Full Color 3D Printing With PolyDye And Existing Inkjet Cartridges

December 28, 2024 by Maya Posch 34 Comments

The PolyDye system installed on an Elegoo Neptune 2 printer. (Credit: Teaching Tech, YouTube)

Being able to 3D print FDM objects in more than one color is a feature that is rapidly rising in popularity, assisted by various multi-filament systems that allow the printer to swap between differently colored filaments on the fly. Naturally, this has the disadvantage of being limited in the number of colors, as well as wasting a lot of filament with a wipe tower and filament ‘poop’. What if you could print color on the object instead? That’s basically what the community-made PolyDye project does, which adds an inkjet cartridge to an existing FDM printer.

In the [Teaching Tech] video the PolyDye technology is demonstrated, which currently involves quite a few steps to get the colored 3D model from the 3D modelling program into both OrcaSlicer (with custom profile) and the inkjet printing instructions on the PolyDye SD card. After this the 3D object will be printed pretty much as normal, just with each layer getting a bit of an ink shower.

Although it could theoretically work with any FDM printer, currently it’s limited to Marlin-based firmware due to some prerequisites. The PolyDye hardware consists of a main board, daughter board, printed parts (including inkjet cartridge holder) and some wiring. A Beta Test unit is available for sale for $199, but you should be able to DIY it with the files that will be added to the GitHub project.

Even for a work-in-progress, the results are quite impressive, considering that it only uses off-the-shelf translucent filament and inkjet cartridges as consumables. With optimizations, it could give multi-filament printing a run for its money.

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Experimental sequence for the Ramsey-type phonon anharmonicity measurement. (Credit: Yu Yang et al., Science, 2024)

Creating A Mechanical Qubit That Lasts Longer Than Other Qubits

December 27, 2024 by Maya Posch No comments

Among the current challenges with creating quantum computers is that the timespan that a singular qubit remains coherent is quite limited, restricting their usefulness. Usually such qubits consist of an electromagnetic resonator (boson), which have the advantage of possessing discrete energy states that lend themselves well to the anharmonicity required for qubits. Using mechanical resonators would be beneficial due to the generally slower decoherence rate, but these have oscillations (phonons) that are harmonic in nature. Now researchers may have found a way to use both electromagnetic qubits and mechanical resonators to create a hybrid form that acts like a mechanical qubit, with quite long (200 µs) coherence time.

As per the research paper by [Yu Yang] and colleagues in Science (open access preprint), their experimental mechanical qubit (piezoelectric disc and superconducting qubit on sapphire) was able to be initialized and read out, with single-qubit gates demonstrated. The experimental sequence for the phonon anharmonicity measurement is shown in the above image (figure 2 in the paper), including the iSWAP operations which initialize the hybrid qubit. Effectively this demonstrates the viability of such a hybrid, mechanical qubit, even if this experimental version is not impressive yet compared to the best electromagnetic qubit. Those have managed to hit a coherence time of 1 ms.

The lead researcher, [Yu Yang] expresses his confidence that they can improve this coherence time with more optimized designs and materials, with future experiments likely to involve more complex quantum gates as well as sensor designs.

The TimeChi Never Shipped, But You Can Build One From Scratch

December 26, 2024 by Maya Posch 6 Comments

What do you do when a crowdfunded product you really liked gets cancelled? Naturally, you take the idea and build your own version of it. That’s what [Salim Benbouziyane] did when the TimeChi project on Kickstarter saw its launch cut short. This device allows you to set a ‘no distractions’ timer, during which notifications on one’s phone and elsewhere are disabled, making it something similar to those Pomodoro timers. What this dial also is supposed to do is integrate with home automation to set up clear ‘focus’ periods while the timer runs.

A quick prototype of the newly minted Focus Dial project was set up using an ESP32 and other off-the-shelf components. The firmware has to run the timer, toggle off notifications on iOS and trigger firewall traffic rules to block a batch of social media addresses. Automating this with iOS was the hardest part, as Apple doesn’t make such automation features easy at all, ultimately requiring a Bluetooth audio board just to make iOS happy.

After this prototyping phase, the enclosure and assembly with the modules were drawn up in Autodesk Fusion 360 before the plastic parts were printed with a resin printer. The end result looks about as good as the Kickstarter one did, but with a few changes, because as [Salim] notes, if you are going to DIY such a failed crowdfunding project, why not make it work better for you?

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Battery-Electric Ships: Coming Soon To A Harbor Near You?

