lego 3d printer

Lego Printer Prints Lego

June 8, 2015 by 23 Comments

[Gosse Adema] made his very first instructable by detailing his Lego 3D printer build. It’s Prusa i3 based, and originally started out as an A4 plotter with repurposed steppers out of an old HP printer. After upgrading to some NEMA 17 steppers, it became a full-blown 3D printer.

It turns out that NEMA 17 stepper mounting holes align perfectly with Lego, making it super easy to mount them. Check out this Lego ‘datasheet’ for some great details on measurements.

The brains of the printer are occupied by Marlin running atop a Atmega 2560, and Pronterface for the PC software. He tops it off with a Geeeteck built MK8 extruder boasting a 0.3 mm nozzle that accepts 1.75 mm filament.

As with almost any DIY 3D printer build, his first prints didn’t turn out so well. After adjusting the nozzle and filament size in the software, he started to get some good results. Be sure to check out the video below to see this Lego 3D printer in action.

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These Are The Droid Controllers You’ve Been Looking For

June 8, 2015 by 34 Comments

When I was in the 4th grade our teacher announced that we had a special guest visiting us from somewhere “Far, far away…” As we piled out of the classroom and into to the courtyard, my jaw hit the floor – It was R2D2! The droid started to move around, and made all the noises like the movie. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. R2D2 was real, and he was right in front of me! (My young mind made the conclusion that if R2D2 was real, then all of Star Wars was real.) I had to turn around to see my friends’ reactions. Unfortunately, it’s at that moment, I saw a middle-aged man, holding a RC transmitter, with antenna extended, standing in the background operating the controls. Sigh. R2 wasn’t real – it’s just a remote-controlled robot. My dreams of becoming a Jedi were forever crushed.

[Chris James] of the R2 Builders Club has been working hard to make a pair of “Stealth RC” controllers to help keep the magic of R2D2 intact.  These dual joystick, 3D printed, hand-held units can be easily hidden in the palm of your hand, or the front pockets of a loose jacket while you operate them. Loaded with features, these tiny controllers use XBee radios to talk to a receiver and custom PCB inside the droid, that in turn, can then control dozens of servos, motors, sound playback and more. Because some R2D2 builds will have dozens and dozens of functions, rather than have a button for each one, [Chris] has programmed in gesture controls in to the unit, so that two controllers and can control several dozen preprogrammed actions. [Chris] hasn’t finalized the design just yet – he still calls it a “beta” build, but so far his documentation is outstanding (PDF) – some of the best we’ve seen.

You can learn more about the R2 Builders Club and the controllers in the video after the break

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Hackaday Prize Entry: A Light Electric Utility Vehicle

June 7, 2015 by 32 Comments

[Chris] lives in South Sudan, where there are a lot of poor areas with terrible infrastructure. One of the bigger challenges for this area is getting people and materials over roads that are either bad or don’t exist. Normal vehicles aren’t built for the task, and a Hilux or Land Cruiser is much to expensive. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Chris] is building a rugged low-cost utility vehicle platform for the developing world.

This battery-powered, four-wheel cart is made out of what [Chris] could find. The frame is made out of 50x50mm angle iron that’s welded together, with the body panels fabricated out of 1200x2400x1.2mm sheet that’s sourced locally. While [Chris] would like better wheels, the cheap Chinese motorcycle wheels are everywhere and cheap – $65, which includes the bearings, breaks, and sprockets. It even has higher ground clearance than the Land Cruiser.

[Chris] already has a prototype of his project built and it’s rolling around. You can check out a video of that below.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

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Meet Us In Shenzhen

June 7, 2015 by 14 Comments

Hackaday Prize Worldwide is coming to Shenzhen, China at the end of next week! There’s lots to do, join us for as much of it as you can:

zero-to-productZero to Product Workshop

RSVP now for our Zero to Product workshop on Friday, June 19th. This is created and presented by [Matt Berggren] who shares his experience designing and laying out printed circuit boards professionally. A basic knowledge of electronics is all you need to get going and to lay out the dev board shown here!

