“You are the melting men
And as you melt
You are beheaded”
Also sprach Siouxsie of Siouxsie and the Banshees (Melt!)
In our basement, I have been working on a setup to record 3D printed stop motion in stereo, while melting the printed objects. I am using a heat gun, which I mounted on a slide to get a controlled, and hopefully repeatable, effect.
There is a bathroom fan mounted over the setup to get rid of the fumes from the melting pla plastic, which vents to outside, repurposing a dryer vent.
Today I found the heat gun itself actually gives off the worst fumes. The thing is almost twenty years old.
It took me a while to get the thing properly mounted and aimed. The test yielded an interesting result but not exactly the effect I am looking for. And the focus was a little off.
The heat from the gun is more focused than I expected, and melted the print in half, decapitating the fella. In stead of using the slider to gradually move the heat source close to the print, I think I need to make it come down slowly, at a basically constant distance. I have already mounded the slide vertically. Gravity is not my friend now. I think I need to add a counterweight on a sort of pulley.
Meanwhile I am working on an animation featuring the same character, modeling a boat, and creating an end of year animation. Let’s see how much I can finish before the semester vortex pulls me in again in the new year!
