“My parents are both creative in their own ways. They used to run a clothing company when I was a child, so I was always surrounded by textiles. And my mum is a fine artist, so yeah, I was always around art and design. When I left school, I took an apprenticeship at a theatre company and learned costuming, which was really cool and I really enjoyed. They take on an apprentice every year to keep those skills going, because they’re a bit different to fashion – there are a few things that are specific to theatre.
“I also studied millinery [hat-making] as part of that as well. I’ve always loved historical costume; old dresses and costumes are really inspiring.
“I’ve always done things like knitting, and any handcrafts, little bits of woodwork, I’ve dabbled in all sorts of things. I moved into digital fabrication a few years ago, because I wanted to make some crystal-shaped Dungeons and Dragons dice. I wanted to make those, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to make them accurate enough with my hands. I investigated getting them 3D-printed, and it was too costly for just a random project idea.
“But then I found out that Aldi had a sale selling 3D printers one day for about $400 AUD. I had no idea they were so cheap! I bought one that day and fell madly head over heels in love with the technology. In a relatively short time, I was helping to moderate the r/3Dprinting subreddit, which is the largest 3D printing community on earth after Thingiverse. It became my whole world.
“I like blending 3D printing with traditional media as well. I do a lot of printing on to fabric, and I make little bits for costumes, and tools to help me make costumes as well.
“I quite like functional stuff. I recently made a watercolour palette, for example, because I decided I wanted to learn watercolour and gouache and stuff. And I used fabric print actually in a functional way to make the hinges for that pallet for the lid and stuff.
“If the hinges were plastic, they would break within a couple of weeks; because they’re fabric, they can bend and bend and bend.
“I think 3D printing is often seen as a pretty thing, but it can be quite functional too – the fabric is what makes this hinge so flexible and so durable. If I’d just plain 3D-printed that, it would break within a few uses probably, even in PETG.
“$400 for a printer is ridiculously cheap. And it came with a three-year warranty as well, which in the 3D printing world is practically unheard of. I actually had something break on that machine, and I got it fixed no bother; they paid for all the shipping as well. I don’t know how they’re making their money, but it’s a great machine, a little Wanhao D6 clone. That’s what I learned on. I have other ones now, but that’s what I learned on.
“I don’t moderate it any more, but when I did – before I did really – I faced discrimination for my gender. Like, bad enough to realise why I needed to take a stand. Before that I was like, ‘Oh, feminism’s important, but oh well, whatever. It’s ticking along fine without me. It’s hunky-dory’. I was treated so differently, and so poorly by some of the other people on that subreddit, that it made me realise how bad it could be. When I came to moderating, I really wanted to encourage people to be empathetic toward each other. My motto was always ‘Remember the human and be excellent to each other’. When I left, there were hundreds of comments from users saying how much they appreciated my moderation style. I take quite a bit of pride in that. I like to think I made it a little bit nicer but, especially in the past few years, Reddit had become really, really challenging. And it was much more challenging when I was visibly a woman.
“For example, I’ve been told, ‘You shouldn’t show your face because you’re a girl’; and ‘You’re only doing this for attention’. This, despite the fact that the whole of Reddit, it’s based on attention – that’s literally how the karma system works. Literally anybody who posts anything is doing it for attention.
“But I’d get called out, even if it was just my hands in a picture holding something, because my long fingernails made it obvious that I was a girl, so I was just seeking upvotes. Oh my lord, really!
“But that’s only a really small minority of people who are hideous; the vast majority are lovely. I think that’s the same in any society; it couldn’t function if most people were terrible. I take great pride in the knowledge that many people really liked what I did there. I think I did well as a moderator; I got that feedback, so I should believe it.
PUSHING THE TECHNOLOGY
“I’ve done three posters to answer common questions, and I’ve got a couple more in the works. I’ve done one on levelling, how to level your 3D print bed. One on what software to use to create 3D models depending on what you’re trying to do; another one on CAD tips, different ways to model things specifically so they suit 3D printing as a technology. That was born out of Reddit: I saw lots and lots of different questions from people – well, lots of the same question really.
“And so, I made those guides to help answer those very same questions, particularly the levelling and the ‘what program should I learn.’ At one point they were every second question we were getting on the subreddit.
“I have recently worked out how to 3D-print feathers. This is a neat little slicer trick to be able to make these. They act very much like real feathers; I printed all these straight, but I’m able to bend them by hand like you can with normal feathers. And I really like them because they’re quite ethical. The feather trade is very similar to the fur trade, and for that reason I haven’t bought feathers in a really long time, even though I like making hats and stuff. But the ethics around it are a bit dodge. So I’m pretty excited to be able to work with feathers again, any colour or size that I want. I reckon cosplay wings would be super-cool too, that’s what I’m excited about at the very minute, but there are things that I’m getting excited about all the time.
“A little while ago, I started working on a felt 3D printer that would print felt instead of plastic. I’m still sort of working on it. I flip between projects that have been on the back burner for a while. There’s this process called needle felting which uses a needle that has tiny little downward-facing barbs on it. You poke it into loose wool, imagine the wool you get off a sheep. It tangles those fibres together and by poking it in certain directions, you can form 3D objects. I thought: ‘What if you could do that with a 3D printer’? You could have it extruding wool and felting it together with a felting needle. I made a little tool head and moved it around with my hands in the way that a 3D printer would move, and it worked. I just need to put it onto a printer and make a bit of a post-processing script so it will do the jabbing motion and everything.
“3D printing is mostly rigid materials, and where there are soft materials, they’re soft and rubbery. There’s nothing cuddly or warm that you might want to curl into at the end of the day. I get so excited at the prospect of teddy bears, or custom insoles for your shoes, or custom pillows that are exactly made for the way you sleep. It would be such a cool technology to explore. Maybe I need to bring that one back out of the chest of not-quite-forgotten projects.
“I can’t see why it wouldn’t work. It worked by hand, and all I have to do is get the printer to do the same motion my hand does, so I think it should work.
“So this is a recent project – I found a way to force the tool path to make interesting textures on flat surfaces, which I thought was pretty neat, especially as you can’t do that with any traditional media; you can’t put a glitter on there and have it end up looking like this.
“The printer head goes in all sorts of directions, and that creates this cube pattern. I’ve made a YouTube video – it makes more sense on there than trying to explain it here. There is an SVG to G-code converter I originally started writing, but then someone else wrote the same thing, and probably better than me, because I can barely code. So I use their one, built into Cura.
“There are some skills I’m pretty good at, like sewing. I’ve probably maxed out that skill tree, or near to it. Coding – probably not so much. I could probably cobble something together. And I did get the SVG to G-code thing mostly working before I discovered somebody else had already done it. I’ve shown it to other people who can code and they’re like, ‘This is fine’. So I guess it’s alright, but I would probably have a hard time picking it up again. The only thing with coding is that you have to get it 100% right or it doesn’t work; with most other tools, you can get things 90% of the way there and you’ll still get a result, but with coding you get nothing. It’s so punishing.
“I came from such hand-crafty stuff. I’ve always been strong at Photoshop, and Illustrator, and stuff. But yeah, anything electronic is just foreign to me entirely. I’m, thankfully, surrounded by lovely people who are willing to help me learn, but it’s just taking the time to do it and get stuck in.
“You’ve just got to find your tribe, right? The maker community is great. It’s very homey.
“I think we’ve seen that this year more than ever, especially in 3D printing with the PPE side of things, people just selflessly printing PPE with their own filament and not asking any money for it. The community is great, and that’s what brought me back when Reddit was hard.”
