{"id":358,"date":"2015-11-06T22:46:04","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T22:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/?p=358"},"modified":"2015-11-09T15:45:53","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T15:45:53","slug":"tabletop-frame-holder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/?p=358","title":{"rendered":"Tabletop Frame Holder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Concept:<\/h2>\n

My wife and her mother are working on a project to put 5 x 7 inch\u00a0pictures in a wooden frame, and they thought it would be a nice touch to have a frame holder to display the picture on the tabletop.\u00a0 My thought, of course, was to 3D print one for each frame, perhaps in different colors.<\/p>\n

When I asked my mother in law what colors she wanted, she asked, “Can we do it in clear<\/em>?”<\/p>\n

I’ve recently been learning about making molds and casts at the Phoenix office of Reynolds Advanced Materials<\/a>, and so I decided to give clear frame holders<\/em> a try. Here’s the concept drawing:<\/p>\n

\"FrameHolder1\"<\/a>So I developed a basic plan, based on the following steps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Design and print a 3D frame holder, using FreeCAD for design, and Slic3r and Printerface for pushing the file down to my Lulzbot TAZ 4<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. After manually shaping the part a little, make a “negative” mold using any available mold material.<\/li>\n
  3. Cast a plaster “positive” from the mold.\u00a0 Refine the plaster cast with some sanding as needed.<\/li>\n
  4. Make a negative mold from the plaster cast, using some material suitable for multiple casts of the final item. (After all, I’m on the hook for four frame holders!)<\/li>\n
  5. Cast into the fine-tuned mold, using epoxy resin, which comes out clear.\u00a0 Smoothness will depend on how smooth the plaster cast turns out.\u00a0 Some buffing will surely be required.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Step 1 – 3D Model<\/h1>\n

    So the picture you see above – with the frame inside the holder – is a screenshot from within the FreeCAD design tool.<\/p>\n

    Essentially, there’s a thin (2mm) horizontal base on the back, to keep the holder and frame from tipping over backward.\u00a0 The side “grips” each have a slot to allow the frame plenty of room to be lowered into the holder without damage, but not so much slack that it will fall out of the back.<\/p>\n

    There were a few rough spots on the 3D print which needed some additional work.\u00a0 I used a little clay to shape some edges by hand, and a Dremel tool to smooth down some rough spots.<\/p>\n

    Once I had the 3D print prepped, I inserted the frame to ensure a good fit.<\/p>\n

    Step 2 – First Mold<\/h1>\n

    With the 3D printed holder ready, I prepared Alga-Safe.<\/p>\n

    I’ll be adding more to this shortly… stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Concept: My wife and her mother are working on a project to put 5 x 7 inch\u00a0pictures in a wooden frame, and they thought it would be a nice touch to have a frame holder to display the picture on the tabletop.\u00a0 My thought, of course, was to 3D print one for each frame, perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-frame-holder"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3d.rayharwood.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/FrameHolder2.gif?fit=905%2C343","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p76pQa-5M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3d.rayharwood.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}