I have a new favourite person on my list of favourite 3D printing people (it’s rather long these days, but that’s good) — and it’s not just because she has sent me a ruck of samples, or indeed because she’s a she. KAADEE is one of the most genuinely lovely, positive and excited people I’ve come across, who has caught the 3D printing bug and is doing quite lovely things and she’s sharing her work, her files and her enthusiasm. Quite openly and freely. What’s not to love?
I’ve been chatting to KAADEE online for a little while having been introduced by a mutual friend and it’s time to let the world know what she’s up to.
First, a bit about the lady herself: The KAADEE moniker comes from her real name — Kristin Diana. College educated, she pays her bills by way of an administration job, but this does not fulfill here creative urges, nor, indeed her talent. She told me she has always loved sewing and drawing, but she was introduced to 3D printing at college, which is when she got her first 3D printer.
It didn’t go according to plan at first, she told me: “Like many people I though 3D printing could do anything. I can’t tell you how disappointing it was to find out it couldn’t. I’ve spent a good deal of time swearing at my 3D printer! Even when I got some help — at first nothing turned out as I wanted it to.”
KAADEE’s particular passion is for jewellery or small fashion items of interest — it doesn’t have to be fine (i.e. expensive), but it does need to be original (a girl after my own heart). She has a particular desire for items that capture light, or ‘glint’ as she calls it — and the smaller and brighter the glint, the better. She says: “diamonds excel at glinting, but for the price, they should! Now, I have learned to 3D print ‘glint”.
Like everyone that I have ever met that has made a success of 3D printing, she persevered through the trial and error stages, experimenting and learning from previous mistakes.
Last year she started printing with nylon, again not quite getting the results she wanted, and every translucent material she tried “printed like goo.” Then she made contact with Tom at Taulman3D who introduced her to t-glase, the original high strength translucent 3D printing material from the specialist developer and supplier. Taulman3D was also instrumental in helping KAADEE refine her techniques for printing jewellery on her Seemecnc 3D printer. KAADEE uses three different sized extruder heads — .7mm , .82mm and .9mm. It’s set up to print slowly, at approximately 12 mm per second, while the print temperature is set to 215˚C with the bed temperature set to 70 or 80˚C. All of KAADEE’s pieces are solid, but with no top, bottom or fill.
As KAADEE acknowledges, makers utilising 3D printing will be more than familiar with all this jargon, and the fact that she is keeping the process simple, but she is keen for people that like her designs to consider printing them for themselves, and they need the right information to do it.
“I am no 3D Printing wizard but I feel like I am getting there now!”
She certainly is …..
KAADEE designs shapes that she likes: “designs that are every part of me — fun, silly, inquisitive, artistic, stylistic and an endless parade of emotions.” These are produced as bracelets, charms and her personal favourite, ear-rings. They are all of these things and more because they have been designed and printed with passion.
The impressive results that KAADEE is now producing started getting lots of positive attention from the people around her who were asking her to print pieces for them and their friends. This gave her the confidence to design and print more and more. And she has just launched her website — eyes of another — with images and freely downloadable files for anyone to continue or start their own 3D printing journey.
Her unique designs are brought to life with the glint she is after, achieved by using t-glase 3d printing material.
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