Getting a Faux Wood Finish on 3D Printed Parts #3DThursday

I love doing faux finishes. That technique can come in handy when trying to make a piece of 3D printed plastic look like wood or stone or metal.

In this Off Earth video, Darrell shows how you can achieve a pretty realistic faux wood finish by using a mid-town brown spray paint and various shades of alcohol ink pens.

The Tooth Fairy’s Wand #3DThursday #3DPrinting

The Tooth Fairy s Wand by EvoCivic Thingiverse

Great wand for aiding in Tooth Fairy hijinks. From EvoCivic on Thingiverse:

The Tooth Fairy’s wand (in case your child tries to trap the fairy and steal her wand or asks her for one when a tooth falls out). Make sure the fairy leaves them a note saying that this is a copy and the magic doesn’t work for humans as only the Tooth Fairy can make her wand work.

It’ll easily print out in a couple of hours so can be made the night it’s needed if a tooth suddenly falls out.

Download the files and learn more


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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

New Guide: Make Your Own Cosplay Fireball Props with Motion Sensing

Cosplay Fireball

Check out the latest tutorial from Erin St. Blaine: make a magical floating fireball prop for your Cosplay character. A snap of the wrist makes the LED flames flare up brightly! This is a fun beginner project, with no soldering required. The code is done in Microsoft MakeCode, with a drag-and-drop code block editor, so it’s easy to change colors or animation triggers.

From the guide:

Complete your cosplay with this Magical Item: a floating fireball that flares up at your command. Whether you’re portraying Kael’thas Sunstrider from WoW or trading flaming shots with Super Mario and Luigi, this fireball will push your outfit over the top. This is a very easy project, with no soldering required. The Circuit Playground board makes motion-sensing programmable lights a snap. Customize your colors and your animation speed with Microsoft MakeCode’s drag-and-drop code editor. You’ll be stopped for so many photos that you’ll never make it to that panel discussion at DragonCon.

Full tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/cosplay-fireball-prop-with-motion-sensing/

3D Printing Mandalorian Helmets on a Small Printer #StarWars

In this I Like to Make Stuff video, Bob prints out and finishes two Mandalorian helmets, one for him and one for his son. Because he’s using small-bed printers, he had to print the helmet in sections.

Bob is a master at 3D print finishing and this video is a great class in things like using PETG filament (easier to sand), glazing putty, filler primer, and lots of priming coats and sanding. As you can see from the results, all of that time and effort pays off.

Reinvented Magazine Presents their Latest Maker Themed Issue!

Caeley Looney from Reinvented Magazine reached out to let us know all about their latest issue which features Erin St. Blaine, Adafruit tutorials and more!

Reinvented Magazine is proud to present its latest issue, and guess what? It’s maker themed! Issue No. 5, their most recent publication, features a wide variety of makers, innovators, and electronics aficionados. Here is a more in-depth look at the content you’ll find in this season’s magazine:

  • An exclusive interview with Svetlana from Kamui Cosplay, showing off her extraordinary maker-centric cosplay designs just in time for some Halloween inspiration;
  • A story highlighting the Maker Movement, including an exclusive interview with the founder of Maker Faire, Sherry Huss;
  • Their ‘Meet the Makers’ series featuring interviews with Julielynn Wong, MD; Maker and Nonprofit Founder, Xyla Foxlin; Ashley Awalt; Erin St. Blaine; and Lorraine Underwood;
    An interview with the Host of Mythbusters Jr., Allie Weber;
  • Articles providing an introduction to electronics, 3D printing, and hackathons;
    Do it yourself (DIY) article featuring one of Adafruit’s tutorials;

You can find all of this (and much more) in their latest issue, which is officially in stock on their website!

Order your digital or physical copy now at https://www.reinventedmagazine.com/shop-1!

Reinvented Magazine is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works to empower and inspire the next generation of young girls to pursue their passions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Through their One-for-One Program, for every magazine bought, they donate up to one magazine to a girl in a low-income or rural area without access to STEM education resources.

Casting a Mask in Resin #WearableWednesday #Cosplay

BioCosplay shows us how he casts a Mask in Resin on Youtube!

In this video I show you how I cast a mask using smooth cast 300

Website – biocosplay.net

Instagram – instagram.com/biocosplay

Check out his youtube channel!


Flora breadboard is Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

“Best of Adafruit” Photo & Video Series Day 50 #photography #art #design #wfh #bestofadafruit

“Best of Adafruit” Photo & Video Series Day 50 #photography #art #design #wfh #bestofadafruit


Throughout this week, the Adafruit photo team will be posting a “Best of Adafruit” photo each day!

Check in as we take you back to all of our favorite photos and videos.

For our day 50 post, here’s a throwback to one of our favorite wearables learn guides, Cyber Punk Spikes, made out of NinjaFlex 3D printing filament!

