We were trolling around Hackaday.io, and we stumbled on [Barb]’s video series called (naturally enough) “Barb Makes Things“. The plot of her videos is simple — Barb points a time-lapse camera at her desk and makes stuff. Neat stuff.
Two particularly neat projects caught our attention: a mechanical pointy-finger thing and the useful 3D-printing-filament rivets that she used to make it. (Both of which are embedded below.) The finger is neat because the scissor-like extension mechanism is straight out of Wile E. Coyote’s lab.
But the real winners are the rivets that hold it together. [Barb] takes a strand of filament, and using something hot like the side of a hot-glue gun, melts and squashes the end into a mushroom rivet-head. Run the filament through your pieces, mushroom the other end, and you’re set. It’s so obvious after seeing the video that we just had to share. (Indeed, a lot of cheap plastic toys are assembled using this technique.) It’s quick, removable, and seems to make a very low-friction pivot, which is something that printed pins-into-holes tends not to. Great idea!
We’re just going to say “go check out her YouTube channel” and we figure that’ll take care of most everything else. There’s an excellent bamboo-skewer marble drop, and an automatic six-guitar musical machine, and… You’re still here? Go check out her channel.
I don’t know anything about the processes involved but the result is delightful.
Really cool
Love the rivet technique!
i really hate using 123design, it feels so unintuitive compared to inventor or solidworks
Considering 123design is free and Solidworks is $4000, I will absolutely live with the quirky-ness of 123design for a hundred years.
↑↑↑↑ What Timothy Gray said.
agreed. i also work a lot with kids and v casual 3d modelers, and there is a benefit to showing the work in software that they can easily jump into.
Interesting. First place I’d seen filament rivet forming done was on the OpenForge 2.0 tabletop gaming terrain tiles, and I thought it was pretty a clever way to do a fastener:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1419276
I wonder if a 3D printer could be modified to extrude cold filament and add the pivot points itself.
preface: never done anything with 3d printers, but understand the concepts.
i don’t believe it’s physically possible to extrude cold filament– i believe most hot ends have a smaller final diameter then the incoming filament to make the heat correctly heat up the filament to extrude it.
Personally I would have made a simple fist shape instead of a pointing finger so you could put a little leather boxing glove on it, kinda like this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4iJEf6RZls
And as for the filament rivets I think that you could use a second hand heated hair straightener to rivet both sides at once, and quicker than the glue gun.
I used to do this as a kid with weed eater cord. Good stuff!