The "Rona"

So my kid ended up testing positive after wigging out and taking 3 tests in a week, first 2 were negative, the 3rd came back positive. I think it was just a cold but I'm a crazy 40 year old man that doesn't believe in such nonsense. I have to give her credit tho for sticking to it until she got the result she wanted.

I decided since she finally got it that a reward for her efforts was in order.

I must make her a trophy.... Hear me out on this one this is a build in progress.

I ordered this multicolored glow in the dark PLA filament I was going to mess around with and I just happen to have it on deck when I got the news and I had a amazing idea for a trophy.

I found a virus model on thingiverse and tried it out with regular white PLA and it came out ok but the speed was 80mm/s and it got a little violent on my 5 dollar Walmart foldie table, broke 2 supports in the shaking print job.. I got some industrial Velcro tape from Walmart and velcro'd the table to the wall and that solved the shaking / vibration issue nicely.

Now I was ready to the real print. I really wanted to do a timelapse of this under a blacklight but I'm not setup yet. I'm still a very new user to this world and everyday is new adventure for me. I have a pi4 but waiting on fan and heatsink to show up before I set things up and try to tackle OctiPrint. but I got some nice shots of the print, it needs some sanding on a couple spots but I think it came out great!

So This isn't the end of the journey.. Model looks amazing under a blacklight so I want her to be able to see it glow like that when ever she wants. I downloaded my free year of Fusion 360. I'm going to attempt to make a plate with her name on it and the date saying she "beat the rona" or something like that, make a stand for the model to sit on. I have small understanding of electronics from my RC years so I ordered a 500 piece LED kit and I'm gonna try to print a battery holder for the back of the plate with some wires running to the stand and put UV leds on it to a switch and it will light up and glow. Granted this is all only a working theory in my head so I'll keep you updated as I make this a real thing!! But I think I can tackle this, it should look pretty sweet if I can pull this off.

Stay tuned.