3D printing new mallets and little hand card holders

This week I did a couple of quick projects this week that went from idea to finished product so fast that I forgot to take any pictures of the process or record anything while I was doing it. Literally from idea to reality in less than a day.

We are living in the future.

My daughter loves playing go fish. The problem is her little 5 year old hands are too small to hold the half the deck she usually ends up with. I've seen a device in the store that will let little hands hold a lot of cards, but those things are too expensive for daddy. But having a 3D printer nothing is impossible.

The first iteration of the design was a little too blocky. Maybe I was too stuck on it being FFFriendly, maybe I was too stuck on the grain of the print not hurting the cards. But it was mostly to test if the gap and flexibility of the part would hold cards. I printed it out and it did indeed hold cards, kinda.

The second iteration I closed the gap and used Blender's curve tool to focus the center to a round point. Then I cut off the edges so it'll still print successfully, and printed it out. And it worked... mostly. Good enough for a little girl, anyways.

Next, my son had a band concert. He's in precussion and plays the bells. He had somehow lost the top of one of his mallets and I suggested that I could print him a new one. I told him I had some flexable material and he said "but dad, it's made with hard plastic". "Oh, well what do you think I normally print with?" and his eyes widened in realization. but of course I didn't wand to just do boring old mallets. So I took my Spelunky designs, took some measurements, and whipped these out.

The important part of the design was having a rounded back, so the design had to be slightly modified, but it wasn't too bad. hopefully they won't be too much trouble to keep upright so that they strike the bells on the rounded part.

They were both printed with 5 shells and 60% infill, so they're practically solid. The skull was printed in ABS in 2 parts, acetone glued together, then vapor smoothed. The idol was printed in PLA in one part, sanded, and hit with a heat gun to melt it slightly. I'm curious if they'll have different sound qualities, but I suspect they're good enough for intermediate school. I wonder what his teacher will think of them. I suspect I kinda over achieved on this one, but it was a lot of fun and a good use of those Spelunky models I made a while back.