3D Printing Dinosaur Bones For A Museum - MTM #35 - 3deedan

In this episode of Meet the Makers, we sit down with Daniel Orr, a unique creator who collaborates with the Missouri Institute of Natural Science to 3D print components for dinosaur reconstructions. Daniel shares his journey into 3D printing, spurred by personal circumstances, and how it led him to volunteer at the museum. He delves into the challenges and triumphs of printing large-scale dinosaur parts, the museum's history, and its significant discoveries. Daniel's story is a testament to how passion and community involvement can lead to extraordinary contributions in the field of paleontology.
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Where to find Daniel / the museum 
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@3deedan?lang=en
Museum website: https://www.monatsci.org/the-museum
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Come be a guest on meet the makers: https://forms.gle/wTqzxqGpsu9hZ39F6
Follow misfit printing on Tiktok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@misfit_printing
Support the show / Misfit at The Harpo:  https://theharpo.com/ 
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Meet the Makers
00:34 Daniel Orr's Journey into 3D Printing
02:37 Challenges and Triumphs in 3D Printing
04:32 The Evolution of 3D Printing Projects 
06:45 Museum Contributions and Community Impact
17:02 Lithophanes and Custom Creations
23:24 The Dilophosaurus
24:04 3D Printing Projects and Market Challenges
24:27 Museum Volunteering and Personal Stories
25:21 Dinosaur Replicas and Future Plans
35:10 Night At The Museum 
39:23 Final Thoughts and Inspirations

Transcript

riverside_daniel_& kate _ nov 23, 2024 001_misfit_printing's s
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Meet the Makers. Today, I have a very exciting guest with us. I have Daniel Orr and he often works with the Missouri Institute of Natural Science, one of the most exciting creators that I have come across in the 3D printing space. What he specifically does is 3D prints components for dinosaurs inside of their museum.

I have not seen, Anything else like it on social media and so excited to talk more today and just to get to know you and your projects a little more. So first of all, thank you so much for jumping on with us today Thanks for having me. As I said, we've been trying to get this set up for a while and I was excited to do it, we've gone back and forth for a while. So I am super excited that we finally got to sit down and find time to talk today, I'll kick you off the same way and I'm sure that it'll go down a crazy different path, but to start off How did you get into 3d printing and making stuff in general?

Oh I guess I could make the backstory We'll get this a little personal too You know coveted hit back in when? Late 2019 early 2020 and they start having the shutdowns and my dad who had a triple bypass [00:01:00] 20 something years ago needed to go back to the doctor and kept getting pushed off and pushed off because of COVID restrictions and when you couldn't go to the doctor, he ended up having a series of strokes before he got in.

And I helped take care of him every day, and I needed something to do on my own And I'd been coming to this museum, once a year for several years, since my kids had been in middle school. And I was out here hiking a trail nearby, and I'm just like, I'm gonna walk in there and check it out again.

And there was the volunteer sign. I said, hey, we need volunteers. And I said, hey, I've always thought about that. I worked nights most of my life, and my kids were in school. But They're adults now and I work days like put in your application and I did that and like I said, I'd watched the stages of Henry, the triceratops for a long time he was in the cast that came out of the ground behind a partition in a small building I started volunteering and they started getting together, having meetings and we've really got to get this thing done because it was a donation from a landowner in Wyoming we were like, what are we going to do 

And I'd always had an interest in 3D printing. I'd never seen one [00:02:00] before in person, honestly, and I said, Hey, I've been thinking about doing this. Do you think this is a process we could do? Because we are a very small museum, very few resources for, people to even get away and build something out of plaster.

And he goes, I think we could. He has another friend who's he's with the museum, and we talked to him, he's We could absolutely do this. He goes, I know people from several other museums who will let me use their scans of the stuff we don't have I can scale it to what we're doing then he goes, I'll make the STL files and send them to you.

You have a Google share file, All right, I'm going to look and find the biggest 3D printer I can within my budget. the first printer I got was the Creality CR 10 S5. It was a 500 by 500. that was not a beginner printer. I spent a good two months just beating my head against a wall until I figured out how to do this.

And that turned into getting Other printers mainly I started with the crealities who doesn't that teaches you a lot like I said this project has about 14 [00:03:00] 000 hours of printing in it I do the stuff on the side just like everybody else i've got the bamboo lab printers now and I do a lot of other stuff for the museum through patreon I have flexi factory who does all the skeletal dinosaurs.

And so I print those and we sell those here for fundraising in the museum and such I actually bought my first printer. It was a very complicated, large printer. And I did it just to do dinosaur bones at first. 

I just got my first larger format printer myself and it's definitely a bit of a learning curve even compared to my other printers. So I have to imagine being newer to 3D printing at the time and running massive prints on that.

Even from just a bed leveling standpoint, that had to be quite the adventure. I didn't know what I was doing. I hadn't looked at stuff. you could tram it, I didn't really know what all that was. even on the Crealities in the beginning even getting your starting layer, I would start a print.

And then manually adjust my Z axis in the micrometers to get it to start. that's how I started every print for a year, [00:04:00] especially on Creality, because I never did learn how to exactly get my starting Z axis part for a long time. I'd start it and be like, Z axis adjust, and it goes in like 0.

