Wesley's Tool-Box

My daughter Celine got interested in building a telescope after seeing a couple of real ones in the house. She even made a make-believe one out of a couple of tubes. But to make a working one, one would need at least two lenses - an objective lens and an eyepiece. Those aren't just lying around anywhere in working pairs, so I searched for a simple telescope building kit instead.

And this "HT-Mini v2" was just the thing I wished for. It's cheap, at about US$5.60, while seemingly easy and sturdy enough for a kid to handle. I ordered two, so my two daughters wouldn't fight to have one, and the kits arrived in the mail the next day. Each of them were basically comprised of a pre-cut foam sheet and two lenses.

We opened the package and got to putting one together.

It seems that the Makibox 3D printer that I built doesn't have too much movement errors, so I tried printing some small animals, on the request of my daughter Celine. They take around 30 to 60 minutes to print, and look alright. Printing several at a time make some edges rough, though. Read on for a couple of in-production photos.

A home 3D printer has myriad of uses, but I think toy printing immediately stand out if you have children. Makibox can print in non-toxic (after printing, anyway) ABS polymer, so I set out to make a simple plastic figure for my daughters after the test prints were done.

One thing to note is that the extruder broke down a few weeks ago, so I had to send it back to Hong Kong for replacement. That's why there had been a lack of blog posts about the 3D printer since early January. I've got my replacement, and it works perfectly so far. Better than the original one, in fact.


I selected a squirrel design from Thingiverse because it didn't look to complicated, yet cute enough so that the kids would like to play with it. It turned out that I was right on both accounts. Keep reading for more pictures.

There hasn't been much of wind-up toys in the house that my kids could get their hands on. I wanted to fill this hole a bit, but past experiences told me that kids don't play with one toy too long, so I should save money and go for some variety. For this, this little assembly kit series called "InoQ" from David Toy seemed to be a good idea.

I bought a Tyrannosaurus model from a local discount warehouse, which cost about US$3. It was on the low-end of assembly kits as far as price goes, but it said it would move, so it looked better than the stuff that you build and doesn't do anything else after. It also didn't look very sturdy, but considering the price, I thought it should be good enough for several minutes of enjoyment.

And boy, did it give us enjoyment.