New Guide: Frozen-Inspired Temperature-Sensing Pendant

Elsa with her Gizmo

The latest tutorial from Erin St. Blaine will teach you how to make a Frozen II inspired pendant for your young maker friend (or for you and your own sweet style) featuring elemental images that change based on the temperature of the air. The TFT Gizmo inside the pendant will display a snowflake when it’s cold, a spinning leaf image when it’s warm, and a lovely purple flame when it’s hot. From the guide:

Discover your inner Snow Queen with this temperature sensing pendant. Invoke the elements of snow, air, and fire using your breath or body heat (or your Ice Queen Superpowers). The pendant will display a snowflake, a spinning leaf, or a lovely purple flame animation depending on the warmth of the air.

Inspired by the elemental spirits in Disney’s Frozen II movie, this pendant will be sure to inspire and excite any Queen Elsa fans, and add an element of magic to your cosplay or halloween costume.

This project uses Adafruit’s TFT Gizmo, a Circuit Playground Bluefruit, and a 3d printed case. There’s no soldering or coding involved — just a few screws to tighten, and a couple files to upload — so it’s a wonderful beginner project if you’re just starting out in the world of electronic cosplay, or if you have a young helper who’s getting interested in making stuff.

Check out the full tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System here: Frozen-Inspired Animated Temperature Sensing Pendant Guide

Adafruit’s Top Youtube Videos of the Decade #AdafruitTopTen #DecadeofAdafruit

Adafruit top of the decade blog

It was so fun looking back through the Adafruit Youtube videos of the last decade to compile this list! Lets start with the best – check out our top 1-10 youtube videos of the last decade below!


1.

All About Electroluminescent Materials – EL Wire, EL Tape, EL Panel! #Adafruit

Browse Adafruit’s extensive catalog of EL materials and supplies! http://www.adafruit.com/category/50

Get inspiration for your next EL project with the guides on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/category/el


2.

Guardian Robot – Zelda Breath of The Wild #3DPrinting #Adafruit

Since the last Guardian Robot project, we’ve gotten a number of requests to add a servo and LED to the head – In this project, we’ll show you how to do that!

Mounted to the eye is a 10mm blue LED. The head itself is attached to a servo horn and mounted to a micro servo. The head can freely rotate while the eye blink randomly. Surrounding the body are 5mm blue LEDs that illuminate the various surface details.

The random motion of the servo and eye blinks give the illusion of the robot “searching”. It’s appears quite organic and live like, adding much more dimension to this replica.


3.

Firewalker LED Sneakers

Light up your stride! Mod a pair of high-tops with NeoPixel strip and FLORA, Adafruit’s wearable electronics platform. Becky Stern and Phillip Burgess show you how to use a velostat step sensor in the heel to trigger firey animations as you walk! Build your own: https://learn.adafruit.com/firewalker-led-sneakers/


4.

We did a partial Furby teardown– check it out at the Adafruit Learning System! https://learn.adafruit.com/furby-2012-teardown


5.

Getting Started with the Fingerprint Sensor

Here’s a video guide to getting started with our fabulous fingerprint sensor! In addition to the detailed photo/software tutorial, we hope it’ll help you set up your sensor easily!

Buy one: http://www.adafruit.com/products/751
Full tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-optical-fingerprint-sensor


6.

Raspberry Pi Laptop with Atrix 4G Dock

We found this post in the Raspberry Pi forums and wanted to make a tutorial for this easy way to make a Raspberry Pi laptop using the Atrix 4G dock: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6747

Check out Adafruit’s many Raspberry Pi tutorials and accessories: http://adafruit.com/rasperrypi

More info on the cables and adapters used to make this project here:https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/09/10/cables-adapters-for-the-atrix-raspberry-pi-laptop/


7.

DIY Raspberry Pi Gameboy – 3D Printed #3DPrinting

https://learn.adafruit.com/pigrrl-raspberry-pi-gameboy
Celebrate the 25th anniversary of that classic gaming device by building your own with 3D printing and DIY electronics from adafruit.

The 3D printed enclosure will house all the components and you can print it in your favorite color.

Find out how to assemble and program this project by checking out the guide on the adafruit learning system.


8.

iPhone Light Mod

Add a light panel to illuminate the back of your iPhone!
Adafruit iPhone tools & accessories: http://www.adafruit.com/category/111


9. (personal fave)

Collin’s Lab: Soldering
Learn the basics of soldering from Collin Cunningham!


10.

Introducing NeoPixels by Adafruit!
http://www.adafruit.com/neopixel

Adding colorful LEDs to your project used to require a lot of pins on your microcontroller and complex code. With the Adafruit NeoPixels, those problems are a thing of the past. You only need one pin on any microcontroller to run a long string of pixels, and with our open source NeoPixel library, you can get your NeoPixels up and running in seconds.

Not only are NeoPixels easy to use, but they come in a wide variety of designs to fit your project. You can get NeoPixels in sewable form, long waterproof strips, in a ring, on an Arduino shield, on a stick, breadboard friendly and much more! Learn everything there is to know about Adafruit NeoPixels and how easy it is to use them on the Adafruit Learning System.