It Never Stops (and we wouldn't have it any other way)

Oh my damn. So many things to write about.

First of all Happy New Year! I've been slacking but it's been a busy couple of weeks!

LaserGnomes/Mind2Matter is all moved in to our new location in San Leandro with Type A Machines!

Rod, Justin and I!

I totally thought I had more pictures on my phone/camera but I've been so excited to just make things and get set up, I have been slacking on the photos!

I'll get some tomorrow of the nearly completed space.

I do have pictures of some of my projects. I want to test out scanning equipment on sculpture, so I have been working with Sculpture House Prima Plastilina Modeling Clay, Sulphur Free, Light Tan, 2 lb - 2 lb, which is an oil based clay that does not dry out. I've never worked with it before and was sort of worried about the "hardness" of it (I put off model making 1 forever and a day because of the thought of using it). When Justin used it for school, he was warming it in the oven to soften it and then you ran into the issue of it getting too hot and burning your hands.

Well, I discovered the wonders of the heat gun. I've used the heat gun for finishing PLA and doing some welding/shaping work in PLA, so I grabbed it to use on the plastilina. It works wonders! How a heat gun is NOT a part of your materials list for classes that require it is mystery to me!

I definitely needed a break from working with it today, as my hand and arm hurt a lot but Wintergreen Essential Oil. 10 ml. 100% Pure, Undiluted, Therapeutic Grade. has been a lifesaver when it comes to pain caused by over exertion. I have 20:80 dilution mixed up at all times (usually adding wintergreen oil to avocado oil or coconut oil as a carrier) and it works wonders. I even gave some to my mom for her horrible chronic foot pain and she said it helped really quickly.

I had a couple of kids request a fairy sculpture when I went to the Creative Learning Loft Christmas party, but it's turning out to be a bit more elfin than fairy. I'm not one for fairy princesses anyway :)

All I can say is this is a really exciting time and I'm so proud of my husband for keeping at 3D printing even when it was frustrating beyond belief. We had an idea of where we wanted to land, but weren't sure how we were going to get there.

We now have a wonderful creative space and are making money doing what we love. We can even take the Pi to work with us.

We will be having an open house/shop warming party in the near future. Keep an eye out for the info!

BTW - I haven't forgotten about the whole 3D modeling software trials. Between the move and holidays, it's been busy and in all honesty, it's faster for me to bust out the clay. I spent hours trying to figure out how to do fairy garden fence pieces using software and had doors in 3 sizes, a fence and part of an elfin creature done in an 8 hour day.

Made In Space!?

We went to a really great 3D printing meet up on Sunday (it's been a busy week with Mind-2-Matter and getting ready for finals next week, so I wasn't timely in blogging about it).

It was hosted by Type A Machines and 3DHubs, who just recently unlocked San Francisco.

3DHubs is another print on demand service that required a certain number of printers to sign up in an area prior to "unlocking" a city. We had been watching for months for San Francisco to be unlocked but have been steadily using MakeXYZ to grow our business.

We spent a bit of time networking and one of the featured speakers was Made in Space!

What's Made in Space you ask?

Basically they are a group that is working on the first 3D printer in space!

How rad is that idea?

I can't say we're working on anything as ground (or space) breaking as 3D printing in space, but Mind-2-Matter getting to be a REALLY exciting project.

I'm working on the photography tomorrow morning before we head out to Half Moon Bay.

I went through the entire casting process on Saturday from spruing to pouring the investment mold to pouring the pewter! Justin took some video so I will get that posted up tomorrow as well as the photos of Gnorman in various states of being.

Here are a few of Gnorman from my cell phone (the real pictures will happen tomorrow!).

Brain Rot 

I really wanted to keep a golden Gnorman, but he had to go through the polishing stages!

Mind-2-Matter

You may remember Gnorman from earlier this year.

This was my free sculpture for my figure modeling class during the Spring 2013 semester at AAU.

This may be the piece of work that I am the most proud of ever. EVER. (and I've made a lot of art in the last 30 years). Needless to say I was most saddened when I was too busy to properly finish Gnorman and have him fired (I went straight from work/school to wedding prep/work and he dried out!).

I had been crossing my fingers that we could get him scanned before he was a total loss since June/July. Our method of scanning wasn't the easiest but Justin and I worked through a variety of methods using Kinect cameras for another project and I figured that we would, at some point, rig that set up again.

Well, we didn't have to.


The Gnomes (thanks to the Elder Gnome) have acquired the Sense 3D Scanner.

A few minutes time and we had a model to print. I was so excited I could barely contain myself last night! The original Gnorman is 8" W x 13" D x 24" H. New Gnorman is about 1" W x 1.5" D x 4" H!

So exciting!  

And it was just in time. Gnorman's ear fell off after we finished scan!