1 millimeters in that or whatever. And I'd adjust it out that way. And I knew what its offset was\ even when you did get them figured out, the springs and stuff were after three of them start normal, they're already off kilter again, it's like having flashbacks listening to you talk about this. It's been a while since I printed out my crealities, but I was the same as you. I wouldmanually adjust my Z offset on that first layer, like trying to just get things to go down. now with you, it sounds like you're on Bamboo too, but it's like a whole different process.

Totally. I actually went from Creality to the Anycubic stuff and those Anycubic Vipers were about the same price. All auto leveling, no screw, and those things worked great, I've run five or six of the Vipers into the ground and they've moved away from that line anyway.

Then I've had two of the Anycubic Cobra Maxes and I've run them to into oblivion. They're not [00:05:00] repairable. And now I think I'd mentioned something about the Elegoo stuff. I've got, they're all still in the box. I haven't opened them yet. I got three of the Elegoo Neptune four maxes and that's the four 20 by four 20 by four 50 or five somewhere in there.

Cause I've actually, I went through the whole deal and I've got a partnership. I'm getting ready to start with Elegoo. So they, I hadn't even hadn't heard back from them. And then yesterday I was at home and my son's You've got another printer out there on the porch. I said, no, I bought those two and I've never taken the other one down to the city.

He goes no, you have another one. I'm like, oh, they finally sent it. So I'm really going to get back into my content creation so I can push them because that's going to be great for us because I have to have three of those to print stuff. My next project is I'm going to completely recreate the triceratops.

We're either going to find another museum who wants it or we've thought about putting it in the lobby at the local airport or maybe the library, something that gets it out there and, people can see and be like, This is the, the real ones at this location, go check it out kind of deal. It's crazy. I know we were talking before [00:06:00] this that you're just starting to get back into content. And I know it's been a while since you posted, but even seeing just how far since the last update that we've seen from Henry the last update that I saw on your page, like there was a lot missing still.

Since we're in the background now, it's really cool seeing so much of it having come together. As you were talking in the beginningyou answered a lot of my questions, but take me back a little bit. He didn't originate, he wasn't originally from Missouri.

You said he was from Wyoming? No. He is from Eastern Wyoming. with anything fossil wise, there's a geologic time scale to the Earth. our geologic layers here are way older than dinosaur stuff. Henry's late Cretaceous, so he's going to be like 66, 67 million years old.

What we have here in Missouri is that ancientsea life. We're looking at 300 to 350 million years. you have to find the right areas And be lucky enough to know somebody in that field we are actually the first dedicated natural history museum in missouri As of right now, we're still the only real mounted dinosaur in the state of missouri, but our director He's that's this is like what his life has [00:07:00] been and he got him on a date Dig.

He took some people on a dig with some friends who were digging on a property of this rancher in Wyoming. And even at that it's private property. It actually belongs to the landowner. And he said he'd left, they dug for a week and he just goes, there's something special about this dinosaur I want it for.

He goes, we need this in Missouri. And he. Called the rancher back got to know him and they negotiated terms and they went back and finished digging over a couple years actually, because he was discovered in 2013. And we actually just went back and did the last dig on him.

This is 24 in. we didn't really find much, but we just that finish up dig and we were trying to hope to find some of that last stuff and because like I've, he, like I said, that was 2013 and I've been here for four and a half years as a volunteer. So I wasn't even there for the major dig stage of it.

That was one of those things I was curious about. You came in about four years ago when you had come in had they started doing any I know you mentioned maybe some museums do it through plaster.

[00:08:00] Obviously, you guys have done 3D printing on it, but had they started reconstructing anything up until this point? Yeah, there was When we had up in here, you had a big part of the frame built already, and you had the skull. The skull is a recreation. We never found the real skull, and it's a plaster, or, It's a simply a sculpture, they had a couple of the leg bones that they'd filled in that way, but after that we started completely with the 3D printing.

I think we did one with kind of wooden plaster, and it was his Right scapula because we needed to get it up and mount it. It was a complicated piece The guy hadn't actually made files for it And he's like I was gonna cut it out of wood build it on a plaster and he got that up there like that 

okay makes sense For you guys in it if I'm understanding correctly, so basically you were able to look at other records of other Dinosaurs and create files off of that then to backfill what you guys didn't have records for yeah The guy who helped us his name is henry sai was a phd paleontologist Who taught at the local state [00:09:00] university here in springfield, missouri And but he's not one of those who likes to go out in the field he got permission from The Smithsonian, their Triceratops is named Hatcher, and it's actually quite a bit smaller than ours.

But he got permission to use their files, their scans of what they had, and then he scaled it to what we had. this is actually, the largest Triceratops ever found. There was nothing out there comparable. So he had to actually take it and scale it. which was an interesting process because you would think if something's twice as big, everything would be double scale, but it just didn't work that way.

If you compared stuff like this ribs might be two times as big, the feet were only 14 percent bigger vertebra. So the, whenever it grows up, it's not at an even scale per se. No, I found that really interesting, that things didn't grow and, just because your femurs are twice as big doesn't mean your ribs and vertebrae are twice as big that is interesting to hear, and I guess it's similar to humans too. if I think about myself, I'm A little taller than average for a woman, but I have incredibly short legs. Like I'm not very proportional. [00:10:00] So I'm the same. I have short legs. I'm almost six foot, but I wear a 32 inch inseam.

