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.


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.

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:


