Well the time has come to try to make something and its something I been wanting to make cause I actually have one in my possession, but looking at it, it seemed to simple for me even though some things could pose a challenge, and then I saw my references and I found a treat of a diagram surprisingly, and I thought what if I made all the pieces that assemble into it. That would be more challenging. So I decided to make it with all the pieces, so I will try to explain my thought process in creating this maybe it will help someone, I feel like a lot of people starting out try to get a head of themselves without thinking it through. If you are familiar with all this, all I can do is hope to entertain you. I will not be taking apart this stapler as in its current condition its worth at least $50 probably more closer to $100, however I will try to figure it all out as I go if I can. So follow me on this journey to making this amazing piece. The feature that makes this stapler unique is it has a tape measure type mechanism in it to pull a slide to push the staples up. I may even try to rig this to function, IDK we will see how it goes. This is more just how I would go about this to help some newer people to 3D, I did one of these before on the old site , so we will just call this a update lol. I don’t think I will be measuring to scale this one. I am just going to follow the diagram and scale it all around that.
I am no professional here so if I run into issues, I will be posting it and how I figured a way to fix and I am sure it will happen. Also everything is going to be vanilla Blender, only addons I will use will be built into Blender.
With that said , here we go!
First thing I do in my thinking process is, I want to find all the references I can for said model, I usually will plug it into PureRef which is a nice way to organize your references into a collage on one sheet. It is a amazing free program , if you are not using it, you should.
Seeing as I own the object I won’t need a lot, but you can never have too many, if its something really big I suggest you have multiple sheets for the different parts but seeing as this is a smaller objects I won’t need that. Here is what it will look like using Pureref, being auto arranged
If you take time to prep it will be much easier when you start modeling. Once I have my images for reference. I make the model reference sheets for the views in Blender, you can use Photoshop or free alternatives that are good. Krita and Gimp, if you have problems with Gimp highly recommend Krita as it’s more like photoshop and it is also Free.
In this case I will take the diagram, though it is not the exact model of stapler , it is of the same series and will work for accuracy. if you look at the diagram it is really cluttered with a ton of numbers so what i do it cut the picture up into seperate views and center the them as best as I can and clean up the images. If you leave it it will be more clutter and distracting, and will cause your modeling a lot more difficult. This is what I mean about Prep. Now these are my images. The one I had to scale down to fit, I try not to do that to keep the scale but the sizes were different anyhow and I have a really good picture to align it all evenly so shouldn’t be a issue.
As part of Prep, I highly suggest you organize everything, my Folder structure Is by year > Project > and then specific categories of subfolders. However you want to organize your projects is up to you, I will share with you how I have mine. It’s just how I work. The point is get organized it will save you trouble later on.
Now that I have all the images created and my folder structure organized, I am ready to jump into Blender. Since I am not measuring anything out, I will not need to setup my Units of measure and leave it default.
I will then setup my references in Blender, and I keep the sheet in pureref on my other monitor, if you have one monitor you will just need to pop it up in front of Blender, not a big deal , you can just change the size of pureref and scroll and zoom around when you need.
Something I suggest doing next is to move your scene objects ,like your light and camera into a separate collection so you can easily hide them, I did the same with my reference images in Blender. Then hide the scene objects for now.
Usually you want the References to be out of the way, but I left it there to start so I can make a cube as a guide that will be a boundry for the model since i’m not measuring anything.
Before I make the guide block, one other thing I do is go to filters on the outliner and turn on selectable which is the arrow icon, when turned on it will be highlighted. Also before I forget to rename my references in the outliner.
What that will do is allow you to turn off the references from bein selectable, by clicking the little arrow, which then they can’t be moved or changed because you want to keep everything to scale and aligned.
For this model, I will be using a cube to use as a guide to quickly keep the size of everything to match our references, In the object properties I set it under (viewport display) to wire. Then I rename the cube to guide and disable selectable with the filter in the outliner.
Then I will enable selectable in the outliner on the side image and move the reference on the X away from where I will be modeling
Now as long as I don’t go outside that bounding box, It should be the size I need
SAVE! a file of your setup, even though you did not make anything. Do you want to do all the setting up of the references and whatnot again? No you don’t… SAVE!
The next thing I will do is block out the object with simple shapes ,no need to get fancy, you just want a rough idea of the proportions and resemble roughly what you are trying to make. Follow your references, they are essential. I am pretty sure you can’t break everything down into simple shapes.
It was at this point I thought I forgot a top view of the object, but realized I didn’t have a good one, I only have a reference of the top button which I can add later since I will have the size of it figure out from the other references. Had I had one ,I would have added it.
After looking at the diagram it turns out the base of the stapler is a bit different then the one in the diagram, so I will start with the top first then, adjust the base to match my reference sheet in Purref. What I know to be correct is the top half of the stapler, so I will start with the button and work down. I will use a cylinder for that, basically cube and cylinders is all I really need to block out the entire object. the key here is to get the form, for the base I will have to add some edges to bend it into the shape I need, but you want to keep it as simple as possible to start. Also something I forgot is I will make a new collection called objects and select it, that way anything new I add will be added into that collection.
Once I started I quickly realized I needed to make the side image selectable and set it to Show in front of the object and change the opacity, then lock it from being selected again so I can see my picture and objects
Then blocked out the stapler
Very nice work man. Looks awesome. Very realistic
So from there I will just refine the shapes I made, I started with what i dubbed “The Hammer” as I keep working on this, I keep finding new things and thinking about how this is functioning on the inside. The diagram is pretty neat , but does not explain all the mechanisms on the inside, but it is a different model , so that could be part of it.
While I am at this point, I am going to make a spring, that goes on the inside of that square tube, then start working on the head of the stapler and try to work out how it could work in there, It’s going to be a little bit of guess work, but should be close enough. I believe there is a pin or rod that pushes down through the middle of the spring. So I will create all that next
Loving the rolling commentary along the process. Looking promising and great to see the blending again. Added to my watch threads so i can keep up to date with the process.
I was about to post my progress when I noticed I messed up, we are going to roll with it and try to cut the teeth flipper thing back along the red line that I have drawn, something like that.
Awesome to read about your thinking process and see the progress. Starting the folder systems by year is a good idea lol. Will use that for sure
Dang loving the progress of this man! Good to have ya back at it!
Ok having the object helps, there is a post that the teeth flipper sit on and bolted on one side, if I press on it , and its a bit loose when i press on it, it pops back out slightly but very consistent , so that confirms my theory , there is a spring there and looking at the diagram, I believe there is a kinda bearing type gear thing that spins a ball on the gear up that knocks into the flipper releasing it from the ratchet, causing it to pop up and as it comes up it resets the gear and the flipper , that is what I will make.
ok, must be more to this, cause there is a snap and a ring when it resets, plus that bolt is where the gear is, so there is another sping there to help reset it, updated my pic to how i think it works
Also the large Hammer spring , I need to take some meat off, that looks like it would be too much tension for it to push down
