Another Printer With An Infinite Build Volume

May 12, 2017 by 16 Comments

Very rarely do we see a 3D printer that is more than just a refinement of what’s currently standard practice. [Prusa]’s single-hotend, four-color printer makes the list, but that came out a while ago. The novel 32-bit controller board found in last year’s $200 Monoprice printer has the potential to change a cottage industry. Save those two exceptions, innovation in 3D printing really isn’t seeing the same gains we saw in 2010 or 2011.

A company out of the Netherlands, Blackbelt 3D, is bringing out the most innovative 3D printer we’ve seen since last March. It’s an infinite volume 3D printer that’s built for autonomous production. This printer can produce row after row of 3D printed parts, or it can print an object longer than the build plate. If you have enough time, filament, and electricity, there’s no reason you couldn’t print a plastic beam hundreds of meters long.

The specs on this printer are about what you would expect from a large machine meant for industry or prototyping, as opposed to a machine designed to print out tugboats and fidget spinners. The Blackbelt uses interchangeable print heads for the hotend with 0.4, 0.6 or 0.8 mm nozzles. The filament feed is a Bowden with the extruder hidden under the control panel. The frame is explicitly Bosch extrusion, and the machine’s build volume is 340 mm by 340 mm by whatever. Retail price (on Kickstarter) comes in at €9,500, but for an extra €3,000 you can also get a neat stand with casters on the bottom. Of course, with an infinite build volume, you could also print a stand. Continue reading “Another Printer With An Infinite Build Volume” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: Modular Stepper Control

May 12, 2017 by 22 Comments

Stepper motors are a great solution for accurate motion control. You’ll see them on many 3D printer designs since they can precisely move each axis. Steppers find uses in many robotics projects since they provide high torque at low speeds.

Since steppers are used commonly used for multi-axis control systems, it’s nice to be able to wire multiple motors back to a single controller. We’ve seen a few stepper control modules in the past that take care of the control details and accept commands over SPI, I2C, and UART. The AnanasStepper 2.0 is a new stepper controller that uses CAN bus for communication, and an entry into the 2017 Hackaday Prize.

A CAN bus has some benefits in this application. Multiple motors can be connected to one controller via a single bus. At low bit rates, it can work on kilometer long busses. The wiring is simple and cheap: two wires twisted together with no shielding requirements. It’s also designed to be reliable in high noise environments such as cars and trucks.

The project aims to implement an API that will allow control from many types of controllers including Arduino, Linux CNC, several 3D printer controllers, and desktop operating systems. With a few AnanasSteppers one of these controllers, you’d be all set up for moving things on multiple axes.

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Simulating The Learn-by-Fixing CPU

May 12, 2017 by 24 Comments

Last time I looked at a simple 16-bit RISC processor aimed at students. It needed a little help on documentation and had a missing file, but I managed to get it to simulate using a free online tool called EDA Playground. This time, I’ll take you through the code details and how to run the simulation.

You’ll want to refer to the previous post if you didn’t read it already. The diagrams and tables give a high-level overview that will help you understand the files discussed in this post.

If you wanted to actually program this on a real FPGA, you’d have a little work to do. The memory and register initialization is done in a way that works fine for simulation, but wouldn’t work on a real FPGA. Anyway, let’s get started!

Continue reading “Simulating The Learn-by-Fixing CPU” →

3D Printing A Synthesizer

May 12, 2017 by 13 Comments

Before there were samplers, romplers, Skrillex, FM synths, and all the other sounds that don’t fit into the trailer for the new Blade Runner movie, electronic music was simple. Voltage controlled oscillators, voltage controlled filters, and CV keyboards ruled the roost. We’ve gone over a lot of voltage controlled synths, but [Tommy] took it to the next level. He designed a small, minimum viable synth based around the VCO in an old 4046 PLL chip

For anyone who remembers [Elliot]’s Logic Noise series here on Hackaday, this type of circuit should be very familiar. The only thing in this synth is a few buttons, a variable resistor for each button, and the very popular VCO for an analog square wave synth.

