Robots going into battle: They are carrying swords and come flooding out of the belley, down a ramp of a huge robot-behemoth who is holding out its arm like an order to attack. The background is in red and orange as if on fire.
January 10th 2025

Klebewal

In autumn last year, I bought a 3d printer: the Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra, so I'm printing all kinds of things now. When my sister secretly confided that she wanted a tape dispenser for Christmas, I decided that I'd make a custom one for her.

Screenshot of the model in Fusion 360 Blueprint with front and side views

For the design, I noticed that tape dispensers somewhat look like whales and decided to make that explicit in my design. I spent an entire afternoon designing it in Fusion 360 and sent it to the printer. These days I am using "Siraya Tech Build" resin for everyting, because I bought two liters of it.

Here you see me with the freshly printed 'Klebewal', wearing scary-looking protective gear. I am giving a 'thumbs up' (the thumb looks weird, but this is no AI generated, I assure you). The objects on the buildplate are still wet and riddled with support structures.

Only after printing it, I noticed a couple of flaws in the design, most importantly: The tape roll was attached to ball bearings and friction was so low, that the whole tape roll would slip upward and out when you pulled the tape. In a subsequent print, I made the ball bearings fit inside of the tape-roll. They are now attached to "rails" that keep the tape roll in place. An easy fix.

As you can see in the blueprint (side view), there is a box shaped opening in the bottom of the whale. This is meant to house some weight. I bought a few bags of lead from the hardware store (they also sell fishing gear at "Hellweg" for some reason). I melted the lead with a candle and a hot air gun in a tin and poured it into a plaster cast. In hindsight this was probably rather dangerous; If I were to do it again, I should invest in a proper gas burner and a steel crucible with a handle. But it worked just fine and the resulting lead block fit perfectly.

Finally, I spray painted the whale with primer followed by two coats of black paint and I added the distinctive white spots that orcas have.

I also cut a piece of felt to fit the bottom of the whale and glued it in place with a hot glue gun.

I'm pretty happy with the result and though one could argue that the amount of work that went into this project is seriously out of proportion for a measly tape dispenser, I had a lot of fun doing it. Also I am amazed how a 3d Software and -printer enables me to turn practically any idea into a physical object.

Here are some pictures of the finished product:

photos of the finished orca whale shaped tape dispenser photos of the finished orca whale shaped tape dispenser photos of the finished orca whale shaped tape dispenser
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