And I know people who are three inches shorter than me that have 34 inch inseams. It's just nothing. Nobody's and no thing has ever been exactly symmetrical or exactly proportionate. And so it makes us unique, for sure. seeing you next to it it's crazy the scale of it.

And you said it's the biggest Triceratops that's been found up until this point? Yeah because they have formulas they can do based off bone measurements to give you an estimate And I think average for a Triceratops is like eight to 10 metric tons. And Henry's conservative estimate was 18 metric tons.

So it's not like he's this much bigger than the next one. He's exponentially bigger than the next one. He's like the Shaq of dinosaurs, it sounds that's exactly the way I say it when people come in. I'm like, he's the Shaquille O'Neal of Triceratops, I love that.

Coming back to the 3D printing side of it. So for you guys, you make the decision that 3D printing is the way that you guys are gonna go about this. You're gonna start creating pieces from that. Looking at the [00:11:00] components that you guys have printed on there, it looks like they match very well to everything else.

it looks like it blends very well into all the other components. What does the finishing process look like for those prints? Honestly, if I had any real bad support sticking, I always tried to orient it where that would be hidden or behind.

If it was a big enough piece that we had to cut it into pieces and put it together even what you do with real bones when you're patching because they're fragile, you have an epoxy putty where you make, it's called paleo putty, and you mix it together and we'd pushed that over the seams 

that was back then we used mesh mixer, which is just. Excuse me, that is a bitch to use, especially when you're trying to put dowel rods or things. I actually use Bamboo Studio for almost everything now, that is just, I know some of the other, like Cura, have added that, where you can cut and slice and add dowels, but it's been a game changer being able to do that.

I haven't had a ton of prints I've had to slice into multiple pieces, but even for the basic, if we're talking about slicing a Mandalorian helmet, nowhere near as complex as what you guys are doing over there. I was like, you were talking about that as I'm working on our second dinosaurs, the [00:12:00] notosaur.

If it was like biology, all animals, you know what a sacrum is? it'd be like your tailbone where the bottom ribs and stuff. Alright, let me see if I can scoot back that's the sacrum for the new dinosaur, Wow. I just broke that off, that's alright. It was a secondary piece, we're gonna putty it all back together. Oh, okay. That's even like with the real dinosaur bones, like they say, if you've never broken a fossil or broken a bone, you're not a real paleontologist.

that's one of the things I was thinking going through watching your content. I guess for your everyday person like you or me, I'm used to going to a museum and it's something where it's like far behind ropes and you can't touch it. But it seems like at your museum you guys have things like Pretty, pretty open to the public 

We do have a barrier around him we, the kids can't go up and touch him. But we do keep a lot of stuff I depends on what kind of mood I'm in that day and how I want to interact with people or how the kids are acting, but I keep stuff in different places. We can go up to the counter and be like, hey, here's a real chunk of dinosaur bone you can touch.

And they go to another place, oh, here's a mammoth bone. [00:13:00] You can touch and just different things which we try to be interactive and we've actually used a small museum. We've even this week. It was last Friday. We had some people come through who were from Europe and they said they'd been traveling around and said they actually went in the Smithsonian and looked around the Smithsonian and not our dinosaur stuff, but he told us our gym and mineral collection and display.

He liked it better than the Smithsonian's. We're always proud of that kind of stuff now, for you, it sounded like you had gone to the museum, you had gone multiple times, and you had just almost fallen into it, realizing that you could volunteer there, but did you have a background in being interested in the museum?

Just all this stuff in general before you started here to an extent. You know what kid didn't like dinosaurs. I'm that age. We got one section on it in fourth grade. my graduating class was under a hundred people. I went to a town that, when I was a kid, there were 3000 people in town.

And that's, the early eighties, mid eighties. here's your five dinosaurs. You get to know about, and then you move on. So there's not really anything to foster or continue that kind of growth with kids who are interested in that That's one thing that's really great about this museum because we have a summer camp program [00:14:00] for kids called Dino Camp.

we really have something in the area that kids can come and learn more. when I was a kid, you had a T Rex, a Triceratops, a Pterodactyl, a Stegosaurus and maybe one or two others, a Brontosaurus, and these kids come in now that are five and six years old 

I've been here for four and a half years, and I'm learning a lot more than I used to know, but these five and six year olds know more than I ever will, it's just what about this dinosaur? It's my favorite dinosaur, and I'm like, I've never heard of that kids just absorb that stuff like a sponge, and I think if you can get kids interested early, that kind of sticks for life.

We've actually had some kids that come through here in their early when they were younger and went through dino camp or different things. It's not all dinosaur related, but we have there's kids who went through here and learn from this museum who have gone on and done good things in paleontology and got degrees.

We have a. Kid right now who's actually in the University of Wyoming getting his degree in paleontology. He's already got jobs working for ranchers, leading digs as a summer job. there are a lot of museums out there that are even larger museums. And you go in it and they're not much [00:15:00] more than a curated collection anymore.

And this museum still, Publishes papers and does research Not me. I'm an enthusiastic volunteer that's I work at a cheese factory is my real job. So that's oh get out it's a very unique profession 

I have to say you're the first person I've ever met who's worked in a cheese factory.

It's a large international based company because you're in Arizona. Yeah. Yes. We're at in Arizona? In the general Phoenix area, like off the streets. We have a plant in Tempe. Oh, okay. Yeah. Small world.

