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Cat Treat Puzzles

There are two cats at our house. Chooch, who is chill and cute and amazing… and Bubbs who is destructive an asshole and… amazing. In a different way. Like, he fucks with things. He gets bored, I guess. Especially at around 2am when he messes with stuff in the bedroom so we lock him out, but then he does crazy shit. So Dana got this Catstages Kitty Cube Cat Interactive Treat Puzzle Toy to try to occupy him a bit. She said it’s the easiest puzzle toy she could find, just to get him started.

It does keep him busy for a bit, so that’s good. And he knows he get treats when he plays with it. But also, 3D printing, so I went looking for ‘cat toy treat puzzles’ and found a few. And yeah, I missed the Cat Toys Contest back in 2023.

I printed Cat Toy – Treat Dispenser Puzzle and chose the Removable Axle for Cat Treat Dispenser Puzzle to go with it. I wasn’t sure what size holes to go with for the treat barrel, as it depends on the size of the treats. I ended up adding a little hot glue on some of the holes to make it more difficult for the treats to fall out. I may even cover up a few of the holes to make it even more difficult.

Overall, this one is a winner though! Bubbs will spin it and get treats to come out. Chooch, well, not so much. She isn’t that smart. But she is smart enough to sit nearby when Bubbs gives it a spin because sometimes a treat will fly out and she’ll get it first!

I also printed Tumbling Treats Egg (Cat Toy) but they don’t seem to be as excited about this one. It requires a good smacking to get treats out, and I think they treat it to gently. I did enlarged the hole with a step bit hoping it might be a little easier for them. We’ll see how that goes.

I have not yet printed Sliding Cat Treat Puzzle but it looks pretty promising, so that might be next in the print queue.


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Kenilworth Portraits

Remember when I got the Kids Camera Instant Print which I now just refer to as toy camera most of the time?

Well last month I went to Kenilworth Square East to see work by UWM PSOA students (including my daughter) so I brought the toy camera along and shot portraits of people. When you are holding a toy camera that looks like a pink kitty, people tend to let you shoot their portrait. Then when you hand them a receipt with their photo printed on it they smile even more!

So here’s a bunch of photos from the evening. I set the camera to print after each shot and tore off the print and handed it to the person (or people) in the shot. It was a ton of fun being able to share like that!

I took most of the photos but the one of me (and a few others) were shot by my daughter Madeline, who is also a photographer, and actually had work on display at the event.

When I got home I printed a second copy of each photo so I could use them for this blog post…

I also started a new photo album called Toy Camera to upload more of these shots…

The metadata says they were shot with an iPhone, which is sort of true, since I took a photo of each photo with an iPhone. Weird, right? It seemed like the easiest way to digitize them…

I originally messed around with a desktop scanner, but wanted a faster process.

Oh, there’s also a device to assist with taking the photos of the photos, and I’ll write more about that in another post.

For now, just enjoy these photos!

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Press-Fit Construction

Stabuilt Blocks

I’ve been looking into press-fit construction techniques for a while now, and I stumbled across this 1917 building set “The Embossing Co Stabuilt Blocks” yesterday. (Nice font, eh?)

Stabuilt Blocks

It consists of a bunch of wood blocks with round round holes and pegs that hold them together. (I know you’re probably thinking I’m a big fan of LEGO, or maybe TINKERTOY. You’re half right. I’m more interested in the design of these things, and in making my own than I am in building things with them. I’m weird like that.)

Stabuilt Blocks

I didn’t examine all of the pieces, but one of the longer pegs looked a bit off with the cuts on the end. Maybe many were off like that? It almost gave it a DIY look. The DIY aspect is what I liked about this set. You could (somewhat) easily make one of these yourself if you had access to a basic wood shop.

With digital fabrication techniques you can easily create your own press-fit set. In fact, it’s a thing. For MIT’s “How To Make (almost) Anything” class one of the assignments is press-fit construction.

Vincent Chow's Desktop Organizer/Decorative Art Piece

There’s not a good master index, but you can browse through some of the student work from the past years and stumble across their press-fit assignments. (2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, etc.)

If you don’t get lost in all the documentation of other interesting projects, check out this Fab Academy page about press-fit construction, which has even more links at the bottom.

I’ve got a few projects for 2015 that will rely on press-fit pieces, so if you’ve got any good links, send them my way!