Sunday, December 15, 2013

Doctor Who Cookie Cutters

I pulled out my TARDIS door covering and repurposed it for my new apartment door... why did it have to open from the opposite side as my last apartment?!?  Anyway it was a great way to start an all day Doctor Who Marathon party and cookie baking session.


But that's old news, the new addition to my crafty Doctor Who world are 3D printed cookie cutters!


Not too shabby!  Cybermen, adipose, Tardis, David Tennant, K9, Matt Smith, and (not featured because they were too delicious) daleks.  I tried out this pattern on thingiverse, the go to place for crowdsourcing 3D printed files.  It worked nicely but it didn't quite have the dalek angle that I wanted (more eyestalk!) and the second part of the cutter that made the impressions, well it wasn't impressive at all.  So I ended up making a lot of custom files using cookie caster and pics from the internet.  It took me a couple of tries to get the right thickness of cookie cutter.  On the thinest setting the makerbot I was using often translated the single line into two thin lines with space in-between. Queue hours of cleaning out cookie dough with a toothpick--no good.  The thickest setting was, well too thick and could probably be used for ink printing... but not cookies.  Somewhere along the way there is a happy medium for a solid reusable (handwash) cookie cutter.   I used PLA plastic and a Makerbot Replicator 2 and 2x.  Since the cookie cutters have such little surface area I had to put a raft on it so that it would stick to the print bed and not pop off mid print :(  which happened a fair amount especially on the Replicator 2x's heated print bed.  But hey cookie party achieved!


Tuesday, December 3, 2013

An Impromptu Christmas

Living in an apartment and traveling for the holidays, it didn't make sense to get a real tree so I decided to make one.  Weekend Challenge: no supplies runs, no prep work, using the materials currently in my house make a 3 dimensional Christmas Tree.  No problem!  1) Easel, 2) green fabric-ish stuff, 3) Construction Paper, 4) Penn State themed ribbon, 5) Buttons!    Done.