MakerSlide, European edition
We’re all familiar with the MakerSlide, right? The linear bearing system that has been turned into everything from motorized camera mounts to 3D printers is apparently very hard to source in Europe. A few folks from the ShapeOko forum have teamed up to produce the MakerSlide in the UK. They’re running a crowdsourced project on Ulule, and the prices for the rewards seem very reasonable; €65/£73 for enough extrusion, v-wheels, and spacers to make an awesome CNC router.
Kerf bending and math
A few days ago, I made an offhand remark asking for an engineering analysis of kerf bending. [Patrick Fenner] of the Liverpool hackerspace DoES already had a blog post covering this, and goes over the theory, equations, and practical examples of bending acrylic with a laser cutter. Thanks for finding this [Adrian].
276 hours well spent
[Dave Langkamp] got his hands on a Makerbot Replicator, one thing led to another, and now he has a 1/6 scale model electric car made nearly entirely out of 3D printed parts. No, the batteries don’t hold a charge, and the motor doesn’t have any metal in it, but we’ve got to admire the dedication that went in to this project.
It was thiiiiiiis big
If you’ve ever tried to demonstrate the size of an object with a photograph, you’ve probably placed a coin of other standard object in the frame. Here’s something a little more useful created by [Phil]. His International Object Sizing Tool is the size of a credit card, has inch and cm markings, as well as pictures of a US quarter, a British pound coin, and a one Euro coin. If you want to print one-off for yourself, here’s the PDF.
Want some documentation on your TV tuner SDR?
The full documentation for the E4000/RTL2832U chipset found in those USB TV tuner dongles is up on reddit. Even though these chips are now out of production (if you haven’t bought a proper tuner dongle yet, you might want to…), maybe a someone looking to replicate this really cool device will find it useful.
Maker slide in europe! About time! I’m sick of looking for the parts I want I finding out thier only available in the US!
The two links in the kerfbinding section both point to the HaD article, not the blogpost. Could you provide the correct link?
Fixed.
In between when I first opened this page and refreshed it a minute later the second link changed… so either someone at Hackaday is fixing things, so I’m just going crazy.
Either way – blog link is now in the article as well as directly here:
http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/blog/2011/laser-cut-lattice-living-hinges/
As for the makerslide and most product from US above $20, we face huge custom taxes plus high shipping prices. So it makes sense to spread the production by “region”. As for European Union, we save on tax or at least on custom paperwork and delay, and a bit on shipping. It is still complicated to ship above 1m length… I need some 2 meters slides!
I’m really bummed that the tuner chip in those usb tv tuner dongles are not being made anymore. I got one, but I hope someone else brings out such a useful and wide-range device for as cheap of a price. I guess manufacturers of other chipsets are getting questions from people who are interested. I hope we haven’t seen the last of the awesome, cheap, very wideband SDR components.
Docs for R820T tuner (not supported atm)
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ultra-cheap-sdr/QiIo7834sLI/7YpqSRnYud4J
Why use coins at all for reference, here are some examples of universal references everyone can find:
CD
AA/R6 Battery
Standardized plugs (USB etc.)
Then just plonk a dual scale ruler beside it.
a CD is larger than a business card.. I think they were going with stuff that would fit on a business card so you can carry it in your wallet.
If you need that, you could go with an AA, a USB and a micro USB plug, plus a dual scale ruler. That would fit. Never ever use coins for reference until the entire world (including north Korea) is using the same currency.
The proper link to the kerf bending blog post would be useful.
It’s not as useful as you might think – he never actually gets around to do much testing, more theory than practical.
Still, the blog is called ‘Deferred Procrastination’, so, y’know, anyway.
€65/£73? Don’t you mean €73/£65?
I got a virus downloading the damn reference card!
then don’t use IE :)
Just teasing.
I submitted the downloaded file to Virustotal which says it is clean (0/27). I opened and printed the file on A4 paper, it looks fine. The scales are correct when measured with a ruler.
MakerSlide will soon be available at http://www.makerslideeurope.com
Please sign up to the Mailing List to be notified when it is in stock.