One of my favorite pastimes is to watch Youtube about 3D printers. At some point you get tired of reviews (especially if you have one and don’t want to lust over yet another one!) so you move onto prints and creators. One of my favorite creators is “3D Printy”. His designs are amazing and his videos are entertaining and tell you everything you need to know about the design and what you are getting into. Previously I had printed a “lockbox Pumpkin” and it was fun but took FOREVER to print so I only ever made two.
Recently he published a video about “3D Printed Snowman Fidget Toy” and it was fantastic as usual. I printed a few and the family thought the snowman was cute and wanted more. At first I just used Christmas colors, red and green, to make the hats and scarf. But then we (as in the family and I) wondered what a teal or pink one would look like. And then something wasn’t quite right . . . this is a snow “man” but what would a snow woman look like? I did a quick google search and it seemed the only real difference was the hat! So I got the hat STL, put it in TinkerCAD and shrunk it down and made the brim a bit wider. TADA! The bonnet was born. I posted my “makes” to Thingiverse and Prusa Printers and posted a picture on Thangs (since they don’t have makes). 3D Printy liked it and suggested I make a remix so I posted that too on Thingiverse and Prusa Printers (not on Thangs because makes and remixes are not a “thang” there).
I know that gender and identity are sensitive issues and I don’t mean to suggest that one hat or the other has to go with one gender or the other. I happen to think that biology is complicated and gender isn’t binary in the way we have traditionally treated it. So wear whatever hat you want in whatever color you want! We have all combinations! 🙂
New Tricks
I also thought it would be cool to try out switching the filament and printing the stripe on the hat in a different color. Generally speaking switching the filament is the 2rd worst thing there is about 3D printing (after fixing them when they break) and is one of the more difficult tasks to do. (Scraping the print off the bed used to be the most difficult followed by leveling but that’s gone away thanks to magnetic beds and auto leveling systems.) On the Prusa Mini along with Prusa Slicer it’s SOOO EASY to switch colors in the middle of a print I wish I would have tried earlier. Now I have a new 3D printing tool for when I think up designs.
And I get it . . . it’s not THAT difficult to change the filament even on other printers but it’s almost always when I end up having problems with my printers so I still avoid it and want to just keep printing the same thing till the filament is gone!
Making them Gifts! And the pictures!
The family loved them so much that we decided to give them out as gifts to some of the teachers and staff at Patterson Elementary. I wish we had time to make one for every teacher there! They most certainly deserve it. Here are all the ones we gave away.
