Prusa Introduces A Resin Printer At Maker Faire NY

September 22, 2018 by 35 Comments

For one reason or another, the World Maker Faire in New York has become the preeminent place to launch 3D printers. MakerBot did it with the Thing-O-Matic way back when, and over the years we’ve seen some interesting new advances come out of Queens during one special weekend in September.

Today Prusa Research announced their latest creation. It’s the resin printer you’ve all been waiting for. The Prusa SL1 is aiming to become the Prusa Mk 3 of the resin printer world: it’s a solid printer, it’s relatively cheap (kit price starts at $1299/€1299), and it produces prints that are at least as good as resin printers that cost three times as much.

The tech inside the SL1 is about what you’d expect if you’ve been following resin printers for a while. The resin is activated by a bank of LEDs shining through a photomask, in this case a 5.5 inch, 1440p display. Everything is printed on a removable bed that can be transferred over to a separate ‘curing chamber’ after the print is done. It’s more or less what you would expect, but there are some fascinating refinements to the design that make this a resin printer worthy of carrying the Prusa name.

Common problems with a masked SLA printer that uses LEDs and an LCD are the interface between the LCD and the resin, and the temperature of the display itself. Resin is not kind to LCD displays, and to remedy this problem, Prusa has included an FEP film on the bottom of the removable tank. This is a user-replaceable part (technically a consumable, at least to the same extent as a PEI build plate on a filament printer), and Prusa will be selling those as spare parts on their store. The LCD is also cooled; one of the major drawbacks of shining several watts of UV through an LCD is the lifetime of the display. Cooling the display helps, and should greatly increase the lifetime of the printer. All of this is wrapped up in an exceptionally heavy metal case with the lovely hinged UV-opaque orange plastic lid.

Of course, saying you’ve built a resin printer is one thing, but how do the prints look? Exceptional. The Prusa booth at Maker Faire was loaded up with sample prints from the machine, and they’re of the same high quality you would expect from the Form 3D printers that have been the go-to in the resin printer world. The Prusa SLA also works with big-O Open resins, meaning you’re not tied to a single resin vendor.

This is just the announcement of the Prusa resin printer, but they are taking preorders. The price for the kit — no word on how complex of a kit it is — is $1300, while the assembled printer is $1600, with the first units shipping in January.

I Hear You Offer WiFi

September 22, 2018 by 13 Comments

We are swimming in radio transmissions from all around, and if you live above the ground floor, they are coming at you from below as well. Humans do not have a sensory organ for recognizing radio signals, but we have lots of hardware which can make sense of it. The chances are good that you are looking at one such device right now. [Frank Swain] has leaped from merely accepting the omnipresent signals from WiFi routers and portable devices to listening in on them. The audio signals are mere soundwaves, so he is not listening to every tweet and email password, merely a representation of the data’s presence. There is a sample below the break, and it sounds like a Geiger counter playing PIN•BOT.

We experience only the most minuscule sliver of information coming at us at any given moment. Machines to hack that gap are not had to find on these pages so [Frank] is in good company. Magnetosensory is a popular choice for people with a poor sense of direction. Echolocation is perfect for fans of Daredevil. Delivering new sensations could be easier than ever with high-resolution tactile displays. Detect some rather intimate data with ‘SHE BON.’

Continue reading “I Hear You Offer WiFi” →

Wonderful IPad Mini 2 Home Made Spiral Notebook Case

September 22, 2018 by 10 Comments

Part of the joy of hacking is the joy of discovery, of seeing how things go right as well as wrong. That’s one cool thing about this iPad Mini 2 case build by [Eric Strebel]: in the video, he details the things that went wrong as well as those that went right. For instance, he used glue on one version that melted the foam core he built the iPad holder from. The end product is wonderful, though. It combines an iPad Mini 2 case and a spiral-bound notebook so you can use both digital and paper mediums, with the iPad cleverly hidden behind a panel that both protects it and turns the screen off when not in use.

Continue reading “Wonderful IPad Mini 2 Home Made Spiral Notebook Case” →

Turn Your Teddy Bear Into A Robot With Yale’s “Robotic Skin”

September 22, 2018 by 8 Comments

Despite what we may have seen in the new Winnie the Pooh movie, our cherished plush toys don’t usually come to life. But if that’s the goal, we have ways of making it happen. Like these “robotic skins” from Yale University.