Yeah we're actually going to be in Tucson with the museum in February Tucson has the world's largest gem mineral and fossil show every late January, early February. And so we're going to go out there as a museum because we go out there and buy stuff in bulk for our gift shop and stuff like that.

So we're gonna go out there for a long weekend and buy a bunch of stuff to bring back. That's super cool. I never got super into stuff like that, but I've always wanted to. I had gone to one Gemstone show with one of my friends. She was very into it. I could see how you could get just super [00:16:00] entrenched into it, and it's seems like a collection that you could never have an end to finding things to collect.

No, not at all. I do a little bit, like I'll do vendor boosts with the 3D printing stuff to make a little extra cash, and I'm adding minerals and fossils into that, I bought a pound of fossilized shark teeth a while back from a kid, and I've been setting those up in the little Crystal trays and stuff.

So I'm going to start adding that in and trying to sell stuff like that. I'm going to try to find some stuff for my own personal collection and my own booth when I'm out there. Yeah, that's awesome. That's cool. I'm well paid off the stuff I've shown and it's not like you go into a big arena. It's sections of town that are like, you go to these hotels, they push all the stuff to the back of the room.

These hotels make so much money, they don't care. And like you go in from hotel to hotel, you can go from room to room, it'll be different vendors and it's like the entire town. here's the people from China with their stuff from China. Here's the section of people from Morocco.

Here's Brazil. It's like the entire town, not just one convention center I've lived in Arizona for five years now. I've never known [00:17:00] about this. So that's cool to hear about. I know that you mentioned you've been doing some shows I'm not sure if it's something you're still doing, but in the past in your content, I saw that you were doing a lot with lithophanes.

Is that still something that you do? Oh yeah, I love that. I can't really take that to shows too much because it has to be custom made. one of my favorite events I do every year now, it's a Japanese Fall Festival. And I will make up about 10 or 12 of those. I'll make them a little smaller where they'll fit on those rotating bases.

And each one will be a specific anime. Like here's your One Piece, here's your Dragon Ball Z, here's your Sailor Moon my lithophanes really take off at Christmas time. I actually had a lady from work order one. Two days ago that's just something I see a lot of lithophanes done in social media But when I started doing the woodworking the wood frames and the lighting I've never really seen anybody else doing that I'd like to get an Etsy page and actually push that but I get easily overwhelmed where do I find the time?

How do I do this? I spread myself pretty thin Yeah, it sounds like you have a lot of interest and a lot of talents. [00:18:00] Like you said, the way that you do them, it's pretty unique. I don't see a lot of other people incorporating the woodworking into them, so I thought that was really cool the way that I saw you do them.

For people who maybe aren't familiar can you briefly talk through what the lithophanes are essentially it's a 3D printed picture. You have a program you run it through. I use lithophanemaker. com you go in and set your parameters.

How tall do you want it to be? You can do square ones. You can do round ones. I do a lot of the they're circular. You can do three or four pictures and it makes a cylinder. I try to do standardized sizing to make my woodworking easier. so I do them at 150 millimeters tall and I try to edit the pictures to be one, one scale.

That way everything comes out uniform, but it essentially prints them standing up. you do a hundred percent infill. So you don't see grid lines through the light, it. Decides how thick it needs to be in different places. when your light comes on behind it, it creates the picture based on the depth of the plastic in each location.

I buy LED battery powered LED lights off of Amazon usually to put in [00:19:00] them. And like I said, the round ones, I'll make a wood lid and wood base. Sometimes I'll burn the wood off. Somebody wants a custom color. I like, I had a guy order one where it was pictures of his kid from his different school sports.

And their school colors were red and. So I did all the woodwork and redstained. I'll try to personalize them a little bit like that. But it's just one of those things that's really unique. People really like them. You can do them where they're circular and put like a tab on them. Then if you make them about 80 millimeters across, you can hang them on the Christmas tree in front of a Christmas light, and they'll almost perfectly light them up.

I actually do that at work. do you guys, know what an angel tree is? it's our local foster care system, a lot of times it's harder to get those kids will all write down something turn it in even though they're in foster care and a lot of business to pick those up.

So I will actually. Instead of buying stuff, I make those at work, and people order them from me, I sell them for, 10 a piece but all that money goes into that program so they can buy presents for the foster kids I usually [00:20:00] make 500 or 600 a year to buy presents that way.

Oh, that's awesome. I do a lot of other work like that because we have a local tenant county or it's called OKAC, it's an organization to help you fight poverty. they have OKAC Head Start, which is like a free preschool.

If you meet the financial requirements, my girlfriend is on the board in this county. every year we have a Mac and Cheese Festival. last year I 3D printed some little cheese wedges for you. And we just had them set up where, they're not a 20 item, but if you donated 20, you got one.

And I raised 500 for that as well. they had a pickleball tournament here recently and I made the trophies for their pickleball tournament. I've done stuff. I think if you went back to one of those videos, I did, I've done trophies here for like contests with the Triceratops skull for second, third place.

We used to have trunker treats and we do costume contests. So I'd make trophies for that kind of stuff yeah, you like I was And like you've said, you have a wide range of things that you make. It sounds like you have a lot of different experiences doing different [00:21:00] things there too.

It's a very good supplemental income unless you have a full blown print farm And you can pump out a hundred items a day when you're running six or seven printers. It's a passive income I get up in the morning. start them I'm at work and build up an inventory And I'll do a farmer's market here there and I do two or three big events a year like that Japanese Fall Festival We found another one.

