Industrial injury to industrial revolution

Panic not dear reader. I am not about to bore you with volume 4 on the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The short version of this journey was that I had neck ache so needed to sort my office out giving me a decent monitor to work on. While extracting batteries from the touch pad dohickey, I nearly severed a finger (th industrial injury part). As I was putting things together I realised that my mac takes up too much space so I REALLY wanted to go and buy one of the Twelve South BookArc thing-a-mug-bobs. The cheap ones are not available from the mac store so it was either:

• £70 - yes, £70, and a few days for the really sweet mahogany effect item to turn up.
• Or, 3D printing to the rescue

So, a sphere, several rounded edged cube and an hour later (and the industrial revolution bit) I had a simple prototype:

3D Printing - My first 'tool'

Now I know what the early cavemen felt like when they found fire - Yep, all warm and fuzzy inside. This 3D printing mallarky is all very well and good, but if you don't use it for a real purpose, then what is the point really. Well, today I built my first useful thing.

For my 3D scanning, I borrowed a compatible tablet for the scanner and started playing with that, given the Microsoft Surface 2 weighs nearly a kilo it's a bit of a burden on the fingers. The tablet needs a cradle I thought. My first challenge was trying to get the tablet on the build plate of the printer... I wanted a cradle that held the tablet in each corner, this would be the most secure and allow me to use the device in landscape mode. A rethink was required. More of a slot in harness... this has upsides, you can take the tablet out easily to use it elsewhere. Hmm...