Need a simple fab process to go from a humble vector graphic to a final part — in a matter of minutes? The CO2 laser cutter might be the right choice. As these tools open themselves up to widespread use through hackerspaces, I decided to give Delrin some well-deserved time under the spotlight.
The laser cutter yet-again proves itself a formidable tool with the construction of GameCube-Bot V2
This guide is a brief collection of tips and techniques that I’ve either learned from others or discovered on my own over the last couple years working with laser-cut Delrin (a.k.a Acetal) for functional prototypes. I hope this guide serves you well as we keep exploring the limits of the material.
As a disclaimer, keep in mind that in no way are these techniques unique or limited to Delrin. Many are not only years old but also common practice in either engineering design or the local machine shop. This article simply highlights the techniques shown here that perform both repeatably and predictably with Delrin and a couple hand-tools, and I hope to share them with a growing audience of laser cutter enthusiasts.
Join us for a Meetup on Saturday, September 12th near Washington DC. The Hackaday Crew is headed out to the DC area a week from Saturday and we want to hang out with you. We’ll be hosting a meetup at Nova Labs hackerspace in Reston, Virgina which is on the Northwest side of DC.
We’ll get things rolling at 6pm on Saturday, September 12. The event includes a few lightning talks, some food and drink, and a lot of socializing. This is free to all but you do need to RSVP to let us know you’re coming. We want you to bring a hack to show off. We love to see what people are working on no matter the level of complexity or stage of completion.
Breakout board laid out in KiCAD
This all started when [Anool Mahidharia] mentioned that he’d be at Nova Labs on September 11-13 to lead a KiCAD PCB design workshop. This 2.5 day boot-camp starts with installing the Open Source EDA software on your laptop and ends when you have a completed PCB design ready to be submitted to a board fab. There is a charge for the workshop and attendance is limited so if you’re interested in it you should sign up now. Our events page is a good collection of information on both events as well as directions to get to Nova Labs.
It will be fun to visit with [Bob] and to meet everyone who can make it to the Saturday evening meetup. So far [Mike Szczys], [Brian Benchoff], and [Sophi Kravitz] are all planning to be there. [Anool Mahidharia] will of course be there since he’s leading the workshop. The following weekend [Anool] and [Brian] will both be headed to Philadelphia for the 2015 Open Hardware Summit for which Hackaday is a proud sponsor. [Matt Berggren] and [Amber Cunningham] will both be at OSH as well, talking all things Tindie.
If you have a 3D printer, it is a good bet you’ve at least seen or heard of Tinkercad. There’s pros and cons to doing your design in a Web browser, but Tinkercad is very easy to use and great for making simple objects. However, there are other 3D object designers you can use in your browser, too. Tinkercad is just the one that everyone seems to know about.
I won’t talk much about Tinkercad, but if you haven’t tried it, it is well worth a look. It has a simple system of drawing things and holes. When you merge holes with things you can make lots of shapes. The alignment tools are good, and since Autodesk acquired them (part of its 123d app suite), it isn’t likely they will go under any time soon (which, as you may remember, almost happened).
If you are designing some great new secret invention you may shy away from cloud-based design programs. But if you are printing out key chains with your coworker’s cat’s name on it, do you really care? Most of these cloud-based programs will work from any computer so you can quickly do a design in a coffee shop and then go home and print it.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, this video has been taking the internet by storm. The YouTube user [Gasturbine101] has successfully taken flight in his home made multi-rotor flying machine.
It’s a massive array of high powered brushless motors with props, fifty-four in fact, all counter-rotating. It has a weight of 148kg (we assume this includes the inventor), and produces a maximum lift of 164kg. Apparently it’ll even last for about 10 minutes. The props are grouped into six, using Hobbyking stabilizers to balance the flight.
Buzzword technology has two possible fates: they fail and disappear or they succeed and disappear. Remember at one time “multimedia” and “networking” were buzzwords. They succeeded and now they’ve vanished into ubiquity. Of course, there are plenty of failed buzzwords (like telecosm) that you probably don’t even remember. They just vanished into obscurity.
Unless you’ve been living under the CNC mill in your local hackerspace, you’ve probably heard or read about the “Internet of Things” (IoT). Companies big and small have realized that getting in early on The Next Big Thing is good for share prices and, right now, IoT is where everyone is trying to make a play.
There’s two things I’d observe, though: First, IoT is far from new. Connecting embedded systems to the Internet is old hat (I even wrote a book called Embedded Internet Design way back in 2003). Second, the way it is going, IoT–in its current incarnation–is doomed.
How many times have you walked into the wrong side of the door? How many times have you been momentarily confused as to whether or not you push or pull that obscure door handle which isn’t so obvious in its intended use?
What if you never had to worry about doors again? What if we could have an omni-directional door? [TVMiller] couldn’t find any examples of this, so he decided to build his own prototype. He calls it the Any Way Door.
The Any Way Door is just a 1:12 scale version, but as you can see in the following video, it works pretty well — and if anything would make for a very cool door that interior designers / architectures would love.
The question is, can it be done at full size effectively?
For the past year, [Adam] has been working full-time on developing a low-cost x-ray system for developing nations. He has more than 3,500 hours into the project. A few months ago, we announced the 2015 Hackaday Prize, with a theme of, ‘build something that matters.’ A low-cost x-ray would certainly matter to the two-thirds of the world’s population that does not have access to medical radiography, making this project a great entry for The Hackaday Prize.
[Adam]’s portable x-ray system consists of an x-ray tube encased in an epoxied, 3D printed enclosure filled with dialectric oil. This tube is tucked away inside a beautiful case with just a single 12VDC input and an easy to understand user manual. This is just very high voltages and x-rays, nothing [Adam] hasn’t handled (safely) before. The real trick is in the imaging, and for this, [Adam] is using a phosphor screen to turn that x-ray exposure into something visible, an off the shelf x-ray sensor, and a prism to adapt the sensor to the phosphor screen.
The results are incredible. After taking a few pictures of what he had on hand, [Adam] can see the bond wires inside the microprocessor of a calculator. That’s more than sufficient for medical imaging – the goal of the project – and cheap enough to send it to the far-flung reaches of the planet.
