3D Printering: Speed Is So Hot Right Now

January 29, 2024 by Donald Papp 33 Comments

Speed in 3D printing hasn’t been super important to everyone. Certainly, users value speed. But some value quality even more highly, and if gaining quality means giving up speed, then so be it. That’s more or less how things stood for a while, but all things change.

The landscape of filament-based 3D printing over the past year or so has made one thing clear: the market’s gotten a taste of speed, and what was once the domain of enthusiasts installing and configuring custom firmware is now a baseline people will increasingly expect. After all, who doesn’t want faster prints if one doesn’t have to sacrifice quality in the process?

Speed vs. Quality: No Longer a Tradeoff

Historically, any meaningful increase in printing speed risked compromising quality. Increasing print speed can introduce artifacts like ringing or ghosting, as well as other issues. Printing faster can also highlight mechanical limitations or shortcomings that may not have been a problem at lower speeds. These issues can’t all be resolved by tightening some screws or following a calibration process.

The usual way to get into higher speed printing has been to install something like Klipper, and put the necessary work into configuring and calibrating for best results. Not everyone who prints wishes to go this route. In 3D printing there are always those more interested in the end result than in pushing the limits of the machine itself. For those folks, the benefits of speedy printing have generally come at too high a cost.

That’s no longer the case. One can now buy a printer that effectively self-calibrates, offers noticeably increased printing speeds over any earlier style machines, and does it at a reasonable price.

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X-Ray CT Scanners From EBay, Brought Back To Life

January 22, 2024 by Donald Papp 13 Comments

If you have ever wondered what goes into repairing and refurbishing an X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) scanner, then don’t miss [Ahron Wayne]’s comprehensive project page on doing exactly that. He has two small GE Explore Locus SP machines, and it’s a fantastic look into just what goes into these machines.

CT scan of papyrus roll in a bamboo sheath.

These devices use a combination of X-rays and computer software to reconstruct an internal view of an object. To bring these machines back into service means not only getting the hardware to work correctly, but the software end (including calibration and error correcting) is just as important.

That means a lot of research, testing, and making do. For example, instead of an expensive calibration grid made from an array of tiny tungsten carbide beads, [Ahron] made do with a PCB laden with a grid of copper pads. The fab house might have scratched their heads a little on that one, but it worked just fine for his purposes and price was certainly right.

Tools like these enable all kinds of weird and wonderful projects of their own. So what can one do with such a machine? CT scanning can spot fake AirPods or enable deeper reverse engineering than a regular workshop is normally able to do.

What else? Shown here is an old foil Pokémon card ~~from an unopened package!~~ (Update: the scan is not from a card in a sealed package, it is just a scanned foil card. Thanks to Ahron for clarifying.) [Ahron] coyly denies having a pet project of building a large enough dataset to try to identify cards without opening the packs. (Incidentally, if you just happen to have experience with supervised convolutional neural networks for pix2pix, he asks that you please reach out to him.)

The real power of CT scanning becomes more apparent if you take a look at the videos embedded below the page break. One is a scan of an acorn, [Ahron]’s first successful scan. Another is an interesting scan of a papyrus roll in a bamboo sheath. Both of the videos are embedded below.

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‘Radar’ Glasses Grant Vision-free Distance Sensing

January 19, 2024 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

[tpsully]’s Radar Glasses are designed as a way of sensing the world without the benefits of normal vision. They consist of a distance sensor on the front and a vibration motor mounted to the bridge for haptic feedback. The little motor vibrates in proportion to the sensor’s readings, providing hands-free and intuitive feedback to the wearer. Inspired in part by his own experiences with temporary blindness, [tpsully] prototyped the glasses from an accessibility perspective.

The sensor is a VL53L1X time-of-flight sensor, a LiDAR sensor that measures distances with the help of pulsed laser light. The glasses do not actually use RADAR (which is radio-based), but the operation is in a sense quite similar.

The VL53L1X has a maximum range of up to 4 meters (roughly 13 feet) in a relatively narrow field of view. A user therefore scans their surroundings by sweeping their head across a desired area, feeling the vibration intensity change in response, and allowing them to build up a sort of mental depth map of the immediate area. This physical scanning resembles RADAR antenna sweeps, and serves essentially the same purpose.

There are some other projects with similar ideas, such as the wrist-mounted digital white cane and the hip-mounted Walk-Bot which integrates multiple angles of sensing, but something about the glasses form factor seems attractively intuitive.

Thanks to [Daniel] for the tip, and remember that if you have something you’d like to let us know about, the tips line is where you can do that.

UEVR Project Converts Games To VR, Whether They Like It Or Not

January 14, 2024 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

UEVR, or the Universal Unreal Engine VR Mod by [praydog] is made possible by some pretty neat software tricks. Reverse engineering concepts and advanced techniques used in game hacking are leveraged to add VR support, including motion controls, to applicable Unreal Engine games.

