clockspring3D

Phantom Cavalcade Vase

This ghostly vase mode print ends up surprisingly rigid and robust as far as these things go! Presumably, that's because all that detail ends up adding plenty of extra material, and because all those indentations and protrusions effectively brace the form against movement in pretty much every direction :)

As usual with complex vase mode prints all the work was in identifying all the tiny ...

The Little Mummy

Hi hi, wonderful people!

This little mummy can conveniently store any number of things in its capacious noggin, and also has a choice of stylish hats with which to accessorise!

What really inspired me to follow this path was partly to make adorable big-eyed mummies, but also just to work out how to represent stylised bandages effectively. The tricky bit is having layers go over eac...

Mechano-Bat Box

Howdy, wonderful people!

Bats usually hang upside-down, rather than standing up, but maybe they would stand more if they had big, chunky boots like this bat does!

Another significant difference between this bat and regular ones is the number of intermeshed gears it possesses. The wings and neck drive each other so that raising the head opens the wings and provides access to the con...

Pocket Radio Box

Howdy, wonderful people!

While multimaterial printers are getting more accessible all the time it's still very satisfying to work out how to achieve a multi-colour print with just a regular normal printer. And for that there are two primary techniques: post-print-assemblies and filament changes by layer.

This cheerfully-retro-styled radio box has both those techniques at play! 2025-10-29 17:03:25 +0000 UTC View Post

Magnetic Frame Pods

Ahoy-hoy, wonderful people!

Sometimes when ideas spring to mind they aren't so much visual as tactile. And this one is an excellent example of that! What I had pictured (figuratively speaking) was a series of components held in place by magnets, but free to move as a series of objects when pushed. I figured there would be initial resistance to the motion, but once we slip past the magn...

Flexionoid Articulated Lamp

Ah, hinges! This model may be a lamp, but it's secretly an excuse to explore elaborate hinges with in-built locking and adjustment mechanisms!

Yep, those vertically-printing hinges include a lever to unlock the hinge and allow it to move freely, until the lever is released and a locking pin slots into place, keeping the two parts of the hinge fixed together. The best bit about this me...

Cinnamon Secrets

Hi hi, wonderful people!

Yes, it's time for more questionable food choices in printed form! Depending on where you are in the world, these might be cinnamon rolls or cinnamon scrolls, but either way these Cinnamon Secrets are designed to cleverly hide your valuable cylindrical items.

It might be surprising to hear that the toughest decision in this design was how exactly it would o...

Ribbon Basket

Hey there, wonderful people!

Is it still papercraft if it's made of printed plastic? Probably not :P But I do love taking those papercraft ideas and bringing them into the printing space.

Originally, this design was all about using decorative strips to give the suggestion of weaving, but that led to actual weaving. Now these box walls are comprised solely of thin printed strips...

Surface Orb (vase and regular modes!)

Hey hey, wonderful people!

I'm a sucker for making colourful prints with basic techniques like filament swaps! But this model uses a somewhat different approach to taking advantage of that - the bottom layer has flexible extensions that are folded up and slotted into the walls of the container above it!

The bottom layer is modelled with a set of a 0.2mm thick features radiating out...

Counterfold Case

Howdy, wonderful people!

Why have one hinge on a lid when you can have six, right?!

Some years ago I played around with different approaches to a geometric mechanical model known broadly as a kaleidocycle, where a set of rigid elements connected by normal, single-axis hinges was able to endlessly turn inside-out. Such a fascinating mechanism, and I had long wondered if it would b...

The Scanline Classic (for EL wire!)

Ahoy-hoy, wonderful people!

Yes, it's an old-timey TV that incorporates EL wire to give that classic cathode ray scan line feel! And it's another print made up of a multitude of parts :D

You'll notice that the EL wire is wrapped around a caddy that keeps thing nice and neat! It's really just a shape that fits behind the curved glass panel and which incorporates channels for 2.3mm...

Echoform Vase

Hi there, wonderful people!

Some concepts just refuse to let go until they turn into some kind of reality, and this is one of those. I was contemplating some kind of classic vase design, but with things arranged around it that seemingly contravened the basic laws of vase mode printing, and that turned into "what if there were two vases!", and apparently some walls as well.

Quilted Case

Howdy, wonderful people!

Yes, it's a padded, fabric-covered, 3D printed box! I had modelled hard plastic versions of upholstered things before, so it's a logical progression to actually add padding and fabric, right?!

Let's have a look at how this is constructed. The panels on the box are...

Resistor Boxes

Hi there, wonderful people!

As you well know, I love closure and latching mechanisms! I've been exploring what are effectively printed springs lately, and it occurred to me that I could use a sprung stopper as a means of keeping something firmly closed.

In the photos you'll see there's a w...

Blacksmith's Pail (no multimaterial required!)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Multimaterial printing is great, but it really does have some downsides. Excessive extra print time and unreasonable material waste are realities that make us question whether the benefits are worth it. But contrast that with simple filament swaps at specific layers - in that case there's no waste and no time overhead. The downside, though, is that everything on a...

