Weeds

Escaping wild brassicas in cracks in brickwork and

in pots.

Bamboo

Nasturtiun

A few.....

different......

wild brassicas.

Hi

For a while I have had some edible weeds planted in parts of out garden, and I noticed recently some of them had jumped ship to grow in cracks between bricks. Not to be outdone, a small bamboo stick intended as a climbing frame for other plants has reanimated itself and is growing.

So I've done some work in the garden now to help the edible weeds and send the ones I pulled out to the neighbour's chooks. I was motivated by the edible weeds, normally tidying up the brickwork would be a task well below tidying up the sock draw in priority. Our bible for this sort of gardening is the Weed Foragers Handbook by Adam Grubb and Annie Raser Rowland.


Our bible for this form

Body Builder Kit

Hi

For the last several weeks I have been working on adding a fairing to a trike I made and that has been going well with a successful test ride on a few hills yesterday. The fairing is blogged about from here on in my bikes blog. Anyway, I designed and printed a couple of 3d printed joins to connect the fairing to the steerer, and one of these didn't work.  But I thought about it for a while till I realised the unused fairing mount wasn't really a dead end, it could start something.

So after a bit of thinking, I printed out a few extra steerer mounts and went to work in the shed coming up with the creature creation shown at the top. In previous projects like this one I have used bike blinky lights and in this one used fibreglass tent poles, so using them in something new was not a big deal, and I only really had to dream up the body bit.  The usb charger cord for the light becomes the tail.

After that I made the body holus bolus in 2 identical parts on the printer and refined it a bit by changing the usb plug connection.  I wanted it to work when the body was put together inside out as well as right side in, and it does this now.

There has been lots in the papers and the news about waste dumps lately (such as this article ), and to add an artistic but also childishly-toilet-humor-amusing and environmental touch to the photos, I have shown the creatures with some of the waste produced in their production as capolites / poo / dung / there-are-lots-of-other-words.

The photo below is a teaser for the next chapter!  Regards  Steve Nurse

Surfboard Model on Thingiverse

Actual Surfboard in Video, for more see here

Thingiverse Files.

Video by Jeremy Lawrence

Thingiverse Fin

Models at....

1 is to

20 scale.....

or ......

thereabouts.

Hi

After 2 posts about my Asymmetric Surfboard Design, I have decided that for the forseeable future, I can't make the full size version, so rather than burying the design have made it available for 3d printing through this link in thingiverse.  This coincides with my friend Jeremy videoing me on an asymmetric a few days ago, thanks Jeremy.

A few previous posts here and here . Good luck with your prints and I would be especially interested in any real surfboards made to this design seeing the light of day or the kiss of salt water.

Regards

Steve Nurse 

Its Curtains Part 2

Its Curtains demo unit taking shape in the back yard

Main props in place

Completed with string and plywood prop supports and an old towel from the laundry, closed.....

And......... Ta-Da .......open, revealing .........Ta-Da........our hallway.

While I was finishing sending my entry forms for the piece off to Fringe Furniture, my son Ewan

and daughter in law Phoebe came round for morning tea. Christine is unwrapping a late but well received and eco-wrapped birthday present.

Hi,

To start from the beginning of this story, please click here.

here is the way my piece showing off my curtain pulleys came out.  It could be called a Plaque Unveiler, and yes, an internet search revealed such things exist. This one is just for hire!

The photo below shows one of my trikes, which is my 2nd entry in Fringe Furniture 33.

For the next post on this subject, please click here .

Regards

Steve Nurse

It's Curtains

Four hole curtain rod end

Full curtain setup

Right hand side

Right hand side

5 hole versions as string handles

Left hand side

Hi

For a while, I have been thinking of a modest piece of home automation, that is, making a curtain pulley so I don't have to get out of bed in the morning to let in the daylight.  What tipped me into doing it was an article in New Scientist about Vitamin D and the benefits of living by the sun's clock. Linda Geddes recommends "Use blackout blinds to block the light from streetlights" and also "wake up at a regular time and open the curtains as soon as you get up" amongst other things.  If I open the curtains before I get up.... whoa, I would be way ahead of things.