The circuit for this synth is built in two halves. The biggest, and what probably took the most time designing, is the key bed. This is a one-octave keyboard that’s completely 3D printed. We’ve seen something like this before in one of the projects from the SupplyFrame Design Lab residents, though while that keyboard worked it was necessary for [Tim], the creator of that project, to find a company that could make custom key beds for him.

The rest of the circuit is just a piece of perf board and the 4046. This project is all wrapped up in a beautiful all-wood enclosure with 3D printed hinges, knobs, and a speaker grille. The sound is phenomenal, and exactly what you want from a tiny monophonic square wave synth. You can check out a video of that below.

Continue reading “3D Printing A Synthesizer” →

Automate The Freight: Medical Deliveries By Drone

May 12, 2017 by 26 Comments

Being a cop’s kid leaves you with a lot of vivid memories. My dad was a Connecticut State Trooper for over twenty years, and because of the small size of the state, he was essentially on duty at all times. His cruiser was very much the family vehicle, and like all police vehicles, it was loaded with the tools of the trade. Chief among them was the VHF two-way radio, which I’d listen to during long car rides, hearing troopers dispatched to this accident or calling in that traffic stop.

One very common call was the blood relay — Greenwich Hospital might have had an urgent need for Type B+ blood, but the nearest supply was perhaps at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The State Police would be called, a trooper would pick up the blood in a cooler, drive like hell down I-95, and hand deliver the blood to waiting OR personnel. On a good day, a sufficiently motivated and skilled trooper could cover that 45-mile stretch in about half an hour. On a bad day, the trooper might end up in an accident and in need of blood himself.

Continue reading “Automate The Freight: Medical Deliveries By Drone” →

HP Laptops Turn Up Keylogger Where You Wouldn’t Expect It

May 12, 2017 by 58 Comments

Keyloggers are nasty little things that have the potential to steal the credit card numbers of you and everyone you care about. Usernames and passwords can be easily stolen this way, so they’re a useful tool for the black hats out there. One would generally expect to find a keylogger in a dodgy movie torrent or perhaps a keygen for pirated software, but this week a keylogger was found in an audio driver for an HP laptop.

The logger was found by Swiss security researchers modzero. The Conexant HD Audio Driver Package version 1.0.0.46 and earlier apparently logs keystrokes in order to monitor things like the laptop’s volume up and down keys. The real killer here is that it feels the need to log all keystrokes detected to a readily accessible file, for reasons we can’t possibly fathom. It’s a huge security risk, but it doesn’t stop there – the driver also exposes the keystrokes through an API as well, creating an even wider attack surface for malicious actors. One can in principle access the keystroke log remotely.

There’s no word from the company yet, but we really want to know – why save the keystrokes to a file at all? Code left over from debugging, perhaps? Speculate in the comments.

Cheap Helping Hands: Just Add Time

May 12, 2017 by 34 Comments

We think of helping hands as those little alligator clips on a metal stand. They are cheap and fall over, so we tend to buy them and don’t use them. However, if you are willing to put $35 or $40 into it, you can get the newer kind that have–well–tentacles–on a heavy base.  [Archie_slap] didn’t want that kind of investment, so he made his own for about $10. We think that’s Australian dollars, so that’s even less in the United States.

What’s better is he documented every step in meticulous detail and with great pictures. You probably won’t directly duplicate his project because you will probably pick up a slightly different base, but that’s not hard to figure out. The arms are actually coolant hose, [Archie_slap] picked up almost everything but the base plate on eBay.

It’s obvious [Archie] is a frugal guy, based on his drill press. It gets the job done, though. The build is attractive and looks like a much more expensive commercial product. Some of us around the Hackaday lab are old enough to wish there was a magnifying glass attached, but maybe that’s version two.

We’ve looked at a lot of different helpers recently. We couldn’t help but think about a somewhat similar Gorillapod holder we covered last year.