Hex Tile Tub for Ikea Pegboards

Howdy, wonderful people!

Pegboards are such useful things, but I noticed a distinct lack of hexagonal tubs that could be tiled across them and had to set out to fix that!

As you probably noticed from the title and the photos, we're specifically talking about Ikea Skadis pegboards here, which have tremendous advantages when it comes to printed attachment hardware, and for which ther...

Videotape Vault (and fancy slip cases!)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Some might say that VHS tapes are distant enough in the past now to be cool again, but I say they never stopped being cool to begin with! While those magnetic tapes may have faded from relevance for media distribution they remain an unmistakable icon of the cultural landscape. So, it seems obvious that life would be improved if we could adapt that retro styling an...

Scrollform Cylinder

Howdy, wonderful people!

Well, where do I start on this one?! As you've no doubt already noticed, it's a busy, detailed looking thing, and that was ultimately the point of it. I wanted a design that could use filament swapping to create graphic shapes, and thus get a complicated multimaterial look without any more complexity than a simple change of filament during the print. Well, several...

Spiral Sovereign Crown

Howdy, wonderful people!

Crown yourself monarch of wherever you happen to be with this convenient vase mode print! Yep, this was another challenge to myself to see if I could strictly abide by the rules of vase mode design but still design something evocative of regal headwear.

Now, you'll ...

Secret Spray Stash

Hi hi, wonderful people!

I've mentioned many times how much I love finding the little things that give something its identity, and make it immediately recognisable as itself. And this time that has been applied to aerosol cans! It turns out there are standards for the shape of these things, so it wasn't exactly a huge shock when getting the angles and dimensions right made the can look qu...

Extraplanetary Geared Stand

Hey there, wonderful people!

Planetary gears are just the best! As a fan of making things overly complicated, it's hard to find a mechanism that looks more cool and mechanical than that. And the Planetary Phone Stand was always a favourite design, but it certainly has limitations. Most obviously, in the years since that was designed, phones have become much, much larger! But there are oth...

Springlatch Box

Howdy, wonderful people!

I do love a nice latching mechanism! I could never get tired of exploring different ways to keep lids closed! But a big part of the appeal isn't so much the effectiveness of the latch (they're all generally pretty good, after all) but the tactile experience of closing and opening the thing. This one has a nice, satisfying click when the latch snaps into place, and...

Disengagement Canister

Howdy, wonderful people!

There's something so satisfying about twist-locking containers, whether it's a fancy magnetic latch setup or a traditional screw thread. However, there's also something quite nice about containers where the lid remains attached when the thing is open, and those two concepts don't mesh together easily. Of course, I've put some together in the past, where a twist-lo...

Pennant Column Vase

The elements of a design that give something it's something-ness... it's identity that makes it recognisable as the thing that it is... is something that is a constant point of interest when putting together designs that are supposed to give the impression of something, and this time I was contemplating things that ripple in the breeze.

However, I was also contemplating the constraints of...

Articulated Bucket Loader

Chunky print-in-place wheels are fun! But that's not what drove (har har) this model - it was, as you probably guessed, the bucket. The wheel part is trivial in the scheme of things, but keeping the bucket viably printable without it being high risk of unbalancing and coming off the bed was most certainly a challenge!

2025-03-03 08:21:51 +0000 UTC View Post

Scaffold Tub

Ah, I do love a nice industrial motif, and what is more industrial than big, exposed threads? This oversized tub rests on three hinged tripodian struts, and the aforementioned screw threads serve to extend those struts for extra coolness points. You can also just extend two of the struts and fold the shorter leg inwards in for a more... dynamic appearance!

2025-03-03 08:21:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Triple Axis Augmented Crate

Hi, wonderful people!

Yay, complicated motion! Why have one hinge point for a lid when you can have three, right?! But seriously, this ridiculously complicated motion structure does achieve something significant - it allow the lid to pivot over the back of the box and end up flat against the back, vertically. And more importantly it's mesmerising!

2025-03-03 08:21:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Skull Tessellation Box

Hi, wonderful people!

I do love a good tessellation! Here we have a set of expressive skull boxes that neatly fit into each other to efficiently tile two-dimensional space!

It won't surprise you to know that the vast majority of the time on this project went into working out how to shape a stylised skull form so that it would tile a plane, and then tweaking it so that it had the rig...

Hidey-Hole Doorstop (for TPU or similar)

Sometimes 3D printing can actually be quite practical! I needed a couple of door stops, the rubbery sort that you often find on doors that open into a tiled wall. I could perhaps have gone to a local hardware store, but I did have some TPU lying around, and I had already got caught up with the idea that perhaps you could store very small valuables in a fiendishly clever doorstop design!

I...

Torus Weave Tub (vase mode!)

Ahoy-hoy, vase mode fans!

I was, of course, trying to design something entirely different when I got the inspiration for this one. That is often how it goes, but it's invariably a good idea to run with it and see where it might lead!

I had been making a bowl design that did share an element with this tub - curvy elements that emerge from and disappear into each other. But I shifted ...