Hey Monty, glad to hear that your first furmeet went well!

I'm going to guess here that this is a stand that will connect to your fursuit and hold up a tail. I can't say that I have any fursuit experience, so I may be way off!

Shhhhhh, don't tell my tail! Ok ok, you pretty much nailed it.

I am in the process of making my tail and I noticed a lot of them hangs off the belt like a wet noodle. I hope this thing will serve as a base for the tail to attach to and provide something stable that doesn't flop around like so many I see. The best tails I observed were ones that attaches directly to a full fursuit. Since I am making a partial first, I wanted a tail that mimic that look ass much ass possible. So I designed this base to give that end of the tail something rigid as a support.

I also didn't want my tail to jut out from the small of my back. Not only does that look weird butt my spine would have to turn 90° above my pelvis, making for floppy hips. Or it'll have to go to the pelvis first, make a 180° turn to go back up, and then do that 90° bend all to that work physically butt still look weird. No, I want it to come out right around where my tailbone sits, just below the belt-line.

I moved the belt attachment point a little higher in my updated model ass this one sits a little too high on my but. Good thing I made a prototype first, butt I digress.

I also threw in some other ideas I have. If this works out, it'll be another item I made that is different than the norm. I guess you can say I am pretty abnormal.

As for the furmeet, it was kinda short and a bit crowded at times. Wished they had more activities for the group. I heard they had a group fursuit photo in the past but skip it that time around. Aside from bowling (which I didn't do) and that one pool table in the room, there wasn't much to do other than some small talk here and there. I did walk around the area outside the room a few times.

I feel a furmeet at a park with BBQ grilling would be better but that is a gut feeling as I never attended one of those... yet. I like furcons better as there is so much more to do. That Houston con is coming up quick. It is they're first year so I expect some learning experience but I do look forward for it. I just hope my experimental tail idea would be ready by then.

Mm, I totally get it. You want the tail to be following the movements of the dragon instead of looking like something with some ragdoll physics. An extension of the dragon instead of something with its own mind.

Best of luck getting a sturdy attachment loaded up to the rest of the build. With your modeling and building skills I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something great that works well!

Good on you on taking out the dragon suit to your first furmeet. Haven't had the chance since the blasted virus wrecked society but that might be changing soon enough.

Yeah, I want something that is closer to how the sew in tails on full fursuits look and function. I seen quite a few regular ones that just droops off the belt. It kinda looks like those ol' foxtails on alligator clips that people used to hang off their rear view mirror back in the day.

I also have other ideas with this design. The sturdy base can support a battery pack that can be used for LED lights and some motors to make the tail itself more around in the future. I already made a second print but I since make even more changes. I plan to print the 3rd (and hopefully the one I actually use, at least for the upcoming con). I have other ideas but I have to save that for the future. I am running out of time, just a couple of weeks left before blastoff.

Think thing I am worrying about is that damn surge. Still a good chunk of people refusing to listen to reason and get that vax. They are starting to clog up the hospitals once again. It is like they are purposely extending this out longer and longer. If everyone did the mask and social distancing at the beginning, the virus would have dies out in a month or two. But nooooo, can't have that, must draw this out as long as possible by staying the course just that little bit that was needed. Oh well, I digress with the stress.

They already canceled Celebrity Fan Fest again here in San Antonio. That usually have something like 30,000 attendees. That would have been a huge gathering indeed.

StratosFur is limiting it to 450 people, so hopefully it won't get hit with cancellation due to its smaller size, though people should still practice safe practices and get that damn vax. Good thing major cities like Houston and San Antonio have decently high vax rates. I heard over 70%, so there is that.

If that is an integral piece of a fursuit why bother with all the trouble of giving it wood grain?

That texture is an artifact of those layers not being perfectly parallel to the print bed, so the edges shows up as it transitions to the next layer above. The "saddle" part is a compound curve that makes visible edges even more apparent.

The effect is more pronounced as I went with the thickest layers that my nozzle size allows (0.32mm with the stock 0.4mm nozzle). This not only speeds of printing, but makes for a stronger part as the prints are weakest between the layers. I also print with a hotter temperature to promote better layer adhesion as well. Both effects doesn't add too much to the strength but getting some benefits is better than nothing, especially the trade off with the surface appearance doesn't matter in this case.

