Inspiration
I was thinking about how actors have to smoke cigarettes and I wondered if they just did it by method acting. Turns out, either they do, or they smoke some sort of non tobacco prop cigarette.
That can't be healthy. And for the average person who wants to shoot a video or do cosplay or whatever, we are forced to either smoke a real cigarette, get a vape pen, or just forgo it. Then I thought of this.
What it does
It's a fake cigarette that you can put dry ice into. Looks realistic, but don't take my word for it. Look at the photos and videos.
As long as you don't breathe it into your lungs every breath, it's 100% safe, provided you pack the cigarette with larger rocks so that they don't fit through the mouth piece. I've never had a problem with that, so maybe I'm just taking extra precautions.
How I built it
I read up on the dimensions of a cigarette and got some reference photos. (As an added bonus, the blender object should be textured)
From there, I fired up blender and made a cylinder, cut 2 holes into it, and exported it to STL. It was shamefully easy to do. At least later, because I have the cigarette dimensions I can make something else with it. Maybe like "The Overdoser", a pipe that smokes a whole pack of cigarettes at the same time, or a cigarette joiner that just smokes 2 cigarettes, but can be joined with another joiner to make some sort of weird silly straw smoking contraption. Too bad I don't smoke, that would have been fun.
Challenges I ran into
Not all Kroger's sell dry ice. Had to drive 25 minutes away to find some.
I was planning on using crayons in my house to make the fake filter. Turns out I didn't have any. I did have some small post it notes of the same size, which I hot glued to the end of the fake cigarette.
I also had to switch out my filament to the white filament that came with my printer. I was saving that for a special occasion like this.
Once made, the dry ice was extremely hard to work with. You can't touch the dry ice (or at least you're not supposed to), it evaporates if you crush it too small, and if it's any bigger than you want it to be, then you have to smash it into smaller pieces, which doesn't yield good results. For better results, I would make some sort of heated element cookie cutter to make dry ice canisters special made for the cigarette. That would also last a bit longer because of the volume.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Just last month I never modeled anything in blender. Now I modeled 2 cylinders. 4 if you count the holes. It's a huge step up from just searching stuff on Thingiverse, because if I want to, I can now make custom stuff like water blocks and phone holders.
I'm proud that it looks exactly like I'd imagined. I thought of this idea wayyy before I even had a 3d printer. Seeing the finished product work is mind blowing.
The fake cigarette lasts about 30 minutes not doing anything, and 5 minutes puffing it.
The model is only 3 grams, which means that the total cost to print one is around 6 cents.
What I learned
I learned a lot about how dry ice works, how it feels, and where to buy it. Never done anything with dry ice before.
It was also some good practice modeling in blender.
Probably largest thing I learned, weirdly enough, is the Creative Commons - Share Alike license. What it means, is that if someone steals derives your work, they can't put their own license on it; They have to use Creative Commons. Normally I'd use the Apache 2.0 license, but that's a good alternative to the public domain.
What's next for 3D Printed Fake Cigarette with Dry Ice
Might consider finding a way to make the end of the cigarette more realistic. Might require some 3D printer bridging. Even if I got that to work, there would be no way to put the dry ice in, so I'd need some sort of removable cap.
Built With
- 3dprinting
- blender
- dry-ice
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