December 26, 2024 by Maya Posch 76 Comments

When ships moved from muscle- and wind power to burning coal and other fossil fuels for their propulsion, they also became significantly faster and larger. Today’s cargo ships and ferries have become the backbone of modern civilization, along with a range of boat types. Even though tugs and smaller pleasure vessels are a far cry from a multi-thousand ton cargo or cruise ship, one would be hard-pressed to convert these boats back to a pure muscle or wind-based version. In short, we won’t be going back to the Age of Sail, but at the same time the fossil fuel-burning engines in these boats and ship come with their own range of issues.

Even if factors like pollution and carbon emissions are not something which keep you up at night, fuel costs just might, with these and efficiency regulations increasing year over year. Taking a page from alternative propulsions with cars and trucks, the maritime industry has been considering a range of replacements for diesel and steam engines. Here battery-electric propulsion is somewhat of an odd duck, as it does not carry its own fuel and instead requires on-shore recharging stations. Yet if battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) can be made to work on land with accompanying low ‘refueling’ costs, why not ships and boats?

A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) researchers Hee Seung Moon et al. as published in Nature Energy claims that a significant part of US maritime traffic can be electrified this way. Yet as a theoretical model, how close does it hit to the harsh realities imposed by this physical world which we live in?

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Blinded By The Light: The Problem With LED Headlights

December 26, 2024 by Maya Posch 178 Comments

Having a good set of (working) headlights is a crucial feature of any motor vehicle, assuming you want to be able to see the road ahead of you when there’s a lack of sunshine. Headlights are also essential to be noticed by other cars and traffic participants, but if installed improperly they can end up blinding an opposing driver with potentially fatal results. This is a major worry with LED lamps that are increasingly being installed in cars, often replacing the old-style halogen bulbs that have a very different color spectrum and beam patterns, to the dismay of fellow road participants.

This headlight glare can also be simulated in driving simulators, as in a 2019 article by [B.C. Haycock] et al. where the effect is of course diminished because displays can only get so bright. Of note is that it’s not just LED lights themselves, but also taller vehicles and misaligned headlights, all of which makes it important that the angle of your car’s headlights is proper. You want to see the road in front of you, after all, not illuminate every house in the nearest settlement two klicks away.

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Keeping Track Of Old Computer Manuals With The Manx Catalog

December 24, 2024 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

An unfortunate reality of pre-1990s computer systems is that any manuals and documentation that came with them likely only existed on paper. That’s not to say there aren’t scanned-in (PDF) copies of those documents floating around, but with few of these scans being indexable by search engines like Google and Duck Duck Go, they can be rather tricky to find. That’s where the Manx catalog website seeks to make life easier. According to its stats, it knows about 22,060 manuals (9,992 online) across 61 websites, with a focus on minicomputers and mainframes.

The code behind Manx is GPL 2.0 licensed and available on GitHub, which is where any issues can be filed too. While not a new project by any stretch of the imagination, it’s yet another useful tool to find a non-OCR-ed scan of the programming or user manual for an obscure system. As noted in a recent Hacker News thread, the ‘online’ part of the above listed statistics means that for manuals where no online copy is known, you get a placeholder message. Using the Bitsavers website along with Archive.org may still be the most pertinent way to hunt down that elusive manual, with the Manx website recommending 1000bit for microcomputer manuals.

Have you used the Manx catalog, or any of the other archiving websites? What have been your experiences with them? Let us know in the comments.

Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package of the Apollo 16 mission (Credit: NASA)

ALSEP: Apollo’s Modular Lunar Experiments Laboratory

December 23, 2024 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

Down-Sun picture of the RTG with the Central Station in the background. (Credit: NASA)

Although the US’ Moon landings were mostly made famous by the fact that it featured real-life human beings bunny hopping across the lunar surface, they weren’t there just for a refreshing stroll over the lunar regolith in deep vacuum. Starting with an early experimental kit (EASEP) that was part of the Apollo 11 mission, the Apollo 12 through Apollo 17 were provided with the full ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package). It’s this latter which is the subject of a video by [Our Own Devices].

Despite the Apollo missions featuring only one actual scientist (Harrison Schmitt, geologist), these Bendix-manufactured ALSEPs were modular, portable laboratories for running experiments on the moon, with each experiment carefully prepared by scientists back on Earth. Powered by a SNAP-27 radioisotope generator (RTG), each ALSEP also featured the same Central Station command module and transceiver. Each Apollo mission starting with 12 carried a new set of experimental modules which the astronauts would set up once on the lunar surface, following the deployment procedure for that particular set of modules.

Although the connection with the ALSEPs was terminated after the funding for the Apollo project was ended by US Congress, their transceivers remained active until they ran out of power, but not before they provided years worth of scientific data on many aspects on the Moon, including its subsurface characteristics and exposure to charged particles from the Sun. These would provide most of our knowledge of our Moon until the recent string of lunar landings by robotic explorers.

Heading image: Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package of the Apollo 16 mission (Credit: NASA)

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