Saturday, March 16, 2019

Slide of the Month - Dragon 2

 March 2019

Time to make: 4 hours

Finishing: 2 hours

Thingiverse

Design:Zastro

Try it yourself






The Dragon 2 space capsule is designed and built by Space X (owned by Elon Musk). It carries a possible crew of seven and originally was planned for a vertical "propulsive landing". In July 2017, it was announced the "propulsive landing" project had been halted and the capsule would use traditional parachutes for the landings. If you follow the news, this week  (March  2nd - 8th, 2019)  mission SpX-DM1was a huge success for the Dragon 2 as it launched into space carrying "Ripley", docked with the international space station, and successfully splashed down.  If all goes as planned, the first manned mission will be in July 2019 marking the first time astronauts have gone into space in an American built spacecraft since the retirement of the Space Shuttle.


I really like the details of this model and it was a quick print on the Ultimaker 2. I used white spray primer on the slide and paint pens for the rest of the details. The lettering was done using water slide paper.

Friday, March 1, 2019

Slide of the Month - Checkerboard slide



 March 2018

Time to carve: 1 hour

Finishing: .5 hour

Boy's Life -November 1980, page 66

Design: Not named






Interesting fact there is a difference between a checkers or draughts around the world. In America we play checkers on a 8 x 8 square board with 12 pieces per side. The Canadian checkers are played on a 12x12 board with 30 pieces per side while the Thai and Slovak draughts are on a 8x8 board but only have 8 pieces per side.

An easy slide to make (in theory) as it is a checker board pattern glued to a piece of 1/8 in plywood board with checkers made from a small dowel. The checkers are painted with craft paints and glued onto the board with super glue. A wooden loop is glued to the back. The hard part of this slide is keeping the pieces stuck to the board because the checkers popped off very easily. (I should have used wood glue!) To finish off the slide I put a lot of heavy coats of Poly on the slide to help keep the checkers in place.