A lot of the times I prime and paint my parts so speed and that little bit of extra strength is my usual go-to. Slowing it down and going with finer layer heights is something I don't do all that often.

I already printed my second base plate. I thought that would be my final design but I ended up with more changes. I probably print that tonight. Those prints are taking just over 10 hours to do but once I made sure the first few layers are printing ok, I can leave it unintended until it finishes. I done so many prints that I am confident nothing too bad will happen though I do get those "unexpected surprises" here and there.

Thanks for your interest. Do you have a 3D printer? They are awesome and getting cheaper and cheaper. I do wish I got mine sooner. I gone quite crazy with mine... quite.

I do own one, but it's one of those liquid UV interface type and the vertical resolution is 1/1000 of an inch. So these kinds of artifacts don't show up or are so minuscule that they resemble groves on an old 33 rpm disk. On the negative side, those kinds of printers are quite limiting in the kind of polymer that can be used. The result is quite strong but brittle at the same time. The plastic pieces produced resemble the one used for making electrical outlets cover plates. The low-end printer, although very precise are very slow at printing. I used it to basically make replacement parts like oven nubs and stuff, I even printed a real electrical outlet cover plate that needed to have a bigger and deeper coverage over the electrical box.

I been looking into getting a resin printer as well. I seen some hitting around $200US although there are on the smallish size. But good enough if I need something for more detail. Right now, I find my Ender 3 Pro doing great for my current needs. I wish the bed was bigger but for the price I got it for (~$169), I couldn't pass up. Should have bit the bullet and bought one earlier as it turned out so useful.

The tail base I am making are getting close to the limits of the bed. The stock. Sometime in the future, I want to print my head base but it'll have to be in sections unless I get something bigger. A faster printer would be cool too but since I am not in a production environment, I can live with what I have.

The biggest thing I am looking forward to is the metal printers coming down in price so us mere mortals (and dragons) can afford. That I feel will be a game changer when that comes down the pipe in hopefully a few years. Also if multi-filament printers becomes more common. They are also working on printed circuits do-it-yourself machines. Now imagine combining all of them in one machine. That'll be the closest to thing a Start Trek replicator that we can get in the not too distant future. Our whole economy will have to change but that for the name of progress. We need to get off this old model quick and get closer and closer to Star Trek's one... finally.

There is also the problem of 1 company owning the North American patent for a kind of 3D printer that also add carbon fiber at it melts the plastic and build the model so that the resulting piece is almost as strong as steel. Unfortunately, they only rent the machine at ridicule high prices while everywhere else in the world you can buy the technology for very cheap. So the Chinese are using that kind of printer for making all kinds of parts and stuff while here in North America it's only the huge corporation who are able to afford such a printer because of a damn patent, even if the company owning it did not invent the damn thing.

I hate it when companies does that, especially when they can make even more money licensing it reasonable so it can spread far and wide. What is worse is the patent trolls that buys a patent and goes around finding existing products that just happens to be related enough so they can sue them, adding nothing in the inventing project to begin with. And ofen the sued company had no idea of the some odd vague patent and came up with not only the idea independently, but to put it in actual production. The patent trolls are literally a bunch of parasites.

Hopefully someone finds a way around it, something like how Creality did with their belt bed printers by angling the print end 45°. It makes for some weird slicing issues but it works well enough. As a side note to that, my idea is make a belt printer like that but to have the print end rotate as it Print. Slicing that would be a nightmare but could end up with some interesting effects.

I used filaments with chopped up bits of carbon fiber nanotubes already embedded in it, mainly for the anti-static properties. They print well and has this nice matte finish. But it is quite expensive like 5 times the cost of normal PLA. But some of the stuff I do at work, it is far far far cheaper than getting the parts CNC machined. Plus I can do shapes that is impossible to make with traditional mill machining.

When I design a part for printing, I have a different mindset that if I was going to get the part milled. I also like to design the parts with needing as little supports as I can by eliminating large overhangs and the like. I rather make a part in two or more pieces just avoid using supports. I want as much material to go into the actual part and not wasted on something that gets pulled off and thrown away. So adding a gusset or curve here and there is better than having to use a support is better in my opinion.

