Editing Blog/2026-01-11/Modeling With Claude (section)

== Bloopers ==

=== Polarity ===

Not everything went super well. I made the classic mistake of everyone who does this: I didn't keep the polarity right for the magnets. So what happened was that two of the surfaces would push against each other rather than pulling together. Rookie mistake!

I had a trick to make sure I'd get the polarity right. I put the first one in, then I put a second one on top of it and slid it aside till it was in the second hole. Then I'd put the next one on top of the first one and then place the hole on top of it and move it away. In this way the polarity is always aligned between the meeting surfaces.

I lost 3 magnets and two prints to this because the left-side and the middle, and the left-side and the right-side were both misaligned. Whoops!

=== CA Glue ===

Cyanoacrylate glue is pretty good for stick the magnets in their holes, but it works better on the side surfaces than on the poles. My first few tries, I had it on the far pole, but it would detach every time.

While I was doing the polarity trick previously mentioned, the extra magnet I was just about to stick in a hole would be sticking to a magnet that is already in a hole and it's the only one sticking out of that surface, so I could easily paint the outside with the superglue tip and shove it in the opposing hole.

Worked like a charm!

CA Glue is apparently not the best choice for PETG, but there was no way I was breaking out epoxy for this.

Unfortunately, while doing this, I managed to stick 5 of the magnets together. They were both magnetically and adhesively connected and there was no prying them apart.

=== Clumsiness ===

The magnets are tiny! 3 mm x 1.5 mm is very small, and my tweezers were magnetic which makes the whole thing annoying because the magnet will flip over trying to stay with the tweezers rather than stick in the plastic. I used a little flat cardboard box to rub and push the magnets in place, which worked well.

What didn't work well was showing Julie the magnets and then dropping one. It took us 5 min to find it again but we absolutely had to find it since it was in the living room where Astra does play.


{{#seo:|description=The author uses the AI assistant Claude to model a 3D print for a Power Grid card display, exploring the benefits and limitations of using Claude for this task.}}

[[Category:Blog]]
[[Category:AI]]
[[Category:Modeling]]