SpacewΛr Comes To Life From Bonus Formlabs Printer Parts

January 7, 2016 by Sonya Vasquez 13 Comments

What might you do with a few extra stereolithographic 3D printer parts? Why not make a galvo display and resurrect a couple of classic vector graphic games of yore? That’s exactly what [Matt] did. With a few extra Formlabs components and a Haskell implementation of Spacewar, [Matt] can kick back and blast his extraterrestrial foes on the surface of his Formlabs cover.

[Matt’s] source code drives the Form 2 controller board to output laser graphics on the surface of a Form 1 case. These parts might be a commodity for this Formlabs Engineer, but the output is nothing short of spectacular, given the game and USB drivers were put together from scratch. In case you want to give the Haskell source code a try, [Matt’s] kindly included an alternative software-only display using OpenGL.

Unless you’ve just upgraded from Form 1 to Form 2, odds are pretty low that you can pull this one off without breaking either your printer or your wallet. Fortunately, [Alvaro] has paved the way with a stellar galvanometer display that began as a few parts from eBay. At last! Once our Formlab printer warranties expire, we’ll know where to start looking for parts for that mosquito killer we needed.

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3D Printed Speaker Pushes Rapid Prototyping Boundaries

January 27, 2015 by James Hobson 34 Comments

We think Formlabs has really figured out the key to advertising their line of 3D printers — just design really cool stuff that you can 3D print in resin, and release them publicly! To celebrate a firmware upgrade to the Form 1+, they’ve designed and released this really cool 3D printed speaker which you can make yourself.

Designed by [Adam Lebovitz], the speaker can be printed in just a few jobs, using their flexible resin for the dynamic components. It even sounds pretty damn good.

As you can see in the following exploded view of the speaker, almost the entire thing is 3D printed out of just two materials — minus some copper wire, 37 disc magnets, and one cap screw.

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3D Printed Lenses Open Up Possibilities

December 13, 2014 by James Hobson 35 Comments

Now this is some seriously cool stuff. The folks over at FormLabs decided to try a little experiment to test the optical clarity of their clear resin. It’s pretty damn clear.

Using their own slicing software, PreForm, [Craig Broady] printed the lens piece in an orientation that would maximize resin flow around the lens to help prevent defects, keeping it as smooth as possible. While the printed part looks quite clear, all lenses require some form of polishing to become optically clear. It was printed with a 50 micron resolution, and [Craig] used a power drill to sand the lens down from 220 grit to 2000 grit sand paper.

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Creating PCBs With 3D Resin Printers

January 14, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

PCB

The folks over at Full Spectrum Laser are Kickstarting their own 3D printer – a stereolithography machine like the Form 1 and B9 Creator printers. During their testing, they discovered a new application for these SLA printers that should prove to be very useful for the makers and builders using machines – manufacturing PCBs with UV-sensitized copper clad boards.

Full Spectrum Laser’s printer – the Pegasus Touch – uses a near UV laser and a galvo system to build objects in UV-curing resin layer by layer. In retrospect it seems pretty obvious a UV laser would expose UV sensitive boards, but this discovery simply reeks of cleverness and is a nice ‘value added’ feature for the Pegasus printer.

The Pegasus printer has a laser spot size of 0.25mm, meaning the separation between traces on Pegasus-produced PCBs will be just under 10 mils. That’s a bit larger than the limits of laser printer-based PCB fabrication but far, far less complicated. Making a PCB on an SLA printer is as easy as removing the resin tank and putting a sensitized board on the build platform. Draw some traces with the printer, and in a few minutes you have an exposed board.

We’d really like to see if this technique can also be used with other SLA printers. if anyone out there would like to experiment, be sure to send the results into the tip line.

Video from Full Spectrum Laser below.

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Running Into The Form 1 Printer At Maker Faire

October 1, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxNqMg_dwJI&w=470]

The Form 1 resin printer Kickstarter met its funding goal in just about 8 hours, and after five days is on track to be the most successful Kickstarter to date. Being so successful meant we had to drop by the FormLabs booth at Maker Faire to see what the hubub is.

From the sample prints floating around the booth, the Form 1 printer has amazing resolution – a 3 inch tall statue of a Greek god had as many features as a life-sized statue.

In the video (both above the fold and after the break), [David Cranor] goes over the features and finishing process of objects made on the Form 1.

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