Snakey photostand
Snakey photostand
Published 2019-11-12T19:21:23+00:00
This is a snakey photostand. It is inspired by the story of "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
In the iconic drawing from the book, the snake reaches its head towards the little prince before slivering away.
Somehow I always liked this picture and took this opportunity to make something of it.
This model consists of a base (flat bottom - very easy to print) that culminates in long, straight "neck" with a head. In the "mouth" of this snake you can place a picture. Thicker paper i.e. glossy photographic paper works best, but you can also use thinner paper. The picture holds snug and secure through special geometry in the "mouth" that creates a little bit of tension in the paper. But do not worry, it will not damage your photos.
In the pictures, this part is yellow. You can either print it with or without eyes.
The other part is a black inlay for the base. This way, I believe, it looks very much like the drawing in the books. I printed it black. You can attach it with glue or just put it in place and let gravity do its thing.
Lastly, if you have printed the basic body with holes for the eyes, you can print a set of eyes. However, this is a very difficult print (see printing details). My advice: try to print the eyes first. If you are successful, print the basic body with holes for the eyes.
With a bit of force, they could be snap-in-place, but it is better to use a tiny droplet of glue to attach them.
This project was very challenging for me. I usually do not design ornamental models. I am using a parametric modeling software (FreeCAD), so I had to get very creative with designing this piece. I enjoyed the process and learned quite a bit.
I do not use social media, but wanted to share my model with this community anyway.
Hopefully, this will make a nice addition for your place.
base (yellow in the pictures):
I printed with 0,15mm layer height, 50 mm/s print speed, 25% infill and 1,2mm thick walls. Vertically challenged printers might need adjusting for this part.
Inlay (black in pictures):
I printed with 0,15mm layer height and 30 mm/s print speed. Infill does not matter as long as you make the walls thick enough. It is so thin that it is practically printed solid.
Eyes (black in the picture):
This is a rather challenging print. I printed it with 10 mm/s (still too fast) and 0,1mm layer height. Just use the finest and slowest settings your printer can muster. A little tip: disable retraction or decrease it to a minimum. Or use SLA/DLP printers.
In my case the sum of all materials was less than 35g (PLA).
Date published | 12/11/2019 |
Support Free | YES |