So anyway, it didn't take me long to make the custom curtain rod ends using Solidworks, some measuring calipers and a 3d printer.  They can be used to make curtain string handles, pulleys and end stops, and the rod diameter is 19mm.  First off, I just had 3 holes in the parts, but added a couple of extra ones later, one very small one for a screw, and another one to let extra bits of string through.  There's absolutely no need to have the 3 string holes / 5 holes altogether in the parts unless you want 4 strings on the curtain, 1 to open on each side and 1 to close on each side. And the 4 hole version looks more like a face!

My wife Christine has mobility issues and she is very happy to use the pulleys.

Anyway, I will load these curtain rod end things to Thingiverse soon, and will put up both the 4 hole and 5 hole versions. have loaded the parts on Thingiverse now, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3710558/files

And I plan to make a "demo unit" featuring these parts and put it in Fringe Furniture which is coming up soon.  (The story follows on here )

Regards

Steve Nurse

Trade Show Pics

This foam map of Australia by states was a freebee at one of the stands, I can't remember which.  Anyway the "Tasmania" bit is my own DIY addition, left out by the original designers.  After a few days at home, I.........

put it to good use, placing the 3d printed  Alien Sculpture I'd made on to it to give an impressive scale and make the alien landing craft look quite big.

Here it is again with a few camera and light ......

setting changes.  The main file for the alien can be downloaded from thingiverse here, the filename is 480equi.stl.

Spee3d stand.

Bastion Bike with 3d printed parts.

3d printed bike helmet display, I searched the net and found this project which sounds similar.

Hi

Here are a few pics resulting from a visit to the National Manufacturing Week 2019 exhibition held in Melbourne recently.  Comments and links are given under each picture. Overall the show was very good and I found out about some local 3d meal printers.  A gentleman on the 3d printing solutions  stand was very genorous with his time, explaining all about their carbon and fibreglass infused printer filament.

Trolley Modification

My wife Christine with her trolley in use as a table.

Table extension "in"

Table extension "out"

The whole thing.

Hi

My wife Christine has some balance issues, so uses a trolley for support and to carry things when going about our home.  The trolley does lots of duties, it is a support, carrier, table for meals and when reading books or newspapers, and also a sort of ladder to help Christine get into bed. 

So I've seen it in use over many months and thought I could improve the table function of the trolley. The table needed to come closer to her for better support without banging in to her knees, but the first method I thought of (reduce the size of the lower shelf area to make clearance) would have been no good, and compromised the ladder function of the trolley.

About 2 weeks ago, the idea of a sliding top tray came into my mind, and I was able to finish is off over a weekend much to Christine's delight.  When doing mods or making new stuff, its essential to consider all the uses the object might have.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Fractional Solids

2 different versions of greater dodecahedrons.

Ball-shaped greater dodecahedron before stripping away the support material from the printer.

Noodling on cad with the shape, I never printed this one.  The circles in the centre were drawn small at first to help  draw construction axes, but in this pic I made them into a big feature.

Schematic of some of the shapes from the spreadsheet.

A few of the shapes.  Gumby is standing on a couple of partial development shapes, and is so pleased with himself he wants to run for prime minister of Australia.

View of 4, 5 and 6 sided faces.

Top view of 3 sided vertex with views below of (part of) equisided triangle, square and pentagon.

Raw Draftsight Plot.

Hi

During one of my last posts, I showed an application for fractional polygons. Hugh Duncan has detailed these shapes in a blog post, and  Wikepedia calls them star polygons.   Anyway, I got to thinking about them, and that there were oodles of them, but why couldn't there be oodles of solids based on them?  I only knew of 5 types of solid (4th pic down), maybe there could be more?

Anyway, I already did a spreadsheet for calculating the coordinates of a spiral based on fractional polygons (fractional polygons in this folder) and decided to adapt it to seed some fractional solid designs.  The tactic for  my shape hunting is to calculate the coordinates of a vertex of "n" regular polygons of "m" sides.

As an aid to calculate, I drew some vertices to scale in 2d and checked the calculated dimensions and angles against the drawings.

The pics above show the results sofar, including making some shapes, and plotting "solid seeds" in Draftsight using a script pasted from the spreadsheet.  I managed to make a polygon that was new to me but I later found is called a "great dodecahedron".  Anyway, I will keep exploring & report more on this later.  Not everything always joins up and I have made some fine on-screen messes!

Regards

Steve Nurse