When Spiders Attack

My daughter built a snap-together Gundam model with nice ball joints for the legs and neck. That made me wonder if I could make useable ball joints on the 3D printer. I modeled one up and pritned it. It worked pretty good. If one works, why not 17? That's the beauty of drawing then printing – copy and paste is a wonderful thing. Thus was born the spider model.




The spider is crawling on my 1:20.3 model of the Carter Brothers Hobart Estates caboose. Maybe I'll post it separatley one day. The poseable legs help make it look like it's crawling. Pretty creepy in person, actually

I modeled the body and joints in TurboCAD Pro on the Mac. I modeled the head and leg segments in CB Model Pro, then imported the STL to TurboCAD and added balls and sockets. The sockets are subtracted from the body solid. I did not bother to actually add the balls and sockets to the imported STL parts, as that crushes TurboCAD. It's no problem though, TurbCAD creates STL files from the superimposed mesh-solid hybrids.



This is the ball joint by itself

Welcome to John the Tinker's Blog.

Why "the tinker"? Well, I've become a bit of a Vernor Vinge fan. In "The Peace War" he calls people who make tech gadgets and software for hire "tinkers." That's what I do too. I like to make stuff, both for money and for fun. This blog will be my place to share pictures and descriptions of things I've created. I'll also include how-to information for some of the projects.

You'll see some software, but mostly models of trains, remote controls airplanes, boats, and cars. Also, I have a 3D printer (FDM, prints in ABS plastic) I have been experimenting with, so you'll see some parts from that.

I hope you enjoy it, please comment at will.