Size Does Matter

Today my younger son Russell (4) decreed that the Cube should print him a dinosaur. He knew what kind of a dinosaur he wanted, but had a tough time explaining it to me. So I sat him on my lap and pointed my browser to Google Warehouse, where I was pretty sure we would find something he liked. A search for “dinosaur” gave us more than 600 results. As we sifted through the content, he kept on saying “No, not this one” until we finally arrived at this one and he literally ejected off my lap screaming, “This one!!”

I tried to explain to him that the Cube would print it completely in neon green and there wouldn’t be any other color. But he kept screaming “This one! This one!” So I downloaded the SketchUp SKP file. However the Cube Client software doesn’t read SKP files. But then I’m the bloke who wrote a STL exporter for the free SketchUp, right? 😉

I imported the STL file into the Cube Client software.

Click to enlarge

I was taken aback when Russell said to me, “No, not so big“. Usually when it comes to toys, the bigger the better, right? I played along and scaled down the model until it was about an inch wide. “Yes!“, Russell exclaimed, now shaking with excitement, “Now I can hold him when I sleep“. Which  explained everything.

The dinosaur took around an hour to print and Russell stood by the Cube almost the entire time watching it build his dinosaur one layer at a time. The result was this.

My fat fingers had a tough time cleaning out the raft and supports. But eventually I ended up with this.

And true to his word Russell had his Sunday afternoon siesta with his new found friend.