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Cookie Cutter Main
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The Design on Thingiverse Customiser
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How it looked before the raft removal
After a week off due to the UP! playing… well… up #ThingiThursday returned with a roaring success this week.
The machine itself needed re-calibrating, this sort of tinkering activity is what, according to some industry experts, stops the machines becoming true consumer devices. The software with the UP! also needing re-installing as it kept crashing on my machine. After some time it appeared for all intents and purposes that the John Burn Ltd supplied machine was raring to go.
Now, what to print? There’s been a few stories that have caught my eye in the 3D printing world that could potentially be today’s Thingi Thursday. One in particular was a MakerBot blog about customisable cookie cutters now available on thingiverse.
Opening Thingiverse’s Customizer you can quickly see how simple this process is going to be, simply draw some lines and the in-browser software will do the rest. If the tinkering of the machine stops 3D printing being a true consumable then it is touches like this from the MakerBot crew that redress the balance.
I decided at first on making the Everton crest (my soccer team to US readers) but then realised this is supposedly work so plumped for the Personalize Z logo that adorns twitter and other various social networking sites. Designing it was simple enough, even for somebody as inartistic as I.
The ‘Customizer’ neatly dropped my Z shaped cookie cutter into my inbox and I had an STL ready and waiting, for free.
Now for the tricky part, as mentioned previously the printer has not been behaving for a couple of weeks now; parts have been warping, the extruder has not been playing ball with the nozzle height and generally it has been fluffing things up. After its rest period, recalibration and software update all seemed fine. The software tells me that with a 0.20mm resolution on medium speed I should have my print within 1hour 52 minutes.
Sure enough, I did; peeled from the perfboard with consummate ease and the raft removal may have been the simplest yet. We were left with a cookie cutter designed and produced on my desktop with absolutely no skill in design, in under three hours. This is why this technology - which is still its infancy in terms of the desktop world – is genuinely exciting. Designing and manufacturing products ad hoc.
Now we can look forward to some Personalize cookies in the office tomorrow. Best get baking Rose…
