the stuff dreams are made of

I recently got a Makerbot 3D printer, and I’ve been having a whole lot of fun using it to make silly things.

Last night, though, I made my first legitimately beautiful object: The Maltese Falcon.

It took about seven hours to make, and these pictures show it inside my Replicator 2 (yes, I have a Replicator in my office. No, it does not make Tea, Earl Grey, Hot … yet), after I cleaned off the supports and took it off the raft.

It turns out the supports were very important. Here’s what happened when I tried to print it without the supports:

Oops.

For those of you who are interested in specs, I did this with 5% infill, 3 shells, on high resolution.

And for those of you who are interested in all the stuff I’ve made so far, here’s most of my collection:

All these pictures, except the Maltese Failure, can be embiggened by clicking on them.