I’ve been spending a little more than a month exploring product design with my new 3D printer. So this is a dump post of everything I’ve been creating with it, instead of making shaders or gamedev during this time.

It’s refreshing having to take care of different parameters compared to game development. For example having to take into account different materials, physical properties, printability, or handling/usability. On the other hand, I’ve found some similarities with gamedev, for example, the fact that it’s an iterative process and you need to learn from your mistakes.

After printing a few popular online models, and getting a hang of the printer and slicer software, I started designing my first object: a charger base for my smartwatch. I wanted it to not just hold the watch, but also serve as a storage for the cable when it’s not in use. Here you can appreciate what I mean when I say designing this stuff is iterative.

This are not even all of the tests I made. Figuring out the right dimensions, thickness and shapes was challenging. Plus there were other unforeseeable nuances, like, notice the horizontal lines on the rightmost object? They popped up because the horizontal cross section of the sphere is variable, and the printer needed needed to change from 2 to 3 walls. Changing to a variable thickness setting fixed the issue.

By the way, one of the most useful things I’ve printed was this caliper. It is unexpectedly accurate and functional. It allowed me, for example, to measure the charger socket of the watch base accurately.

The next thing I designed myself was this box for my D&D dice. I based off the design of another online model. But heavily adapted it to fit my smaller printer, and ended up re-making the whole model. I also fit magnets into this one to keep the lid shut. It was interesting making the hinges work in print-in-place, as I had to make sure the tolerances were just right and I didn’t use a bridge that could “collapse” and make the pieces stick to each other.

Speaking of D&D, I also printed some figurines for the campaign I’m playing. They were challenging to print, because lowering the layer height to make them more detailed also risked the emergence of other issues like stringing or melting.

I’ve printed some other things and learned a bunch with each print.

Right now, I’m exploring to combine my knowledge of Blender’s Geometry Nodes with all this. I created nodes for making holes or hooks for my Skadis panel.

Right now, I’m working on this other geom nodes to make clocks parametrically. While doing this, I also found some very useful geom nodes to make text meshes. Take a look at the article.

And that’s all for now! But I don’t think my 3D print fever is over. I’ll probably design some clocks and lamps next. I want to try selling some stuff and I think there’s market for those kinds of objects.

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