Tag Archives: 3d modeling

Genuine real Ahsoka Tano progress! I wasn’t sure if our oven would be reliable to bake my leather armour in. I wasn’t sure if the curves would flatten out while on the trays and I wasn’t sure it would be under 60C but over 50C to get the pieces steaming but not scalding.

But it worked! THe hip pieces are a little crisper than the gauntlets, they sand very well. But I don’t really want to try and soak the gauntlets again so there is going to just be a little extra edge seal to cure and sand back.

I can paint these today, though it looks like I interpreted the belt strap wrong, it has a single channel. This is fine as the belt more than anything scalded on the racks and then when it fell onto the oven floor.

My montral were not curing, the latex created an airtight seal, so I have then hanging fan heater height and gave them a few blasts to heat up the water and get that to evaporate. I sewed my Padme Light Blue skirt back seam and tidied the zip area, and even sewed most of my Jem dress on between 🙂

This is how I scaled my hilts. I knew they were much to flat to fit a working blade in the end. And that is still true. I did scale slightly to make them fit a 20mm tube (which is skinny enough for OT and Rebels era blades, the most common 25mm/1 inch) tubes are really good for prequel, TCW, and it looks like the new trilogy too.

I did check my machine. It is perfect for PLA but it’s not completely happy with ABS. I’d need to set up each time with a new adhesion layer (glue stick did help) and do one component at a time. And that was going to be a week of constant work. Not great for stress levels.

But my scaling made the hilts feel slightly oversized. It turns out I spotted other had this same conundrum of trying to fit a blade in. And so I tend to refer to my own hilts as FX style, after the MAster FX line of light up sabers.

Going by knuckle space it works, but my hand itself is much smaller. On my leg it feels right but I’ve rescaled to the dimensions I think look best and it’s printing now. I did also test and her hand fits four times over the body of the hilt but it looks smaller due to the size of her hands over all. So it’s probably best to aim for that effect in hand.

I’m doing Star Wars Reads tomorrow so sadly no Ahsoka, but I will have her ready for next week.

Okay. My health has started to go south again- fatigue combined with insomnia is making for a lot of unpleasantness!

but my early mornings are good!

So yesterday I cut my new Ahsoka tunic from a fabric that has a microfine crepe surface, like nylon stockings, which will create a slight glowy effect. I wanted to use my left over Padme Light Blue ans the surface would allow for some hand stitching that would not show. But there was not enough and the fabric store only had it in mustard yellow. To be fair I am thinking of grabbing it for some summer gear…

Anyway.

I spent half my nap stitching in bed to line up the super wibbly wobbly piece. I am fully lining the garment so I can have super smooth hems (bottom of tunic, neckline and halter seams.

It was actually still quite restfu;. So I know I can do that today with my Padme Light blue hem for a rest and progress. Normally that sort of thing is not restful.

Also I tested my printer and it’s great. I need to really be careful with ambient temp and so really do need to see if I can build some walls around it to keep the heat in. I was really lucky and got a model that seems really sturdy on the Y axis (a lot of people find them bent) with the bed (very slightly doming in the middle but was fixable with bed leveling) and while it rattles like the blazes homing on the y axis. I don’t have to make it home.

But I am still stuck with the issues in SketchUp. And that has everything to do with quads vs triangles. In SKU Circles are not circle. They have 12 or multiples of 12 edges. So My test emmiter looks very blocky on the end. I folllowed some online advice and used Blender to change faces to quads and to divide and set smooth to 0.50 (the guide recommended 3, but that is way too much given the flat faces of my model need to remain flat and they have radiating lines still.

Also the dome part of the emitter does subdivide nicely the rim does not due the radiating line thing. I think though increasing the number of vertices will at least help so that I can just sand those rings down a bit. The inside gets a bit messy anyone with or without build support.

Also, my printer did seem to do well with just glue stick for plate adhesion but hopefully by now my ABS juice is thick enough to brush on the plate.

But I am feeling that time crunch so I think I’ll do the blender stuff today and test another part.

Oh but blender won’t recognise STL exports from SketchUp but it does obj. But it does export as stl as well. So today is play tidy all the things also see if slic3r can work. I think I know how to fix the emitter issue, and make the outside curve a little better but not really able to avoid mangling the flat sides of the hilts.