We'd like to do that It was like Two friends and junk. It's a big Christmas thing. And I'm going to try and do that next year. There were no other 3d printers there, they said. So it sounds like maybe you have about six primers. Did I hear that right?

That you guys are, you're running right now. I'm, let's see, I've got one P one P two, two P one S's and a one mini and two a ones. And now I'm setting up the three. Neptune 4 maxes, but over time, I've, like I said, when you mothball all the Crealities, mothballed all the Vipers, I've probably had over 30 printers overall.

It just gets to, like I said, the Crealities are great to learn [00:22:00] on. I've heard other people say that, even I think on your podcast before, and it's good to learn on you learn a lot, but then, even though you see people say, Oh, don't start with the bamboo because it's a crutch there comes a point where even if the Crealities, once you do the upgrades and you keep replacing hot ends that 150 Creality eventually becomes a thousand dollar bamboo.

And it's just can't take the time and the money for this anymore. My first Crayolity, I always say I, over engineered that thing to the point where it wasn't even functional anymore. But if I think back to the original cost, I think at the time of the Crayolity, I had the under 3v2, I think it was a 270 printer.

And, man, I crazy to even say, but I probably put 500 into different things that I tried upgrading on it. And at that point you might as well just buy a bamboo printer. Which a lot of those weren't out yet. But anybody who's asked me about getting into it, if they want their kids to have something because they like what I'm doing.

Because I don't say, no, don't get it. I'll just send them the link. I said, here's the bamboo A1. Or if you don't want to spend [00:23:00] that money and you're not going to print anything very big, get the A1 Mini. But the AMS, when you can get into that for under 500, I think you can get into it around 400 with the A1.

It's what else, why get something else? I've only been printing for about two and a half years now, but just in the time that I've been printingit seems like it's completely changed things, and I have to imagine probably for you and the stuff that you make, it's completely changed as well.

Do you have a dinosaur in the background as well? Is that a Dilophosaurus? It is a Dilophosaurus. I didn't print it myself. Actually, before I had a 3D printer, I purchased this on Etsy. It is 3D printed, and I just thought it was, the coolest thing. a couple years later, I got a 3D printer myself.

But it's alwayssomething I've had around. So when we decided to get on today, I figured it would be a good opportunity to break it out for our call Okay, that's cool. Yeah. it sounds like maybe you had a little bit of this when you were young I think everybody's interested in dinosaurs when they were younger, but I was definitely a dinosaur lover as a kid So oh, yeah, it's done with me I think my school project in fourth grade was a diorama and I made clay dinosaurs it seems to be a thing no matter what [00:24:00] generation you're from, kids always love dinosaurs and that seems to stay true over time.

For you, as you're working on the, it sounds like you're doing like a whole other dinosaur now. Are there any other projectswhether dinosaur related or not that you really want to work on as a 3D printing project?

Like I said, I like doing my booth and stuff, I don't sell online because you got If you, when you go through TikTok, everybody's, it's the race to zero. You can't compete with them. So I do the stuff around here and it's fun to do that once in a while to do a market or whatever.

But most of my other projects are museum related, this place like I said, I was talking about when my dad was sick and this was my my getaway, I started that. I started volunteering in June of 2020, and he passed in August that same year. at that point in time, like I said, I was that single guy in my mid 40s and, small town.

This place and these projects probably kept me from Being an alcoholic at the local country bar, so everything I do, I like it just this museum like I said, saved my life, This is where I want to do things. I've become pretty good friends with the director.

He actually [00:25:00] works for the county here as well. He's the county geologist. At one point in time, he's He goes, you know what? There's a gal that works down here in the county offices. Now the county goes, I think you two should meet. And now we've been dating for three and a half years, and we're getting ready to move in together in the next six months remodeling a house.

he knew her well, and she does a lot of stuff. She's on boards and stuff. So now she's actually a board member for the museum. So we're very invested. We're very invested in this museum I'm going to recreate the triceratops. We want to try and get it in places.

after I get done with the one we're doing now, it's called a notosaur. do you know what an ankylosaur is? The big armor plated one that would have the club on the tail. It's in that family. It doesn't have the club on the tail, but it's a big armor plated dinosaur. And we have that big armor plated shell.

So I'm 3d printing a skeleton. to mount that shell on top of. that's what I had the sacrum for over here. we're going to try and find some place that wants a copy of the triceratops. if they don't have room, maybe somebody wants just a full size replica of the skull.

We could put it somewhere and say, Hey, this is where we want that. I've been looking at files yesterday. [00:26:00] I would like to maybe make a recreation of a, one scale Megalodon jaw and have that in here, we have some people who know how to do the paleo painting to paint it, to look more realistic.

If you need to have a big Megalodon jaw for a photo booth for kids or something. That would be super cool for sure. I've seen that at some other places And I feel like that's always a hot hit for photos. Have you ever been to Buffalo, New York, by chance? I have. I've been through there. I've never been to any the museums or anything. I was there in the early 90s on a family vacation. But I was talking about our friend Henry Sy, who made my STL files. He was a teacher here in Missouri.

He took a job in Connecticut. he and his girlfriend were moving out there, and he was going to be a professor a week before he moved, his moving company bailed on him, so he had to rent a U Haul. he left his Jeep with me, and I could take vacation about a month after that.

