Using Blender's Particle Systems for 3D Printed Rhododendron Drawer Pulls
Channel: TGAW
Date: 07/05/2017

One of the things that gives Blender its reputation of having a large learning curve is it is geared towards animation.  It has a lot of extra features or capabilities we don't use for 3D Printing.

Or do we?

Homesick for the Appalachian Trail, I embarked on making rhododendron themed drawer pulls. It was a Blender animation feature helped me pull off my vision.  "Particle Systems" are typically used for animating dust, smoke, water, and hair.  In this case, I was able to use it to convert a single flower model into the trademark ball of flowers for the rhododendron.

This video will walk through my setup of the Particle System for my rhododendron in Blender.  It also discusses using Boolean Union to help make cleaner and more stable STL files for 3D Printing.  Finally, it talks about a challenge I had with my nut and screw hole and how I changed the model to make sure my printer wasn't printing over nothing.

My Blender capabilities dull in comparison to the animators and game modelers.  You can see a compilation of some of the best animations of 2013 at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8l8WNHwTOg

Blender Facile's tutorial on "How to create Flower and Butterfly though Blender - Part 3 of 4" inspired me to use Particle Systems for 3D Printing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGTxHRm2lMQ

Want to know more about repairing models with the 3D Builder app that comes with Windows 10?  Check out SparkyFace5's video on "Fix intersection shells quick and easy! (windows 10)":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnCnPNvFUnw

Finally, stuck doing a bunch of Boolean Unions?  That's a good time to catch up on the Friday Night 3D Printing Community Hangouts.  Links to the old streams are at:
https://twitter.com/F3DPCH

Thanks for watching.  Have a great day!