50 articles from the print studio.
Care & Keeping
Why your dashboard duck might melt (and how to stop it)
PLA softens around 140°F. A closed car in a Georgia summer passes that before lunch. Here is how to keep your dash pal upright.
Behind the Print
Layer lines are not a defect
Those faint horizontal ridges are the fingerprint of FDM printing. Here is what causes them and why we stopped trying to hide them.
Design Notes
How we pick which dog breeds get a duck
Forty breeds in, we still take requests. Here is the test every new breed duck has to pass before it goes into the catalog.
Studio Life
What 24 pieces actually looks like
A look inside a small-batch print week: how a wholesale starter case gets made, checked and boxed in Dallas, Georgia.
Gift Guides
Stocking stuffers that do not end up in a drawer
The five figurines our customers reorder most often as gifts, and why each one survives past January.
Behind the Print
From fidget to focus tool: what articulated toys actually do
Print-in-place articulated toys are not just desk clutter. Here is what occupational therapists say about why they help.
Behind the Print
What 0.16 mm actually buys you
Layer height is the single setting that decides how a print looks and how long it takes. Here is the math behind the one we settled on.
Behind the Print
Drying filament: the step nobody sees
Wet filament prints badly and looks fine on the spool. Six hours in a dryer is the least glamorous part of the job.
Behind the Print
How a duck gets its colors
Most of our pieces are one color of plastic. The multi-color ones are not painted — here is how a printer puts three colors on one small duck.
Behind the Print
Support removal, by hand
Every overhang needs a temporary scaffold, and every scaffold has to come off without scarring the piece. This is the slowest step in the studio.
Behind the Print
The first layer decides everything
If the first layer is wrong, nothing above it can be right. A look at the most important 0.16 mm of any print.
Care & Keeping
How to clean a 3D printed figurine without ruining it
Warm water, a soft brush and no solvents. Five minutes of care once a month keeps a shelf of figurines looking new.
Care & Keeping
Dusting a shelf of small things
Forty figurines is not a cleaning job, it is a system. Here is the one we use in the studio.
Care & Keeping
What actually survives the mail
A three-inch figurine weighs almost nothing and travels surprisingly well. What breaks is not what you would expect.
Care & Keeping
When a tail snaps off
It happens. Superglue works, but only if you prep the joint first. Here is the order of operations.
Care & Keeping
Keeping ducks away from chewers
Dogs and cats both find 3D printed figurines interesting. A few placement rules keep everyone safe.
Design Notes
The eyes are the whole design
Change the eyes on a figurine and you change its entire personality. It is the highest-leverage square centimeter on the model.
Design Notes
Why three inches is the sweet spot
Smaller reads as a toy. Bigger stops fitting on a monitor stand. Three inches is the size most of our catalog settles at.
Design Notes
Making a fidget that survives a backpack
Articulated toys fail at the joints. Here is how we test a hinge before a design goes into the catalog.
Design Notes
Designing around marble filament
Marble PLA puts a random swirl through every print. You cannot control where it lands, so the design has to work either way.
Design Notes
The problem with cute as a brief
Every duck we make is a little bit ugly on purpose. Here is why a design that is only cute gets forgotten.
Gift Guides
Desk gifts under $15 that do not look like it
A practical list for office exchanges, with the price ceiling most gift swaps actually enforce.
Gift Guides
A duck for every teacher
Teacher appreciation week, end of term, or a class gift — here is how to buy for a whole staff without overthinking it.
Gift Guides
Gifts for the dog person who has everything
They own the leash, the mug and the ornament. What they probably do not own is their own breed as a duck.
Gift Guides
Housewarming gifts that are not candles
Something small, permanent and slightly funny beats something that burns down in six weeks.
Studio Life
A day of packing orders in Dallas
What actually happens between your order and the mailer arriving in your mailbox.
Studio Life
Why we answer every email ourselves
No support queue, no chatbot. Every message gets read by the person who packed your order.
Studio Life
What a market booth taught us
A weekend of selling in person changed how we photograph, price and describe everything we make.
Behind the Print
What a failed print actually costs
A print that dies six hours in wastes more than a length of plastic. Here is the real accounting behind a reprint.
Behind the Print
Plant-based filament, honestly
PLA comes from corn, which sounds better than it is. A straight answer about what our material does and does not do.
Behind the Print
How we test a new design before you see it
Every new figurine gets printed, dropped, carried and handed to a stranger before it goes into the catalog.
Care & Keeping
Sun fade and PLA color
A duck on a sunny windowsill will change color over a year. How much, and which colors go first.
Care & Keeping
Moving house with a figurine collection
Forty small hard objects in one box is a recipe for scratches. Pack them the way we ship them.
Care & Keeping
Storing seasonal pieces for eleven months
Christmas and Halloween pieces spend most of the year in a box. Here is how to make sure they come out clean.
Care & Keeping
Repainting a figurine (and when not to)
Acrylic craft paint sticks to PLA well enough. Everything after the first coat is a gamble.
Design Notes
Working from customer sketches
We get drawings, photos and one memorable description on a napkin. Here is how a request becomes a model.
Design Notes
The case against a second color
Adding one more color to a design doubles the print complexity and rarely doubles the appeal.
Design Notes
Scale: how a design changes with size
Scaling a model up or down is not a neutral operation. Some details survive it and some do not.
Behind the Print
Why we print to order instead of stocking shelves
Nothing in our catalog exists until someone buys it. That choice costs us speed and buys us a catalog of 200 designs.
Gift Guides
Gifts for the coworker you barely know
You know their name, their desk and roughly nothing else. Here is how to buy something they will actually keep.
Gift Guides
Gifts for a new nurse
Long shifts, shared desks and a locker that has to hold everything. Practical beats sentimental here.
Gift Guides
What to buy someone who collects tiny things
Collectors have rules. Buying inside their rules is easier than you think.
Gift Guides
Stocking stuffers under $10
Small, useful and not immediately discarded. A short list for the bottom of the stocking.
Studio Life
Our returns policy, explained
Thirty days, no restocking fee, and one honest exception. What we do when something arrives wrong.
Studio Life
The spreadsheet that runs the studio
No inventory system, no ERP. One spreadsheet tracks every spool, every order and every reprint.
Studio Life
What we will not sell
There are shapes and requests we turn down. Here is the short list and the reasoning behind it.
Studio Life
Hiring the first person
The jump from one pair of hands to two changes everything, including which mistakes get made.
Studio Life
Why Dallas, Georgia
A small town forty minutes northwest of Atlanta is not an obvious place for a 3D printing studio. It is a good one.
Studio Life
The packing materials we actually use
Why some orders arrive in a padded mailer and some in a box, and what happens to the packaging after.
Design Notes
Why our dog busts have no collar
Every reference photo we worked from had a collar, a tag and a leash. We removed all of it, on purpose.