

HAHAHA! I POSTED ON TIME! TAKE THAT!  (゚∀゚)アハハ八八ノヽノヽノヽノ \ / \/ \

#JustFalloutThings

#JustFalloutThings

Like the picture? Upvote it on imgur and/or the Steam community! :D

Just my fabulous collection of Fallout stuff! Details of the photo, after the jump!
Read more…

Week 17, 2016 – May Acquisitions

I’m getting the ball rolling on a lot of stuff this month, from the MAKE COOL THINGS livestream and YouTube channel, to some prop making, to maybe even doing a little work on a simple fun little game project I’ve had in mind for a while… See a breakdown of this month’s acquisitions after the jump! Read more…

Week 15, 2016 – Baka Wins a Thing!

I’ve been trying to catch Bill and Brittany Doran’s terrific twice-weekly Twitch streams as often as possible. They are the dynamic duo who comprise Punished Props, and the streams are always entertaining and educational. (Holy hell that’s an almost obscene overabundance of alliteration!)

This past Tuesday, Britt was the only one in the shop, and she did a stream where she cast a medallion of the Hearthstone emblem in different materials…then she gave them away to three lucky viewers. (Well, two lucky viewers, and a glitterbomb victim.)

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Here’s mine! Cold-cast copper spritzed with a patina solution to oxidize it! :D (I haven’t taken the picture yet, d’oh!)

I was so blown away when the chatbot randomly picked me for the first drawing, because of how interested I am in cold-casting!

Anyway, read more to see the video… Read more…

Week 10, 2016 – Props, Propaganda, Programming, and Projects.

First of all, let’s take a moment to talk about prop making;  It’s something that I have a real interest in but I can never seem to afford moldmaking and casting supplies…  Well, I’m not going to let that stop me from making some props before I have the ability to duplicate them.

Right now, my biggest obstacle– putting aside money issues and for the moment just looking at what I have –is the surface quality of my 3D prints.  To that end I spent some money on some basic necessities like Bondo body filler, Bondo spot putty, some quality automotive wet/dry sandpaper, and a sanding block.  Bill Doran has a great video on using Bondo, and his video on preparing mold masters also contains some applicable info.

Propaganda! By which I mean videoblogging!  I just got a cheap little steadicam thing for my video camera so I can do handheld shots that are actually stable.  It’s really quite something.

Programming! I’ve got some cool Arduino ideas I want to play with, one of them is inspired by this cool post I found about making an Arduino Wi-Fi scanner that displays the SSIDs of open wifi APs on a little OLED display.

Projects! I’ve got a 3D printing and prop making project in the works based on my current favorite videogame; Tom Clancy’s The Division, which inspired an additional project which I can’t talk about right now… ;D

Gonna be pretty cool though!

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