I have had my Bambu Lab A1 printer for a few months now and it has had a lot of use. I keep an eye out for things that could be useful. A while back I had a request from my friend 
A friend who is into warfare and models had a birthday, so I printed him the kit for this ship. That meant buying more filament as I needed at least three different colours. Actually the fourth was only for a tiny part, so I said he could paint that. He glued it all together with some parts clicking in so they can move.
For Christmas I thought I could provide some models for people to make, so I did these. The tiny Millennium Falcon is a clone of Lego parts. This is a challenge for the precision of the print, but it fitted together quite well.
A big thing in the 3D printing world is modular storage and organisation systems. You can just print off what you need. I did this previously with a 10" rack and some drawer organisers that use the Gridfinity standard.
Last week I saw this system that I thought could bring some order to my messy desk. I have an Ikea Jerker desk that was a wonderfully expandable system. I added various extra shelves to mine, but they do not make it any more. I have seen a few models that bolt onto it, but this one was a bit different.
On the MakerWorld site the designer has provided a tool to customise the parts. So you can make shelves to fit your space. I think this makes use of OpenSCAD that lets you design 3D objects by writing code. I definitely need to get into that, but the tool was much simpler in that you just had to input the required dimensions. I had a space under my monitor shelf and so used appropriate measurements to fit there. I made a shelf long enough for my Focusrite audio interface and printed a couple of drawers for the various bits I have lying around. My mixer had been tucked under there, but is more accessible on top. You may spot some little figured from a comic by 
A neat feature of these shelves is that there are based on the Ikea SKÅDIS pegboard. 3D printers have designed add-ons for that to hang just about anything you want. For now I just made a little tray for loose change and other small bits. I have space for other add-ons. I do not actually have much wall space in the study or I would do more with SKÅDIS.
I am getting more used to the tools you need for this. I had to load models into the Babu Studio app to line them up for printing.
I was aware that the filament the printer uses can have issues if exposed to moisture in the air as it can absorb it and this can lead to printing issues. People use various storage and drying systems to reduce those. My silver reel had been out on the printer for a while whilst we were away and I did notice that it seemed to be sticking a little and I had some little flaws in the print that do not really matter. I used up that reel on this stuff and you can see when I switched to black half-way through printing a drawer.
I had a rare failure when I tried to print a more lightweight shelf. It did not stick properly to the baseplate. That could be down to the damp filament, but also I have not cleaned the plate in a while. I am careful not to touch it as finger grease can be an issue. I stopped this print when I saw the problem.
These prints have all been with PLA, but I have some PETG that I want to try. This will be suitable for items that need to be more rugged and survive outside. I may line up a few so as not to need to keep the filament out too long. I may get a box I can seal it in with some desiccant crystals. I am just running out of space for everything.
Happy printing!
| The man behind: |  : Helping good Hivers level up
#BritList: A monthly list of Hivers in the UK |
