As a Christmas present to myself, I picked up a new 3D printer. The old MakerBot Replicator — so old it’s wooden-framed — has been getting long in the tooth. Its reliability wasn’t outstanding to begin with, but has sunk even further over the years. The year has been good to me, so I decided to treat myself to an Ultimaker S5, which showed up a few days ago. My basement maker lab has graduated up to a new level of fancy.
The first things I printed were boring little calibration cubes. The first interesting things I printed were my Octocats and Octogoats. (Can you believe the Octocat design is 7 years old?!) But the first thing I designed and printed specifically for the capabilities of this printer — a large build area and water-soluble support material — was an electric toothbrush stand that looks like a cross between a Dalek and the Viking Mars lander.
“This electric toothbrush stand has a design that’s partially inspired by the Daleks of Doctor Who and partially by the Viking Mars Lander. The specific toothbrush I designed it around has a diameter of 27mm, but the stand should accommodate anything from about 25 – 30mm. [And if you happen to know OpenSCAD, you can adjust
cutout_diameterfor your specific needs.] The stand itself does not have a charging pass-through since this particular toothbrush takes a AA battery.”
Overall, I’m happy with the new printer and look forward to the cool things I have planned.