I drove his Jeep to him, and I left way too early, I got to about Indianapolis, because it was going to take you across Pennsylvania. [00:27:00] And I'm like, You know what? I'm running way too early, so I googled it, and cut north through Cleveland, at four o'clock in the morning, I was standing by myself overlooking Niagara Falls it was a neat experience.

\ . I ask, I'm actually originally from Buffalo, New York, in Buffalo, we have giant buffalo statues Okay. They're like painted in different ways. And, you'll go to the airport and they're there and you'll go to museums schools. And even doctor's offices, 

But I was thinking for you, like maybe you guys eventually have something like that with triceratops everywhere. We have actually had that idea run around a little bit. Cause you have like downtown area, they'll have art walks, But you're the buffaloes. They do that in Custer, South Dakota as well.

If you've never, if you've never been into like South Dakota and the black Hills, it is so beautiful, they have those buffalo statues all over town there and different organizations, places, paint them up different scenery on them and stuff, and that's really neat. we've talked about that.

Like I said, you get a board and nobody all agrees with each other. we'll probably do it with the ankylosaur because you get that big armor plated shell. You [00:28:00] would have a surface to paint. we've talked about. Recreating the triceratops at half scale to put someplace where it could fit in town and our director is very big He's no he goes his what makes him special is his size and whenever you reduce him down You're just making him any other triceratops he goes I don't know that I like that idea if you're going to put them outside With limited space you're gonna you could 3d print it But then you're gonna have to make molds so that you could mold it in something and we don't have the storage space You would need a building of its own to even the molds for the skulls and things like that.

Yeah, totally makes sense. I understand where he's coming from. I do think the size of your triceratops makes him definitely special. the first thing I'm going to do when I get all the Neptune set up is I'm going to do a one, one scale recreation of the skull.

Cause that's why I said I was grabbing some stuff here. This is a tiny, but I printed that on that CR 10 S five. I've done some other. That's 1 25th scale, or 1, no, 1 scale maybe. Okay. [00:29:00] Did I mishear you? Did you start calling it tiny? Because I would say that it's anything but tiny.

This is a tiny version. in terms of stuff that I'm used to 3D printing, it's massive. But I guess it's scaled to your normal one. It's tiny. I scaled that up as big as I could get it on that CR 10 S5. And that was a five or six day print. What would you say is your largest or your longest print that you guys have done over there?

I had one. you know what the coracoid process is? It's where your bicep and your shoulder blade meet. his left one is real. And Henry did the photogrammetry on it. then you just, reverse the axis and we printed the right one. it was. minutes shy of 11 days. I don't think I've ever encountered a file that's quite that long.

So that's pretty impressive. now I could really reduce the amount of time. The printers are better. I was running everything with a 0. 4 nozzle. I was running everything like [00:30:00] 20 percent infill as well. It said to be up here and be up here for years.

It's gotta be pretty sturdy, so I've got 0. 8 nozzles I'm gonna put in those Neptunes, which that'll help cut time in half, and I said, if I were to do him again, it would not take 14, 000 hours. I could probably cut that time more than in half. That's interesting. It's actually something I didn't think about, but yeah, even speaking in terms of the infill on itI guess if you were to reprint this again, would you Drop it down.

it sounds like you were doing 20 percent infill standard at that point You think you could drop it down? I drop it down to 10 probably. Yeah I said I would love to make one copy of it and make the molds But i'm gonna have to win powerball tonight so I can build a building to put the molds in for you, it sounds like Working with the museum and just like, all the things that you've done there.

I'm sure they've gotten a lot out of it, but it seems like it's given a lot back to you personally. Oh, absolutely. Just hobby wise, yeah. 

for people listening to thisI guess it's probably different from museum to museum, but Do you think this is something like other museums like our volunteers needed at museums? Would you say oh Every museum out there [00:31:00] needs volunteers.

That's one of the things we got into this Even though this took so long, it probably wouldn't have got done on this scale because like I said, when we were doing this, I was 3D printing it. then what we would do is we'd come in three or four of us on a Thursday night after hours and weld and cut and build the frame and work on it.

We'd come in on a Sunday when we're closed and work on it. We'd come in on Memorial Day when we're closed and work on it. We're not like, the field museum in Chicago or, the big museum in Denver. They can build everything behind the scenes and then blow it out and stuff, at best, we usually have a solid crew of three or four reliable people.

It's cool seeing what you guys have been able to put together there It seems like you guys are growing. Oh yeah. Like I said, we're getting ready to add on the building. we built a great relationship with that rancher in Wyoming.

So we go out there and dig every year. that's something I never in my life would have thought I would have done. the last three years I've gone to Wyoming for a week and you primitive camp and you just get dirty and dig. it's a definitely unique experience. I guess for you, did you ever, before you got [00:32:00] involved with this a couple years agoimagine this being something that would be part of your life?

Absolutely not. No, like I said, middle class person, you can have one hobby at a time. It's all you can afford. before this, my hobby was cars. I had my souped up Mustang and now my son has that and I do this. For you, yes, I'm sure your museum that you are associated with, I'm sure that's your number one museum.

But if we take that out of the equation, are there any other museums that you've been to over the years that you really have just loved or maybe are on the top of your list? Yeah, absolutely. There's the School of Mines Museum at the college in Rapid City, South Dakota, that's up at the northern part of the Black Hills.

