We love gadgets. And cats. So for Valentine’s day we combined them. Thanks to the facilities at Sunshine Labs (our new business home!) we custom-designed and made a heart with the Gadget Cat in the middle.
- First it started with a post-it note drawing.
- Then the design was made in Autodesk, the vector for the Cat logo was imported from a vector Adobe Illustrator file. When done, file was saved as an .STL file
- The .STL file was imported into MakerWare, which computed the slices for the 3D printer. MakerWare generated the gcode.
- The gcode was saved onto an SD card, and put into the MakerBot 2x dual extruder and printed it.
- When it was completed, we inserted a battery-powered RGB LED flasher that we made in less than a minute. Instructions for that are below.
To make the tiny RGB LED flasher,
- We used two flashing RGB leds
- We coiled the ends of the LEDs to pinch a CR1220 battery. We chose the CR1220 because it is a 3V battery which has small enough current that it is safe to connect directly to LEDs. No additional resistors or components needed.
- Then the LEDs and battery were placed inside the hidden compartment.
Voila! a flashing red and white heart for lovers of Gadgets, Cats, and Gadgetcat alike!