I'm using Autocad 11 3D, are you using Solidworks? Or something else? I know that Autocad 3D is not popular among 3D enthusiasts. But it's the one I'm comfortable with and I can do whatever I want with it. I've tried Freecad, but it still does have weird bugs in it. At least, so far, Autocad is quite solid and precise.

Ah, AutoCAD. Yeah, I used version 10 before... for DOS back in my college days in the 90s. Ugh, how I hated it so back then. It was 2D only but was my first introduction to CAD. Even though it had a mouse (well, kinda mouse tablet thing combining the worse of both worlds), the interface was mostly command line based. Even opening a file forgoes the mouse. I had to go to the main menu, type that I want to see what files are in the directory, remember the names cause I have to exit the list, type in that I wanted to open a file, and then type in the name of the file I wanted to open even though it itself knows what files are available since it listed it to me on the previous menu item. It was pure madness. That pretty much sour me off of AutoCAD. They was behind pretty much everyone else like SoftCAD but they had that monopoly at the time. Probably why they are no longer the force they once was.

The company I work for standardized on SolidWorks. I rather like it. The interface is mostlywell laid out although it has its quirks like the bad text sketching with no auto-center on the height and things like that. Also can't copy and paste it one piece. But overall in is quite slick.

Back in the day (like mid 2000s), I was using 3Dmax. I liked it overall at the time. Did quite a few models but I got bogged down with my ultra slow and ancient computer even back then. I also played around with Mudbox and Zbrush but again, my piece of crap computer limited my work. Oh, I also remember the Map editors for old 3Dish games like Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, and then the mighty Quake. Too bad I never released any of the levels I made. Fun times though.

But going back to SolidWorks, while very nice it is very expensive. I looked for alternatives and tried out FreeCAD. The backend seems to be very powerful but the interface just about horrible as one can make it though not quite on AutoCAD 10 for DOS level. Probably not for the lack of trying though.

Another program I been trying to wrap my head around is Blender. The sculpting part is not as easy as the old Mudbox or Zbrush I used all those years ago but I did manage (barely) to model my horns as the older posts shows. Thankfully it is still being worked on and had a big interface overhaul not too long ago. Maybe FreeCAD can get the same type of interface overhaul too. Hell, I would love if they just copy SolidWorks and be done with it. Well, the good parts anyway.

I haven't looked at software like SketchUp and the like as I heard the free version doesn't allow exporting in real file formats (I hate STL as it loses so much information). I wish something in the 3D world like FreeCAD was up to GIMP or Blender lever of finish.

I probably have to dump SW one at some point as I am not going to be working forever and not going to pay thousands for a license unless it pays for itself somehow selling stuff (I highly doubt it but who knows? Not me that is for sure ). They really need to come out with a lower cost version that doesn't cost and arm and a leg. I am sure most tinkers would need the more advance features and the like. But I have a feeling they are not interested in doing something like that. So my hopes in on FreeCAD to get in gear and clean things up. Right now I find it a mess.

I believe a breakthrough in free (or cheap) 3D software will be a game changer like how Arduino blew up by making the hardware so easy to use with the software development environment they created.

Oh!... I wrote Autocad 11 by error. I believe I started using that version a long time ago. I don't even think that old version is 3D capable... I'm actually using Autocad 2009 Sorry for the confusion.

Yeah, AuoCAD 10 for DOS was 2D only. Autodesk was late to the 3D party... just like everything else.

Yea, I did look at solid works but damn $$$$... If it's part of your work then yes I've heard that it's a good choice but cad work has nothing to do with my real job. So for now I think I will stick with Autocad 2009 3D

SW is pricey indeed... stupidly insanely pricey. That is why i would love to find an reasonable alternative as would have access to it for forever.

Not only I have SW at work, I also use Altrium, a very nice electrical schematic and board layout program. I use it custom circuit boards and the like. I already made a switch board for a fellow fur for use in his fursuit to replace a handmade protoboard that had corrosion issues. I added some waterproofing and my stuff been lasting a good long time so far. I have a few ideas for my own fursuit in the future. Getting custom board made is so much cheaper than it used to be. And the turn around from being ordered to being delivered is like 5 or less business days too. Insane how good it gotten compared to even just 10 years ago.