Wednesday 9 July 2014

I owe Steve a huge thank you…



Steve and his mate Simon decided to dabble in some 3D printing a while back when they had some time to kill – and at the time they couldn’t quite find a 3D printer that suited them, so they designed one and then promptly started producing them for sale. (Yip, Bright boys!)

Ever since then I feel like whenever I’ve bumped into Steve at either an MPP, a BBQ or at Peter’s place, he’s always just produced something new and he’s passing them around for folks to play with. Sometimes he’d let us give him a couple of quid for a copy, but often he just insists that you take a copy and refuses all offers of cash.

Some of them have been classic Stewart Coffin designs – latterly particularly ones that haven’t been produced much because they’re a pig to make accurately out of wood (no trouble if you’re 3D printing them!) and some have been prototypes of Steve’s own designs. (I love my psychedelic Peanut!)

A little while back Steve and I were talking about lithophanes that James Dalgety had introduced me to a year or three back. Lithophanes are wondrous etched or moulded works of art on semi-translucent surfaces (think thin porcelain) which display a picture when light shines through them… so you’re basically getting a grey-scale picture where the depth of the grey is determined by the depth of the material at any particular point. 

Look at them in ambient light and they’re not very interesting, but put a light source behind them and a picture emerges. Anyway, Steve had mentioned that he was fiddling around with them on his Threedy printers and the very next time I saw him he handed over a freshly printed lithophane of my ugly mug in full manic IPP Exchange mode – it’s taped to the window in my puzzle cave to intimidate everyone who comes in to play with the toys… not sure it’s working (the intimidating bit!), but it is a great little talking piece. 

Thanks Steve!






10 comments:

  1. Hey, is that this picture from the 2013 IPP in Tokyo? https://plus.google.com/u/1/photos/102382035298719827842/albums/5908286626004891585/5908286691979110290?e=-RedirectToSandbox&authkey=CL_xp7GIw82f9QE&pid=5908286691979110290&oid=102382035298719827842

    Very cool to see it immortalized in plastic!

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    1. Yip, that's your shot from Tokyo, Marc! (Not sure immortalised is the right term...:-) )

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  2. Allard, Thank you for the very kind words. Much appreciated! And thanks also to Marc for the original picture - it's really difficult to find pictures of Allard as he is nearly always behind the camera! Marc - drop me a line if you have a picture of yours you would like me to "Lithophane" for you ahead of IPP..(By the way I love the picture of my/Duncan's Pentapod puzzles that is in the same album you linked to - hadn't seen that one until now_...My printer's are desperately busy at the moment churning out puzzles for IPP. Counting the days.... Thanks again Allard! (I will have copies of at least one new puzzle for the next MPP/BBQ!)

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    1. It was a blast taking photos of Allard as his helper at IPP. I have a few more albums from that IPP as well. Let me know if you'd like to see them as well.

      Thanks for the offer to "print" up a photo. I'll also be at MPP so maybe there will be some good photo fodder from there that we could do...

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    2. Yep - just flicked through all the pictures in the Album - a great set of photos! It's been a few years since I've made it to an IPP (no excuse this year though) so really enjoy seeing the photo sets and blog posts that you and other's post. If there are more please point me in the right direction...Best email address for contact is Steve At Goffsoak dot Com name.

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    3. ...guess that would be canon-fodder, right Marc? :-) [Sorry, it's still early!!]

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    4. Shoot, Allard, I expected comments of a higher caliber than that... Well, there's still time before MPP so we'll just see what develops. And I so shudder to think which what execrable puns you'll top this...

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    5. [Bows down in the presence of genius]
      Pawliger 1 - Walker 0
      :-)
      (retires shamed!)

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  3. I just noticed the pun in "Threedy Printers". Shows you how far behind I am!

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    1. ...what matters most is that you got there in the end, George! ;-)

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