In A Nutshell:
Some of you may be asking, "What is Design
Creations?" Design Creations is many things really.
It began as a construct of my wife's design back in the Virtual World SecondLife.
At the time we
we were creating 3D virtual products and selling them for virtual currency which
we could trade
back for real world currency. It was not a get rich quick deal, but the funds it
brought in were nice
in a pinch.
Over the years we found that Design Creations covered many aspects, even outside
the
virtual worlds.
Even as far as things we created at home even software or 3D we may
create online.
A little More Detail:
I started in 3D design back in 2003/2004 with
GMax and Flight
Simulator 2004. After MANY months of frustration,
trial and error I finally got the hang of the program and began creating
simple objects. I moved on to
AutoDesk 3DS Max
with its more advanced feature set and just continued from there.
In 2004 I was introduced to the Virtual World Second Life. I tried my hand at 3D
creation there but just couldn't get the hang
of it like I could in GMax or 3DS Max. Then in 2010 SL did a wonderful
thing, they introduced MESH! This enabled me to use
3DS Max to create objects and import them into the Virtual Grid! Thus
Design Creations was born. Along with my
Wife, Nikki, we embarked on a whirlwind of creation; houses, furniture,
architectural features and all kinds of things.
We eventually moved from SL to InWorldz then we tried our hand at our own Grid.
Then we just kind of stopped,
lost interest maybe. Things kind of got annoying with people being weird
and demanding and lots of drama in the virtual worlds.
We stayed off grid for a while, then in 2020 they year of "covid" we had a
windfall come our way and we dusted off Design Creations,
converted our garage into a Workshop/Den, bought some tools, a GlowForge,
a 3D Printer and a small CNC machine and just went to town!
I've been steadily honing my 3D Printing knowledge and skills, dusting off my 3D
Modeling know-how and learning about
Laser Engraving/Etching/Cutting. I'm even TRYING to get the hang of the
CNC. Now THAT is a tough nut to crack!
Right now I'm mostly downloading and modifying designs here on
Thingiverse, doing ReMixes as I learn and Practice with my
Prusa i3 MK3/S and I dable a bit with a few "from scratch" designs as
needed. I'm not an "organic" modeler
as in I don't have the talent to do characters and such. I mainly to
architectural items, inorganic items, building
blocks, very geometric items. OCCASIONALLY I get creative and come up with
something "fluid", but that has to be
on a really good day and probably in an "altered state of mind" And we
won't go into details of what that means. ;-)
So really, Design Creations is a jack of all
trades and master of a few.
Don't want to say none, because we do have some nifty tricks up our sleeve.
We've decided to remove the VPS and Dedicated Servers, just not the direction we
really want to go.
Our Recommendation and where we host ourselves is
Digital Ocean for VPS or
Nocix for
Dedicated solutions.
Want to take a gander at the gnomes and trolls at work behind the scenes at
Design Creations?
Catch us Live on Twitch @
http://designcreations.design
We also upload our streams to YouTube since Twitch lets videos expire over a
period of time.
This way you can always catch our streams at any time.
Watch Now
At any time you can see what project is currently in our Printers, CNC, and Engravers
at the following links:
Prusa i3 MK3/S Front Cam -
Watch Now
Information and My Thoughts on the Prusa i3 MK3/S -
Read Now
GlowForge Pro Laser Engraver -
Watch Now
We retired and sold the Dremel DigiLab 3D45. It served us relatively well while
we had it, but it
has been extremely surpassed by the Prusa and hopefully just as much so by the
Ender 3 V2.
Information and My Thoughts on the Dremel DigiLab 3D45 -
Read Now
Our
Creality Ender 3 V2 3D Printer is just chugging along.
(Of course it can be a stubborn Bitch when it comes
to leveling!)
Ender 3V2 Cam -
Watch
Now
Information and My Thoughts on the Creality Ender 3v2 -
Coming Soon
We just added a
Creality Ender 3 Max 3D Printer to the Workshop lineup.
Ender 3 Max Cam - Watch
Now
We have a variety of traditional tools as well, mostly by Ryobi.
Work Shop Cam -
Watch Now
All our cameras can be found here in one easy
to access page.
Watch our Cams
We've also gone Etsy! Yes now many of our custom creations can be found on our
Etsy Store
Find it @ http://designcreations.store
Ok, we finally broke down. We are on Facebook too. Yes we hear it's all the rage now. ;-)
We even joined Instagram too. Find us at https://www.instagram.com/sonja.dc
We've added a Patreon Site
as well. We are going to try and be more interactive with our audience, offering
more of an in depth look at some of the things we do. We plan on doing some
tutorials, reviews, walk-throughs
and whatever else we can come up with. This goes along with our partnership with
Essence Of Magic.
Take a gander out the PC's, Servers, SoC Boards, Printers and tools we employ.
Specs
Need to Contact us? We've added all our pertinent emails on a simple contact
page.
Contact US
HAM Radio Operator? Check out the Band Conditions:
Design Creations is proud to be a member of the
The South Canadian Amateur Radio Society.
We monitor 147.060MHz and can be found at Call Sign
KG5YFZ. We also monitor the Digital
DMR frequecies
and hover about the BrandMeister
WorldWide TalkGroup 91.
Occasionally we can be found on D-STAR on Reflector030C.
I use an
Icom 5100A as my shack's base station. I've been using a SlimJim antenna
from N9TAX Labs hanging from my workshop
ceiling and recently made a bow mount to put on a
satellite j-pipe mount to move the antenna outside
to the eave of the workshop. I printed a reducer to fit 3/4" PVC to the j-pipe,
the files can be
downloaded here.
After the antenna came down about 36 hours later in the usual Oklahoma wind I
went on to redesign the
reducer. Though the new design was going to take about 10 hours to print and out
of Carbon Fiber.
Considering I had several other more important print projects to attend to, I
was thinking to myself that
maybe I was over-engineering the problem. While washing my truck a few days
later I looked up and
thought, "Ya know, just a couple of hose clamps outta do the trick." A quick run
to Home Depot and
three hose clamps later the antenna is back in the sky and working quite nicely!
Sometimes it just pays to
go old school from the get go.
Just a few shots of the completed mount:
Up in the air:
A wee bit crooked, but it's functional!!!!
The satellite dish in the background is going to come
down soon and be replace by an
Ambient Weather WS-2902C
WiFi Smart Weather Station.
Ya can't be too careful in this freak ass Oklahoma Weather!
DashCam Project
I'm a bit of a tech-head, ok maybe that's a bit of an
understatement. I got my first computer in 1982 and was in the IT field
professionally in
the '90s when the Internet was really getting started. I worked for the big
companies like AT&T, IBM, Digital, Honeywell, etc. Around about
2000 I got out because it just got too competitive and everyone was just all
about the certificates and the paper you carried. I went
full-time EMS and the eventually Firefighting in 2006. I retired in 2010. Though
I still hang onto my tech roots and tinker prolifically.
With the rise of Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc and just the craziness of drivers
lately I began looking into DashCams.
For one, it's a neat little technical project. Secondly, it provides piece of
mind if you should get into or even witness
an accident or other event on the road. Thirdly, it's just kind of a cool thing
to do.
Check out my DashCam Project here
Privacy Policy - Disclaimer - Terms of Service
© Copyright 2010-2021
Modified - 03/31/2021
Sonja M Thomas - Design Creations, LLC