Death Hourglass - Decorative Gothic Timer

Hey there! :) 

This week, I was prototyping several new designs, and as it happens, I got a lot of spaghetti failure on some of the hard-to-print pieces. It usually bums me out since I really hate 3D printing waste, but this time it was conveniently at the same time as the waste competition, so I thought I'd give it a shot to upcycle them for a better purpose! :D

🔸Filament Granola Story:

So at first I thought of just chopping up the spaghetti noodles and using them as sand in an hourglass, but they were too curly to move smoothly at all. So I thought to home-process them a little bit and make a kind of dense, more uniform "filament granola" with them. I broke them out a bit, popped them in the oven (at 220 C) with two sides of parchment paper and a heavy weight on top. They formed some kind of sheet with lots of holes and squeegly parts, which I broke into pieces and used a sacrificial blender to reduce them to almost 5 mm bits. Look at this diagram: 

🔸Was that necessary?

Not really, actually, I think I just made life harder for myself. ^-^ 

I think you can just directly use the blender to break the noodles into smaller pieces and make some “filament sand” and incorporate that into design. Maybe? I didn't try that yet.

🔸If it's still too much work (and you don't wanna sacrifice any extra kitchen appliances):

Just use the second design with the narrower grain passage, and incorporate the other type of waste we all have: Silica gel blobs!

🔸Are they accurate timers?

Unfortunately no. I think the materials we are dealing with here don't allow for a smooth-running timer either way, unless you process them too much. But they do function, and they're fun to play with!

🔸Print notes:

Definitely read the notes on the print profiles carefully before printing! 

🔸Assembly notes:

After filling your hourglass, you can secure the bars and skulls in place with a bit of glue for extra stability. 

If you liked this design, check out my other randomly gothic models! :D (Click on the pictures to open the models)

I hope you like them, and happy printing! :) 🥂✨

If you really loved my work, you can always get me a coffee :)
(Commercial licences and high-quality renders also available on Ko-fi)