News and Events

Keep up to date with Steve Nurse's designs and 3d printing.

Tuesday, 17 March 2026

Small Monolithic Statue

 



Detail and obverse

Bike seat frame being varnished

The round bits came from here.





Used some bolts and Nyloc nuts from the Eames chair to fix the seat on this bike.


Things are a bit unstable in the world right now we have a former ally with a president who is running rampant seeking regime change in countries other than his own which is a bit upsetting. Now it's not only news that is filtering in from around the world. It is affecting most Australians materially, with petrol prices rising and fuel supplies generally less certain. In the context of all these regime changes, images of toppling sculptures of world leaders have been running through my head. My junk sculpture practice has sort of drifted towards making my own grand - mock world leader sculpture. Yes it is only about 60 centimetres high however placed in the right spot and with a bit of squinting it possibly looks bigger.

The main bits of these sculpture are at the top and they are adapters for fitting disc brakes on bicycles. I ordered them from eBay and they look quite good but I'm not quite ready to try them out yet. They are held together by a used-up lip balm dispenser. The shaft of the plane is from a dead Eames inspired chair found on a junk heap. In the last few days I have harvested bolts and nuts from this chair to fix a bicycle. The base is made from a box of leftover routed timber bicycle frame components which I have been rummaging through and rescuing. Finally I was varnishing and repairing timber bicycle seats and using builders bog and varnish - with these I finished off the plinth.

So there's a lot going on in the world - not all of it nice and sometimes not a lot we can do about it. But at least in Australia we can reduce dependency on foreign energy - maybe ride a bike a bit more, maybe put up a solar panel or two, and maybe support more onshore processing and use of Australian crude oil and gas. But in the short term and as an immediate reaction there is always art.


Sunday, 15 March 2026

CD Clock on Thingiverse

 






Today I put a clock design up on thingiverse, here is the link, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7316196

 This is an old design for me and up till now I have resisted making it public. It needs a cd, a rubber band and a clock mechanism to work. Its standard position is hanging on a wall, but it also has 3 holes for 3mm legs to make it a desk or table clock - just add skewers!

 The 2 centre parts of the design are dependent on the clock mechanism you are using, but the numbers should all attach radially to any DVD or CD using a rubber band as a fastener. The design is a version of a previous design, the printer spool clock, also on thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2531561 . As well as a clock, this design could be used as a counting toy, and a way of learning about factors. Have fun! 

As well as plain clocks, I have experimented with variations, most notably face rotation clocks (the hour hand is anchored and the whole face rotates) and tetrahedral - cd - clocks. Some related posts are 

here, here and here 

 Regards Steve Nurse 

Wednesday, 11 March 2026

Photoframe, Strainer and Stopper on Thingiverse

 







Hi

Today I've added 3 new things to my thingiverse web pages, and these are a diy photo frame, a bowl strainer and a stopper for a Black and Decker Workmate sawhorse. The stopper is probably the least creative doo-dah in this lot but it is what made me get off my bum and put all the designs on thingiverse. I went to my friend Christine's for dinner, and she commissioned the stoppers to tidy up her sawhorse. Before I'd even designed the stopper (she gave me an original one) I realised that the sawhorse at Wecycle needed repairing too. Within a week or so from the commission, sawhorses at Wecycle and Christine's were fixed. My friend Myy said he'd like access to 3d printed things at his repair cafe, and so I've made it available.

The photo frame design I've had and used for a while, and quite like it.

The strainer is quite new - I gave one to Christine although she didn't have a bowl which suited it properly. Maybe it could be useful for her as a cat frisbee?

(Links above are to thingiverse pages which allow a 3d-printable STL file to be downloaded) 

Regards

Steve Nurse