Each module is a collection of sensors and actuators mounted on a flexible substrate, which is then installed onto a flexible object serving as structure. In a simple implementation, the mechanical bits are sewn onto a piece of fabric and tied with zippers onto a piece of foam. The demonstration video (embedded below the break) runs through several more variations of the theme. From making a foam tube (“pool noodle”) crawl like a snake to making a horse toy’s legs move.

There’s a serious motivation behind these entertaining prototypes. NASA is always looking to reduce weight that must be launched into space, and this was born from the idea of modular robotics. Instead of actuators and sensors embedded in a single robot performing a specific function, these robotic skins can be moved around to different robot bodies to perform a variety of tasks. Such flexibility can open up more capabilities while occupying less weight on the rocket.

This idea is still early in development and the current level prototypes look like something most of us can replicate and improve upon for use in our projects. We’ve even got a controller for those pneumatics. With some more development, it may yet place among the ranks of esoteric actuators.

Continue reading “Turn Your Teddy Bear Into A Robot With Yale’s “Robotic Skin”” →

This TARDIS Is Bigger On The Inside

September 21, 2018 by 24 Comments

A few months ago, YouTube user [Maladroit Modeller] uploaded a video of his model TARDIS from Doctor Who which shows an inside that’s bigger than the outside. Recently, [Maladroit Modeller] posted some pictures and has now uploaded a video showing how it’s done.

The TARDIS model itself is a 3:75 scale “Spin & Fly” model. The case to show everything off is built from foam core and the interior is built from foam core, silver paper, cardboard, styrene and other bits and pieces. There looks like there’s some EL wire being used, too, along with a lot of LEDs.

The build looks great and the illusion works very nicely in the video. Check out the video after the break, and then check out the “how it’s done” video for an explanation. Continue reading “This TARDIS Is Bigger On The Inside” →

Make An Electric Skateboard For Your Cat

September 21, 2018 by 10 Comments

Have you ever looked at your cat and thought “You know, my kitten really needs an electric skateboard!” Probably not, but this seems to have happened to [Kim Pimmel] while looking at his cat MIDI, so he decided to build one. This process involved building a simple, low powered skateboard with a Feather mainboard and motor controller combined with a laser-cut switch mechanism. When [Kim] puts a treat into the mechanism, the cat pulls the switch and the skateboard moves forward, moving into a brave new e-skateboarding feline future. MIDI looks somewhat unimpressed by this whole business, but I suspect that as long as the treats keep coming, he will be happy to keep on truckin’. Now, if he can just figure out how to persuade the cat to ollie, we will be really getting somewhere.

Feline tomfoolery seems to be a regular pastime here on these pages, and more than just a quest for easy moggy-driven clickbait. A lot of cat feeders and cat finders abound, but this project isn’t the only cat-operated one. Our readers’ pets can probably spot an Arduino a mile away by now.

Continue reading “Make An Electric Skateboard For Your Cat” →

The Un-Economy Of Building Your Own Spot Welder

September 21, 2018 by 47 Comments

If there’s one thing that brings hackers together, it’s the ability to build something for less money than it takes to buy it. It’s an exercise [Great Scott Gadgets] put to the test because he was playing around with some 18650 lithium cells, and had a huge need to put some tabs on batteries. This can be done by soldering, but to do it right you should really use a spot welder. Here’s the rub: you can buy a spot welder for about $250, and you can build one for a little less. So, the question: should [Great Scott] build or buy a spot welder? This wouldn’t be worth reading if he started off with an eBay order.

[Great Scott] designed this spot welder around a half-dozen supercaps, all securely held together with Kapton tape. This goes through a set of MOSFETs, and everything is controlled through an Arduino, a rotary encoder, and a dirt-cheap OLED display. It’s a simple enough circuit but a bit too much for perfboard, so [Great Scott] laid out a PCB and got a few boards for under $40. A bit of solder and some debugging later, and theoretically a spot welder was created.

After all that work, how did the spot welder work? Well, it didn’t. A slight misstep in the schematic meant this board didn’t have reference ground on the MOSFETs, so all this work was for naught. Of course, the only thing required to fix this board was a second board spin, as [Great Scott] probably bought more parts than necessary because that’s what smart people do. Still, he decided to cut his losses and shelve the project.

Continue reading “The Un-Economy Of Building Your Own Spot Welder” →