I'm gonna go completely through the Black Hills for a little bit. There's the Black Hills Institute of Natural Science in Hill City, South Dakota. And if you know the Dinosaur World, all you've, have you heard of the T Rex? The big T Rex fossils like Sue and Stan and all that. Those, that's the museums that they came from.

That's actually where our director got his start. He was a 16 year old kid on vacation there [00:33:00] and went in and talked to those guys. It was Pete and Neil Larson. They were brothers and they're like, where are you from? And he's he goes, here, I was this scroungy kid. riding motorcycles I'm this scroungy kid who came in off the street off a motorcycle with long hair.

And he goes, they treated me like I was a human being. No big deal. Missouri, that's a place that needs a natural history museum and that's what put the seed in his head, He was working, I think, for the parks department in this area and they were doing a road cut just down the road here where they were blasting the road.

When you drive through a road cut, you can see the drill marks where they drilled holes to put all these charges in and they started putting the charges in and they'll blast like 10 of them. Ten of those at a time, and I think they had two of them that had charges in them, and this happened on 9 11 in 2001, and a national cease blasting order went out on those charges.

They're not removable, and they're not safe to leave, and I had to sit there for several hours, but they got. to blow them. And when th Missouri is called the ca opened up a cave. And [00:34:00] if have a little area where hunting and stuff for our

That are drill brothers supposed to have charges and they go right over the top of the cave and they called people out to look at it. he was one of the two that came out. He was just a kid early twenties, working for parks, and they said he went in and they just had the headlamps and stuff on, and this cave had been completely sealed off.

And he goes, I came out lying my ass off. I said, you have to move this road. This is the most significant find there had. They actually moved the road redesigned it. But took a couple of years. They got back into the cave and he's we got in. We did the research, started doing the testing.

it made an honest man of him. It's actually the oldest fossil cave in North America. it was a short faced bear cave. It has claw marks in the wall. There were mammoth teeth. pieces. There's layers in there that go back like I think 2 million years. 

And that's actually why the museum's here to begin with. Because of 9 11. So it's tragic for American history, but it actually is why we're here. [00:35:00] It's crazy how sometimes things like that happen by, weird circumstance oh that's a really interesting story.

Out of tragedy did come something good for our area. That's, yeah for you, I guess one final question. You're at the museum at night, and maybe this is a goofy question, but I just have to ask as a fan of night at the museum, has anything crazy happened at night at the museum, or anything weird 

Oh, absolutely. Like I said, because I do this project and we used to keep the printers here. I'm what we call a key holder. membership has its privileges, as he always says. So I come out here and I would work on stuff after hours by myself or to check on the printers. actually, I'll just come out here because it's a Zen place to be.

I was out here one night, I think it was a Friday night. It was about 10 o'clock it's dark outside, and I'm in this area where I'm at now, and I just hear this bam at the back door, and I'm like, oh no, what is that?

So I go over to the back door, and I'm like, hello? Because it's a steel door, you can't see through it, and I just hear this [00:36:00] lady crying, and she's Can you help me? I'm like, cause there's a lot of valuable stuff in this museum and I'm like, okay, here's the moment that I step out the back door and I get jumped because I, and I'm like, she's, I can, my phone's dead and I need to call a cab.

I got in a fight with my husband. I don't remember all the exact wording, butI'm like, ma'am, I'm in here working. I said, yeah, I can see the street out there. I said, I got to finish up in here. I need you to walk back down to the street where I can see you. And when I come out, I'll come down and see if I can help you.

And like I said, I, she did that. I could see her walk down there and I went out the door. I had my pocket knife in my hand and went in and out so fast. I could shut it. So somebody couldn't come in, but no I went down to the street. I found her and actually just down the street from us is the Ritzy Neighborhood with the fancy golf course it was a lady who had a bratty stepson they were having a party and she had a little too much to drink got in a fight with her husband and Wandered down the street and she wanted to go somewhere and I gave her a ride to the closest hotel 

Yeah, [00:37:00] we'll just get you someplace safe I'm, not leaving you here in the middle of the night I came back out here after that to check on the place, I pulled into the driveway, the gate was closed, and shined my lights on it. And I was backing out, and a car went behind me really slow, and it was a policeman.

he turned around and pulled me over. he ran my license plates, and I was from a different town. And I was like, oh, you son of a, no.

But then I had to go. I told him what I was doing. He didn't even take my license or my insurance. He's yeah no, that's fine. I just, it just irritated me that he did that. Cause I'm like, that's illegal as hell. Yeah. No, it's crazy that that would even happen, 

I feel like anytime you're somewhere late at night, outside of your home, it's always anytime something crazy like that happens, it's, it always can get your mind running of what might be out there for sure. Hey, like I said, and, like I said, museum minded, we're all pretty science minded, I don't believe in ghosts and spirits and all that stuff, but you be out here at night, sometimes it gets a little creepy, you step outside, you're like, somebody's out there ready to pounce, I'm always thinking somebody's gonna break in.

Because, like we were talking about that, nobody could ever come in here and get [00:38:00] this dinosaur out of here, before the alarm system went off and people showed up. But like I said going back to the whole dinosaur stuff, that market has really blown up. We were talking about Stan, those brothers actually parted ways, and the one brother got to sell that.

one brother got the museum and everything in it, the other one got just the T Rex, He auctioned it off through Christie's and they were estimating it would probably go for 5 million. it actually went for 32 million.

whenever you pay for the rights or something like when he was just a pile of bones in the ground you could have paid that rancher 10, 000 and you would have had the dig rights he. Let us dig it up donated it and then we got it appraised and he gets a tax write off for that and This it 3d printed.

