Anoth­er rea­son to love and sup­port the pub­lic library <3

I got this 3‑D print­ed at the Toron­to Ref­er­ence Library! :D If you live in Toron­to, the 3D print­ers are also avail­able at the Fort York branch and the Scar­bor­ough Civic Cen­tre branch.

Back in Feb­ru­ary I was feel­ing real­ly blah and stressed out at work. So I decid­ed to sign up for a course that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with my job, which was the 3D print­ing cer­tifi­cate class at the library. Once peo­ple com­plete the class, they can book the 3D print­ers to use when­ev­er they’re avail­able. They charge a very rea­son­able 5 cents per minute for the use of the print­er, and that was all. One can choose from many colours of plas­tic, and staff is there to help if any­one needs tech­ni­cal support.

I once saw some­one wear­ing a 3D print­ed bracelet and I was real­ly impressed, so I’ve always want­ed to make one. But of course I have not idea how to design one! So I down­loaded one I liked best from Thin­gi­verse, called the Sub­di­vi­sion Bracelet.

I must be hon­est that, after 3 months, I don’t remem­ber much from the cer­tifi­cate course so I had no clue what to do after down­load­ing the file. Kind of embar­rass­ing. Good thing Mike was there as well and he’s very techy. And the library staff were very cool with drop­ping us hints and reminders as we appeared to be clue­less­ly flip­ping through our notes try­ing to fig­ure out what the next steps are and all the set­tings we should be adjusting.

Our first try did­n’t go so well. For some unknown rea­son the print­er stopped work­ing prop­er­ly. Not only did the kind library staff not charge me for the failed piece, they offered to try print­ing anoth­er for me the next morn­ing on a dif­fer­ent machine, and I’d just have to go and pick it up!

I think the staff were also want­i­ng to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test out an intri­cate project on a new machine, but I thought they were super kind to offer!

And it worked! It took just over 2 hours to print and costs about $8. Here’s a dif­fer­ent side of it.

I under­stand the 3D print­er as kind of like a very pre­cise auto­mat­ed glue gun, which squeezes out thin lines of hot melt­ed glue to build a form. You can see the lines of glue pret­ty clear­ly in the pic­ture above, and under the super macro lens.

And this is how it looks on an arm :)

The sur­faces are less smooth than I imag­ined, I think it can be improved by sand­ing, but I think I might be too lazy to do that :S I’m OK with the way it is.

I’m think­ing of going back to make some Christ­mas gifts this year :D

Have a love­ly week­end, everyone!