Who has started Christmas shopping already?

I have bought a few stocking filler type presents, but I am planning to buy the main presents next week.

I need to buy the appropriate number of large Lego bricks,  tubing and pieces for a young child who would like to build a Henry vacuum cleaner. She wouldn’t be able to do anything too intricate or sophisticated. The cylinder needs to end up at around 30cm or so high. She has several toy Henry vacuum cleaners which are lined up nicely. Somebody proposed the idea that Lego produce a Henry vacuum cleaner set, but it didn’t get enough votes to be produced. I am trying to work out which bits and pieces could make up something that would be acceptable.

Any tips would be appreciated. 

ArchaeC said:

I need to buy the appropriate number of large Lego bricks,  tubing and pieces for a young child who would like to build a Henry vacuum cleaner.

That is a great idea.

You could start with an existing cleaner, strip it down to its main parts and see which can be reasonably replaced with Lego.

I imagine that for it to actually work you would need to glue much of it together to take the forces of being dragged around & lifted but the outer skin should be fairly easy to do and the inner "bucket" that holds the bag - but things like the neck of the vacuum hose and the hose itself would need to be the original parts, maybe bonded onto some lego for where it connects into the main chassais.

Now that is the sort of project I could get my teeth into.

Sounds like fun - I 3d printed a model of the ITER nuclear fusion reactor for my nephew last year - he is doing a PhD on the materials used for certain parts used in them (not sure I would want to do it again as it took 3 months), - I didn't design it, the 3d printer files can be downloaded from here:

https://www.iter.org/node/20687/make-your-own-tokamak-3d-printing

Here it is almost finished (I didn't take a photo of it when it was completely finished):

I did keep a running total of the time it took to print the parts that I actually used and it worked out as 831 hours, not including the failed prints (of which there were many).

Apart from about a week where I was waiting for replacement printer parts the printer ran 24 hours a day for 3 months - after a while I got used to it running at night and got to sleep OK, although when it was finished it took a few days to get used to it not running in the background.

The cost of the reels of plastic worked out at about £150 and there was quite a lot of plastic left at the end for other projects.  I also purchased a bottle of "EMA plastic weld", which I needed to join the larger parts and to repair others as some of the parts were prone to breaking when the excess support plastic was removed.

If you purchased a modern 3d printer you would probably have fewer problems than I did as my 3d printer is an early model that I purchased as a kit of parts.

For anyone who is technically minded and doesn't mind having a go then this project is certainly possible, although it is a large investment of time.

Trev said:

I saw that the Indian Government put out a contract for anyone to give quotes to print out some of these and no-one came back with quotes (probably because they are detailed and fiddly to print).

I can understand why!

Alas! The tokamak has been struck off the future Christmas present list.

For myself, if I was getting a printer I would like one capable of ceramic printing as I would like to recreate ancient archaeological portable objects. I know it wouldn’t replicate the original manufacturing process or materials, but I would like to see how some artefacts would look and feel from different perspectives. Also, ceramic is more pleasing to touch and hold.

If you wanted something printed commercially I  gather it costs from £10 - £20 per hour, so for 520 hours that would be £5200 - £10400, the reason it is so expensive is that it often takes as much time cleaning up the parts as it does printing them.  When I was reading about it I saw that the Indian Government put out a contract for anyone to give quotes to print out some of these and no-one came back with quotes (probably because they are detailed and fiddly to print).

If you are thinking of getting a 3d printer don't expect it to be like a normal printer, you will find that it keeps going wrong and needs taking apart with parts needing to be replaced or adjusted and the software to drive the printer has lots of settings that can cause prints to fail (if you look up 3d printer problems on Google you will get a lot of hits as they are not simple to use).

If you wanted something printed commercially I  gather it costs from £10 - £20 per hour, so for 520 hours that would be £5200 - £10400, the reason it is so expensive is that it often takes as much time cleaning up the parts as it does printing them.  When I was reading about it I saw that the Indian Government put out a contract for anyone to give quotes to print out some of these and no-one came back with quotes (probably because they are detailed and fiddly to print).

If you are thinking of getting a 3d printer don't expect it to be like a normal printer, you will find that it keeps going wrong and needs taking apart with parts needing to be replaced or adjusted and the software to drive the printer has lots of settings that can cause prints to fail (if you look up 3d printer problems on Google you will get a lot of hits as they are not simple to use).

I did keep a running total of the time it took to print the parts that I actually used and it worked out as 831 hours, not including the failed prints (of which there were many).

Apart from about a week where I was waiting for replacement printer parts the printer ran 24 hours a day for 3 months - after a while I got used to it running at night and got to sleep OK, although when it was finished it took a few days to get used to it not running in the background.

The cost of the reels of plastic worked out at about £150 and there was quite a lot of plastic left at the end for other projects.  I also purchased a bottle of "EMA plastic weld", which I needed to join the larger parts and to repair others as some of the parts were prone to breaking when the excess support plastic was removed.

If you purchased a modern 3d printer you would probably have fewer problems than I did as my 3d printer is an early model that I purchased as a kit of parts.

For anyone who is technically minded and doesn't mind having a go then this project is certainly possible, although it is a large investment of time.

Trev said:

I saw that the Indian Government put out a contract for anyone to give quotes to print out some of these and no-one came back with quotes (probably because they are detailed and fiddly to print).

I can understand why!

Alas! The tokamak has been struck off the future Christmas present list.

For myself, if I was getting a printer I would like one capable of ceramic printing as I would like to recreate ancient archaeological portable objects. I know it wouldn’t replicate the original manufacturing process or materials, but I would like to see how some artefacts would look and feel from different perspectives. Also, ceramic is more pleasing to touch and hold.