The Steem Coin: Bring Out the Bling

The Steemit challenge coin was impressive, but I needed to step it up just a little bit. Sometimes that extra little kick can take things completely over the top. I wouldn't know what to do without taking things completely over the top…

So now I bring you the Steem Coin.

(Not an actual SMT.)

While the Steemit logo is complicated enough to need a lot of space before it becomes readable, the iconic representative of STEEM as a currency is much simpler and clearer to read, so it needed less actual physical space around it as a design. I also felt that something a little thicker would feel better in the hand; it needed just a little more heft.

I sat down in front of Fusion 360 and started tinkering with the logo. The first step was to pull the basic design up on a canvas because running things through Adobe Illustrator in order to generate an SVG has been less than successful. It works but the resulting geometry is too complex to actually manipulate with things like chamfers and fillets.

So instead – I traced it by hand with a series of splines.

It was actually less tedious than it sounds.

Once I had the central logo design and the proportions right, then came the interesting part – building the strange little knurling that you see on the sides. For some reason, I really enjoy designing that sort of thing.

It didn't start looking like the physical printed version that I opened the post with, however. Like all of the things that I do in Fusion 360, it started with a render.

You'll notice immediately that the advantage of not having a physical camera means that you can have very crisp edges, very clear chamfers, and an infinite selection of materials. Unfortunately for me, this is also one of the things that I get started tinkering with and playing with, sort of like changing fonts in a book layout, and suddenly three-quarters of the day has disappeared into the screaming maw of rendering.

I suppose that's a little unfair. I have tons of computing power to throw at any problem but Fusion 360 only allows you to render a fly around by using their online cloud rendering system. Sure, I could load up Blender, pull in the models, put together some PBR textures, set up a lighting environment, and then render has complex is seen as I want with indirect illumination and the whole 9 yards – but I'm lazy.

And I wouldn't have time to tinker with even more renders and different materials.

Honestly, how could anyone with not tinker with detailed renders all day rather than actually get something done?

Regardless, back to the process…

Having been horribly consumed with first creating complex offset knurling with a curved inner diameter guide rail, I turned my attention to considering what to do with this thing. Normally I would have gone straight to online production, but something about the actual look of the thing made me want to have one of my own in hand.

So off I went to the Monoprice Mini Delta with a freshly sliced file, a Raspberry Pi 3 which doesn't even have a case (the cobbler's children have no shoes) running OctoPrint, and a burning curiosity.

I made a few adjustments to my usual printer configuration in light of some of the results I've had over the last few months.

Layer height was 0.1 mm because I knew the printer could handle that easily. If I really felt like pushing it I could have cut that in half, but then base adhesion becomes a little bit of an issue.

I set the overall speed to 60 mm/s; fast for most Cartesian printers but not really breaking a sweat for a delta. (I've done prints at up to 120 mm/s for things with slightly larger features and it's turned out quite well, but extrusion becomes an issue when printing that fast. It's quite hard to melt filament, even thin filament, fast enough to squeeze it out the nozzle.)

I used neither raft nor brim, just printed directly on the BuildTak that came stock with the printer, using AIO Robotics' green PLA at 180°C and 50°C bed.

Sure, you can print PLA on an unheated bed – but why would you?

I increased my usual infill percentage from 5% to 20%, not because I was concerned about strength but to make doubly sure that I had enough support underneath the flat areas to keep them nice and stable. That turned out well. Extremely well, all told, because there's a certain heft to the coin that you can really tell. It's pleasing to feel and it's pleasing to hold.

All in all, it turned out to be a 20-minute print. One of these days I'll really have to connect a webcam to the OctoPrint server so that I can capture a decent time-lapse of one of these things.

That brings us back around to whether you can have one for yourself or not.

The answer is "yes."

If you have your own 3D printer, this is easy. I've put the Steem Coin up on Thingiverse, where you can download it and print as many of them as you want. If you do download it and enjoy it, leave a tip via the Thingiverse interface – it makes me look good and, one day, I might even earn enough money to buy a hamburger. No promises, but a man needs dreams.

If you're one of those poor souls without your own 3D printer or you would actually like the coin in metal, and if you're thinking about it I would heartily encourage you to stop thinking and start doing – because a metal Steem Coin is one of the greatest Christmas gifts that you can offer another human – I have provided for you as well. Just hop right on over to the Shapeways shop where I am offering the opportunity to buy your own Steem Coin in a vast multitude of plastics and metals ranging from a meager $5 for a lovely bright yellow plastic coin all the way up to $1,800 if you're a bit of a whale and want it in 18 karat gold.

(You can also get it in transparent acrylic for $15, and while it doesn't really look much like a traditional "coin," it looks cool as Hell and feels amazing. If you've never had your hands on some printed resin parts, you owe it to yourself to buy one of these just to use it as a worry stone. Incredible texture.)

You know what? Don't decide. Go on over to Thingiverse, download the STL, leave me a fat tip, go on over to Shapeways, buy 10 of them in 18 karat gold, then come back over and tell me how much fun you had throwing money at the screen.

I'll wait. It's cool. Go on. I'll be here.

(One of these days I need to get around to actually doing a video tutorial on how to do some basic 3D modeling for sharing with the community. If that sounds like something you would like, leave a comment down below and tell me the sort of thing you'd like to learn how to make. If you don't say, I can't know.)

As they say in the coin business, "catch you on the flipside."