Kingfisher Flexi by Sassiecat 3D
Dorte, aka Sassiecat3D, is a mother of two, an artist, a designer, and a newcomer in the 3D printing community. She has always been interested in how things work and therefore finds 3D printing very fascinating. Her passionate artistic personality can be seen in her beautiful model – The Kingfisher Flexi, a cute and quite special bird.
‘’For the first few months, I printed the Mcgybeers dragon and loved it. So I started wondering if maybe I could figure out a way to do my own designs. I have been a pastel artist for many years and have done a lot of portraits, naturalistic artworks, and such, so designing/artistic work was not new for me.’’ It’s been a year since she learned about Tinkercad and made her first design ever – a corgi with a ‘harmonica’ type movement and a heart-shaped behind. Despite having never tried 3D printing before, she fell in love with it immediately and has made various designs since then. ‘’I love the challenge they present!’’
The Kingfisher Flexi model that SassieCat3D made has been underway for a long time. ‘’I have always loved kingfishers, they are, for me, a special bird, beautiful and graceful.’’ Even though she now has a result she is happy with, it took her quite a long time and a huge amount of frustration to get to the final part. ‘’Normally I make a design from an idea to the finished version in about 2 weeks’ time, but not this time. Everything was made from scratch which meant a lot of test printing from the first 4 parts together to the whole design. I did a lot of redesigning and adjusting because I really wanted this design to have an organic movement to it. For some models, I reuse parts and redesign for the new ones, but not here. Everything was a new way of modeling.’’
‘’Using the same filament for the test prints as for the final model may be more expensive but it helps me to see what I envisioned for the final result and to know if I made the right choice of colours.‘’ When printing the Kingfisher Flexi model Sassiecat3D started with a cheap black filament for the base to test the movement of the model and as soon as that was good, she started testing the filament chose for the model. ‘’I really love the filament I worked with from Fillamentum. I had a very specific vision of the design in these colors, and the “Lilac” and “Mint” were just perfect for that vision.’’ She really liked to work with these exact filaments, as they did not require a lot of adjustments, they print so easily, and the way they combine is beautiful.
The model comes in two colour combinations, Dorte printed the model in the “Iceland Blue” filament from Filamentum as well. ‘’I love the shine and the way the light catches at some points and reflects of it. Absolutely stunning!’’
‘’I have always had a fascination with some birds, like the kingfisher, peacock, eagles, and such, but I love all animals!’’ Dorte has always loved nature and because of that, she puts interesting facts about animals or creatures into info for models. So not only does she make nice things, but she really likes to dive deep into what she like and therefore her models have an added value to them.
When it comes to 3D printing, the printer itself is a very important part of the process, so we asked Dorte about the one she used. ‘’I have an Anycubic Kobra that I use for it. I previously had 2 other printers but they could not do what I wanted, so I bought a direct drive printer, also so it would be less tricky to do filament swaps mid-print.’’ It took some adjustments, but she tries to make her designs easy to print so they will not need any additional support. ‘’I knew that this design probably would challenge a lot of printers tho, so I worked hard for it to be as easy as a complicated print can be and still be a print in place, with no supports model.’’
The model of the bird and many more of Sassiecat3D’s artworks are available online.
Used filaments
