I received, for Father's Day, a new Creality Ender3 3d printer. I am under absolutely no illusions that this was a gift for the family as much as it was for me, but that notwithstanding, it's in my work area and I'm claiming it as my own.
Putting it together was boring, and I won't bore anyone with the details. It now has an auto-leveling attachment, pronterface was installed and connected and, of course, a number of filament colours were obtained. Other attachments will follow but, honestly, people just want to see what uses the printer is put to. "What did you actually print?"
Well, the absolute first thing I printed was this cat from a model that came with the printer. Meow.
The very next thing was a miniature for a DnD session: a Dragonborn Bagpipe Playing Bard.
I am 100% confident that there are going to be possibly hundreds of miniatures in my future.
Now, I am as much a sucker for toys and gadgets as anyone else, but I actually am looking forward to the printer for some actual utilitarian purposes, too; for instance, I like to create new games, and this can be used for helping me prototype (so learning Blender will be in my future, too). It can print tools. Cases for raspberry pi's. And... cameras.
Yes, I found a set of instructions for 3d printing a pinhole camera: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1724928
I wish I was this talented. I am not. But I can follow directions and, after a couple days (because there are a number of parts, the printer is slow, and I need to occasionally sleep), I ended up with a drawer full of parts:
These parts, when combined, do in fact make a pinhole camera, complete with film winders. Looking down the top of the camera body we see the compartments for the film as well as the box for the light:
There is even a hole to show the picture number:
And if that isn't enough, there is even a hole on the bottom of the camera to attach to a tripod:
Seriously, this dude has thought of everything. It is not even difficult to piece together. After spreading the pieces out it's easy to identify what is what. The top pieces:
The film winders:
And the top pieces and winders snapped together:
Put it all together and the camera looks like... well... a camera!
Looking at the front, though, there's just a hole for the light to pass through, and a very large hole at that. I'll need to cut out a piece of aluminum from a can, drill a tiny hole, and fit it in there. I can understand why a hole as tiny as is needed would not be printed; it's just too fine. But there is, however, a shutter release. It's a small rectangular piece that fits into the middle and can be moved up and down. This dude thought of everything.
I'm really looking forward to getting some film and testing this bad boy out. In the meantime, I encourage anyone who is intrigued by such a thing to follow the link above and tip the designer of the model; he's done a superb job.
As for me, my next print is going to be a red dragon.