Sci-Fi Mobile

Published: Oct 22, 2022 by K. E. Claytor

I recently took training for the 3D printers at my makerspace. As a first project I found these neat “kit-cards” on Thingiverse, a great resource for 3D print ideas. These reminded me of the model airplane kits I used to build as a kid and the hours of fun I had there. After printing them out and assembling them with kiddo, I thought they would look good in a mobile. So I put together a quick laser-cut arc template and assembled them into a mobile.

Assembled mobile turning around

They were also great test pieces for the 3D printer. Using these I was able to test the different (raft/brim) adhesion options, adhesion material (I preferred the PLA, as it snapped off cleanly and could be soaked in water to remove the rest), and fill percentage.

The arc lengths on the mobile are all the same length, so I had to balance it to the models’ weights. Here’s the weight balancing diagram:

            Cylon = 6g      Viper = 5g
EnterpriseD = 8g                Tie Fighter = 11g
        Enterprise A = 3g   XWing = 5g

Link to my laser-cut arc template (SVG):

Arc template

Links to the ship models:

I was interested in temperature, humidity monitoring around the house to see if there were any trends, or if the basement was getting too humid. In particular, looking for a low-effort way to get data into a dashboard, I was eager to try out the AdafruitIO framework. They limit you to two managed whippersnapper devices (but you can have more using your IO key), and 10 feeds (this is the real limiter, with each stream of data being one feed).

After the success of the last Netrunner laser-cut ID’s I thought I would do another set for East Coast Nationals 2023. This was right before Smoke (one of my favorite runners) was going to rotate, and The Outfit was doing super strong, so I had an easy time deciding what to do.

I’ve been using the laser cutter/engraver to generate some Netrunner identities for some time, and finally got some that look really good.