The UEVR project is a real-world application of various ideas and concepts, and the results are impressive. One can easily not only make a game render in VR, but it also handles managing the player’s perspective (there are options for attaching the camera view to game objects, for example) and also sensibly maps inputs from VR controllers to whatever the game is expecting. This isn’t the first piece of software that attempts to convert flatscreen software to VR, but it’s by far the most impressive.

There is an in-depth discussion of the techniques used to sensibly and effectively locate and manipulate game elements, not for nefarious purposes, but to enable impressive on-demand VR mods in a semi-automated manner. (Although naturally, some anti-cheat software considers this to be nefarious.)

Many of the most interesting innovations in VR rely on some form of modding, from magic in Skyrim that depends on your actual state of mind to adding DIY eye tracking to headsets in a surprisingly effective, modular, and low-cost way. As usual, to find cutting-edge experimentation, look to the modding community.

Möbius Tank’s Twisty Treads Became Bendy

January 14, 2024 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

[James Bruton]’s unusual Möbius Tank has gotten a little more unusual with the ability to bend itself, which allows it to perform turns even though it is a single-track vehicle.

The turning radius isn’t great, but three-point turns are perfectly feasible.

The Möbius Tank was a wild idea that started as a “what if” question: what if a tank tread was a Möbius strip? We saw how [James] showed it could be done, and he demonstrated smart design and assembly techniques in the process.

He’s since modified the design to a single-track, and added a flex point in the center of the body. Two linear actuators work together to make the vehicle bend, and therefore give it the ability to steer and turn. A normal tread would be unable to bend in this way, but the twist in the Möbius tread accommodates this pivot point perfectly well.

It works, but it’s not exactly an ideal vehicle. With the tread doing a 90-degree twist on the bottom, there isn’t a lot of ground clearance. In addition, since the long vehicle has only a single tread, it is much taller than it is wide. Neither does it any real favors when it comes to stability over uneven terrain, but it’s sure neat to try.

Even if it’s not practical, Möbius Tank is wild to look at. Check it out in the video, embedded just under the page break.

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Simulate Running A Small Hardware Business With Hardware Hustle

January 13, 2024 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

[Oskitone]’s Hardware Hustle is a printable roll-and-write tabletop game that can be played on a single sheet of paper. It simulates attempting to run a small hardware business sustainably. Buy parts, make products, and sell them without burning yourself out!

If you’re not familiar with roll-and-write games, it’s a genre in which players take turns by rolling dice and then choosing how to assign those values in a game space as they progress from turn to turn. In the case of Hardware Hustle, it’s primarily a resource management game in which a player will be purchasing parts, assembling widgets, selling those widgets, and improving processes all while managing both money and opportunity costs.

The inspiration for Hardware Hustle comes from [Oskitone]’s own experience designing, building, and selling things like open-sourced, hackable synth kits that are known for their thoughtful design and fantastic use of 3D printing.

The game is in open beta-testing mode, so if you’d like to give it a try, head over to the PDF download section of the GitHub repository. Don’t forget to share your thoughts with the feedback form after playing. (If you’re wondering why a printable tabletop game has source code on GitHub, it’s because the game’s printable sheets are generated by JavaScript, making adjustments and tweaks and version control easier.)

Tips For 3D Printing Watertight Test Tubes

January 13, 2024 by Donald Papp 12 Comments

[DaveMakesStuff] uses 3D printed test tubes for plants and similar purposes, and he’s shared how to make them on a 3D printer, complete with different models each optimized for different nozzle sizes.

The slots in the model are a means of manipulating how the slicer creates a toolpath when printing in spiral vase mode. These areas end up denser and stronger than they otherwise would be.

It’s not too hard to get clear-looking prints in spiral vase mode by using a transparent filament, but the real value in his design is that it comes out reliably watertight, with an extra-strong base and rim.

How is this accomplished when using spiral vase mode, which extrudes only a single wall perimeter? By using fancy geometry on the part, which makes the nozzle follow a high-density path that turns back onto itself multiple times, in concept a little like a switchback trail. The result is extra-dense areas on both the rim and the bottom of the tubes. This helps make them not only watertight, but far stronger than a single wall.

This technique is reminiscent of an earlier method we saw of enhancing the strength of vase mode prints by modeling thin slots into an object. After slicing, the model still consists of a single unbroken spiral extrusion. But in practice, the extruded plastic forms what resemble structural ribs. Why? Because those technically-adjacent extruded lines are so close to one another that they end up sticking together. Something similar is being done here by [DaveMakesStuff] to ensure that the bottom and top of the tubes are extra strong.

You can see a short video (embedded below) that showcases the tubes, as well as some modular 3D-printable racks that [DaveMakesStuff] also makes. And should you want some tips on getting better transparency from your 3D prints, the essentials boil down to printing with transparent filament, slightly hotter, and with a slightly higher extrusion rate.

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