A Quick Fix

November 3, 2019Leave a comment

Down the street there is an amazing loose leaf tea shop where I source my favorite blends. To brew my tea I like to use a Bonavita Immersion Dripper. The dripper is very elegant being made mostly of porcelain, it seemed like a reliable and durable piece. Unfortunately the base and in mechanisms are plastic and one day a small, but critical, plastic arm snapped.

Normally this would be the end for the entire piece of hardware and the entire thing would need to be replaced. Luckily the bottom is easily removable and small pieces of plastic can be 3D printed.

Second test, working but could be better

With a little over 30 minutes of modeling and printing I had a design that fit and worked well. I decided to change the design and move more the the torque to be around the metal screw points instead of the plastic pins. I think this new piece should be much stronger than the original, but I might reprint it it more neutral color.

The Horror

November 14, 2018November 13, 2018Leave a comment

Recently I’ve been playing Arkham Horror the card game. It’s a living card game adaptation of the Arkham Horror board games with many mechanical improvements. One thing its share with its progenitor is that there are a lot of cards and pieces and it can become a confusing mess quite quickly.

The table after playing Curse of the Rougarou with the unpainted markers

One thing I do like about the Arkham Horror board game is the modular interlocking board pieces that become the setting of the game. Since all the card games has is cards each location becomes a card and instead of interlocking cardboard connectors there is complicated system of symbols on each location card noting which other locations its accessible from.

Painted and weathered token next to an unaltered one

I was not the only one who found this confusing. Users on Thingiverse had uploaded 3D models of arrow tokens which can be used instead to show the connections between the locations. Firing up the 3D printer I printed out a batch. The tokens were very nice, but the flat plastic color didn’t fit the 1920 noir theme of the rest of the game. With a little gold and black paint that was also remedied.

The markers in use

A fleet of tokens waiting to be used

Link to the Location Connectors STL

Link to the play mat

Avert Your Eyes (and Lenses)

September 4, 2017December 23, 2017Leave a comment

Reflecting on the year: This year is drawing to a close and as part of a retrospective look on the year I am finishing and publishing several blog posts that at one point I started and never completed. Here is a follow up post to on seeing the total solar eclipse in August.

I’ve shared my photos of my experience viewing the total solar eclipse, but there is still another story to tell that starts weeks before the eclipse. How to prepare to be able to point a camera with a magnifying lens directly at the sun for a couple of hours without anything catching on fire.

The sun is an extremely powerful light source. Without proper protection it can melt many little parts of the camera. The camera might survive one or two quick photos but I was planning on leaving this on a tripod pointed directly at the sun for the entirety of the event. For that I needed a special solar filter. This is a much more potent filter than what is in the eclipse glasses usually 3 to 4 ND stops higher. This is needed because these filters are going in front of cameras and telescopes that are focusing a large amount of light into a small point, like burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Some solar filters come with a cardboard cutout the slips over the camera lens easily. The ones that I was able to get we’re just squares of aluminized plastic with no easy way to mount them. This is not uncommon for filters or gels; a professional photographer would have the mount needed to affix this, but I didn’t. These mounts are expensive and the eclipse is only a few days away, it would be hard to get. Maybe I can just make one?

Test printing lens attachment

Some quick measurements and some computer aided design work later and I had a working prototype that could mount the filter to a lens with some rubber bands. Testing reviled that some light was getting in behind the filter and reflecting into the picture leading to some interesting photos, but adjustments we’re needed.

Solar filter attached to printed lens hood with rubber bands

Front plate added to keep filter aligned

Testing the set-up

Early test exposure through the mounted filter

Version 2 worked much better be I wanted a faster and more reliable way to attach and detach the filter, as the solar filter would need to be removed for the two minutes of totality. Third and final iteration added magnetic latching so the filter can just snap on and off from the base. Still not perfect but good enough, it was time to head to Oregon for the eclipse.

The final more robust version with magnetic release

As seen in the previous posts the system worked well, and I’m very happy with the pictures I got. Building this system has spurred an interest in astro-photography, and there is so much that can be done with homemade equipment. This is something that I might continue.

Testing the final setup the day before the eclipse

A Clash of Coasts

Tales of the Pacific Northwest

Category: 3D Printing

A Quick Fix

The Horror

Avert Your Eyes (and Lenses)

Reflecting on the year: This year is drawing to a close and as part of a retrospective look on the year I am finishing and publishing several blog posts that at one point I started and never completed. Here is a follow up post to on seeing the total solar eclipse in August.