Candice's 3D Design

In my midterm I set up a goal to build a hamster house using 3D printing and crafting skill. I love to pet hamster because they are so cute and tiny. My inspiration came from LEGO and other toys that I love to build since my childhood. The original thought of making this was just that my hamster cage at home was very dull and small because I prefer not to buy the expensive one. As I would feel the same success as I would do for my other handcrafts like cross-stitching, I decided to make one with my own design in the spirit of my 3D design course. Although my whole set of house never finished due to missing part, my passion will continue once all finals are done so I can have time to finish the handmade items.

The biggest accomplishment I have in this project is the feeling of assessing my design and make improvement. Good changes are essential in very process of growing up. So as my design power. Especially through learning 3D printing technology, the possibilities is more and I can dream bigger. This is very important to me because I feel interested along the reading and lecture in class. I only can do things well and happily with passion when I have interests in them. Considering most of the college required courses aren’t in my interest, this is vital to my goal in college.

The community of hamster lovers has been enlarged these days when people have easier access to share their cute pets to other, that is, in the internet. I regularly post picture or video of my hamsters and their inhabitant on Facebook. I also share them to my friend as some of them are also hamster lovers. The whole environment for building house is small due to limited resources but I hope my project can bring some insights to my friend and every viewers online.

Next thing I will do is to finish my project and take some nice pictures then I will share it online and to my friend using my phone. After this project, I have been thinking about making other themes of hamster houses such as modern apartment and farm life style and try to show them to hamster lovers.

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Dec.15 – Assemble the kit.

This week I put all the items into my cage with necessary decorations. Up to this point, I still need the hand-make items to finish my kit. Since I have no time due to my full time job. I will need to wait until the finals are finished to make the missing items listed on November 23^rd.

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Dec. 08 – Final check on the finished items

This week I will check on my finished item to see if it needs improvement. Also, I will need to wait for the shipment of shapeways.

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Dec.01 – Cost Comparison

This week I go on shapeways.com and consult them with estimated cost will it be for my kit. As it turns out, using 3D printer will have about couple dollars more expensive than making on my own using raw material. But 3D printing is necessary to make a greater details on certain plastic object. So I will give them the picture of plastic object that I want to print out. And for wooden object, I will shop for some material at the art store to make one on my own.

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Nov. 25 – Final decision on the hamster house I want to make.

After two weeks of imaginative process, I have come to a somewhat affirmative blueprint of the hamster house I want to make. It would be a forest environment. It would have mostly green plants and wooden house with cream-colored wood bedding. ( to light up a bit so it won’t be too “dawn”) Main Objects in the kit are a set of green plastic tunnels that shape like pipes circling around the edge ( plastic for visibility, so that I can actually see they playing inside) , a trunk-like wooden house, a plastic wheel (for the problem of noise and visibility), a storage house ( so far no significant details about this), and couple wood ladder. The kit is about 2/3 meter in length, 1/3 meter in width and 1/3 meter in height. There would be two layers that look like the one in the picture above.

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Nov. 18 – Brainstorming, look for examples on the internet.

This week is all about searching the internet since it is the biggest communication tool now days. I take a look on couple images and some comments. The links above are some of my favorites and I would like to build my hamster house using some of the elements in them.

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Nov.11 – Seeking for inspiration and material

This is the first week of my project. Frankly, I feel a bit of confusion because of so many ideas wandering inside my head but none of them are really strong enough to get me started. So, I decide to look for some ideas from one of my favorite toy, LEGO. I pay visit to the LEGO store and look on its official website. There are couple spots that hit me such as the forest and house style. I personally prefer the mother nature theme. After looking for LEGO bricks, I decide to play with a couple of the LEGO bricks I have and try to visualize my sketch of the hamster house.

http://www.personalised-pet-products.co.uk/birte-wooden-hamster-mouse-house-playground-trixie-61779

http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2010/01/worlds_awesomest_hamster_house.php

http://www.instructables.com/community/Hamsters-home-1/

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