This is one of my it appraised for two and a quarter million.we have a safe back there. That's an old timey 1800 safe that has a donated collection in it we'll eventually get on display but it's got the probably the premier collection of topaz in the United States some Brazilian diamonds gold, stuff like that.

It's probably got a half a million dollars of stuff in it so we [00:39:00] gotta have a pretty beefy security system and cameras whenever i'm going in and out i'm like somebody's gonna jump me somebody wants in here Because I see somebody's here I guess I never thought of it that way But yeah, I mean It's it's probably something that you guys need to have pretty extensive security for you think of other places that people would be robbing, you, your mind instantly goes to a banker, instantly goes to a convenience store, but not the museum.

Yeah. that's funny. It has been so interesting talking to you today, learning abouteverything you do with the museum, all the projects that you have worked on to bring things together there. Thank you. Any last, advice for people looking to get involved with museums, 3D printing, or any of the various other things you're involved with 

Man, I really don't have any advice on the 3D printing. That's just become such a standard, thing people just need to ask questions. I hate that I have to buy everything off Amazon where I'm at. I wish I had a micro center close to me, but the closest one is three hours away.

But like I said, there's just so much information out there. And that's what the like with tick tock. I found you on tick tocks where we originally met each other that [00:40:00] way. There's so much good content out there. Once in a while you'll find a Slightly toxic thing, but I just find that's a social media community that's honestly not that toxic.

as far as museums, people need to find their passion if you have time or want to give to anything Find what you want in your area go in and I guarantee you They have something for you to do, I was originally gonna start out because it was post kovat.

I came in and wiped down counters every couple of hours you'd have kids come in and touch everything, all the glass, we had COVID protocols, we wore masks, and cleaned the glass every couple of hours, even with low traffic, that's how I got started, they may just need you to mop floors for a little while, but as you go, we're pretty hands on, when people come in, we make sure we greet people, give them a rundown, depending on how it is that day, maybe a personal little tour, you gotta learn how to read people, every museum out there, I There's not that many people out there volunteering.

Almost every museum I've ever been in is a little short handed. If you find something you like or you love that's your passion, and you find that spot, just [00:41:00] ask them. They're probably going to find something for you to do and appreciate it. Awesome. I love that. I think you inspired me a little bit to maybe venture out into that realm, and I'm sure you're going to inspire other people to venture out to that too.

I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come on here, sharing all of the different projects that you're working on. Can I do one last thing? Because the dinosaurs, we're talking about how large he is and he's here in the background. Let me see it. I'm gonna take my headset off because I think he's pretty centered.

I'm gonna walk back and stand under him just so you can get an actual scale. Please do. Yes, absolutely.

I'm glad that you did that because it's a really good perspective to see how big it is with you there. I can stand under and put my hand up and I cannot reach his spine. he's that big. Put your height out there for everybody.

You're about six foot. you're a guy too. [00:42:00] I'm about five 11. I'm just a hair under six foot. Everybody's always self conscious about their height. When I used to go out and party a little more, I had to have people walk up to me, go look at me and go, you're tall.

How tall are you? And I'd I'm like five 11. And then I went, no, I'm six foot. And I'm like, no, you're not. No, you're not. Quit being self conscious. Don't be self conscious about a little guy. It's okay. Yeah, I think that's if there's anything men like to lie about, it's usually their height.

For anybody who doesn't follow you already maybe doesn't follow the museum already, or just wants to see what you have upcoming next, where can people find you online? through my Tik Tok, it's freeze frame 3D, the way I spell it is the ancient sculpted art, but a freeze frame is a picture, so a 3D printed picture is sculpted art, and it's a picture, so freeze frame is a play on words for that, but it's freeze frame 3D, and like I said, I'm getting ready to start posting again pretty heavy, I'll do the generic set up where you watch something print, but it's going to be dinosaur bones, which will be, pretty cool.

Most of our stuff is done through social media you can look up Missouri Institute of [00:43:00] Natural Science on Facebook. We also have an Instagram page. It's not all dinosaur related, but we do we have mineral monday.

We have fossil friday We do some things like that and I think on instagram It's always we call it monats. I which is hard to it's mo for missouri NAT for natural, SCI for Science, our website is mo natsci.org 

We are a nonprofit, so Everything here is completely donation grant and volunteer based. Our director doesn't even get a paycheck And it started with his private collection. That's a very cool story that you guys have over there.

I hope many people get to go visit it, and like I said, I think you on here today will inspire a lot of other people to reach out to different museums and they absolutely should. Springfield's a very large, small town.

And even cities like this, you have your art museums, your local history museums, and, your discovery centers. There's always organizations that need help with something, I do the OCAC stuff as well, I think any place that you have a [00:44:00] level of interest in, I think it's always worth to reach out and see if there's an opportunity there, and maybe people will be surprised at what comes of it, so Oh, absolutely.

And the world always needs more people to care and more people to help. Yeah. No, absolutely. Awesome. Daniel, it was such a pleasure talking to you today. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day. And with that said, that has been Meet the Makers for today