More of a quick update rather than a real blog, hence the ".5" in the numbering

My shopping cart was delivered, big thanks to danzima for taking care of this! Let's have a look at what I ordered ...

USD to EUR

Buying from my local Farnell website, all prices were mentioned in EUR, rather than USD. There were no clear conversions provided with the instructions to order our shopping cart, so I quickly asked Google:

Knowing that, I started assembling my shopping list, based on the items I mentioned in my introduction post: [Bluetooth Unleashed] Felo'melorn #1: Introduction

Shopping Cart

When budget is provided for Design Challenges, I like to invest in reusable items such as tools. They're useful now, and will be in the future as well.

Besides, I already have drawers, boxes, bins, etc ... full of components, LED strips, boards and what not. Ask mcb1, I think he has the same problem ... but he likes to blame me for some reason

I managed to stay around the estimated budget in EUR, ending up with a 129EUR shopping cart.

Rotary Tool

The first item in my shopping cart is the Dremel 3000Dremel 3000. My last rotary tool died, so it needed replacement.

For this particular project, it will be used to sand down EVA foam into shape, forming the blades rough look.

The Dremel came in a nice blue pouch, with a little box of accessoires, perfect to get started.

Hot Air Gun

The next item in the shopping cart is a Bosch Hot Air GunBosch Hot Air Gun.

EVA foam comes in sheets of different thicknesses (2mm, 5mm, 10mm, ...). But depending on the project, pieces need to be reshaped to get curves for example. Bending the foam will not maintain the new shape, unless heated. And that's where this hot air gun comes into play.

Clear Filament

Finally, I added some clear PLA filamentclear PLA filament for my CEL Robox printer.

The prop will have embedded LEDs to create flame effects. Printing pieces with clear filament will allow me to make custom diffusers. I've been thinking about two approaches for this.

The first approach would be to print completely custom pieces for every part of the sword, but that could be very time consuming.

Another approach using the tools I now have at hand, would be to print sheets the size of my printbed, and use the heat gun to soften the print and manually shape it. I'm not sure if that will work, but it sounds like an interesting thing to try out!