Meetup and Share Your Hacks

logic-noise-booth-artHolding down an awesome booth at Maker Faire all day makes us weary. We’ll recharge our batteries on Saturday, June 20th starting at 7pm. Join us at Bionic Brew (please be kind and tell us you’re coming). As always, when we hang out we like to see, and show off, hacks. Bring something along if it’s easy to store in a pocket or backpack.

Build some Logic Noise at our SZMF Booth

Yep, we already mentioned it… we’ll be camped out at Shenzhen Maker Faire teaching people how to make music with logic chips. We’ve based the activity off of [Elliot Williams’] fantastic Logic Noise Series. Stop by, say hello and grab some stickers!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

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Hackaday Links: June 7, 2015

June 7, 2015 by 22 Comments

I’ve said over and over again that Apple’s MagSafe port is the greatest advancement in laptop tech in the last 15 years. Those charger connectors break, though, so how do you fix it? With Lego, of course (Google translatrix). Use a light-colored 1×4 brick so the LED will shine through.

Want to learn Git commands? Here’s a great game that does just that. It’s a really well-designed game/tutorial that walks you through basic Git commands.

Lets say you’re just slightly paranoid about the Bad Guys™ getting into your computer with 0-days and roller blades. You’d like to connect this computer to the Internet, but you don’t want to leave it connected all the time. The solution? A timer for an Ethernet switch. It’s actually a better solution than doing the same thing with scripts: there’s a real, physical interface, and if the Bad Guys™ get in when you are connected, they could just enable the network adapter anyway. An extremely niche use case, but that’s 99% of the security hacks we see.

The DaVinci 3D printer is an okay printer if you’re cool with the Gilette model. The filament cartridges are chipped, and the software is proprietary. These problems have been solved, and now you can use a standard RepRap heated bed and glass with the DaVinci. At this point, people are buying the DaVinci just to tear it apart.

MDF CNC

DIY MDF CNC Machine Is Small And Solid

June 7, 2015 by 21 Comments

In the world of hobby-level CNC cost and simplicity are usually the name of the game. Using inexpensive and easily found materials makes a big difference in the feasibility of a project. [FreeRider] had built a CNC router before but it was big, flexible and not as accurate as he wanted. He set off to design his own table top router, influenced from other designs found on the ‘net, but also keeping the costs down and ease of build up.

The machine frame is made from 3/4″ MDF and was cut on [FreeRider’s] first router, the JGRO. Notice how all the holes are counterbored for the many bolt heads. It is clear that much attention to detail went into the design of this machine. Aluminum angle act as linear rails on which v-wheel bearings travel. Skate bearings support 5/16″ threaded rod used as lead screws. Lead nuts are tapped HDPE blocks and seem to be doing a satisfactory job with minimal backlash.

[FreeRider] says his new machine is capable of 60 inches per minute travel, double that of his old machine. Since the new machine is stiffer, he’s able to route aluminum and has successfully made some brackets out of 1/8″ plate. He reports the dimensional accurate to be about 0.002-0.003 inches. For more inexpensive MDF-based CNC machines, check out this drawer slide bearing one or this one that uses a drill for a spindle.

Better VGA On The STM32F4

June 7, 2015 by 26 Comments

[Cliff] is pushing VGA video out of a microcontroller at 800×600 resolution and 60 frames per second. This microcontroller has no video hardware. Before we get to the technical overview, here’s the very impressive demo.

The microcontroller in question is the STM32F4, a fairly powerful ARM that we’ve seen a lot of use in some pretty interesting applications. We’ve seen 800×600 VGA on the STM32F4 before, with a circles and text demo and the Bitbox console. [Cliff]’s build is much more capable, though; he’s running 800×600 @ 60FPS with an underclocked CPU and most (90%) of the microcontroller’s resources free.

This isn’t just a demo, though; [Cliff] is writing up a complete tutorial for generating VGA on this chip. It begins with an introduction to pushing pixels, and soon he’ll have a walkthrough on timing and his rasterization framework.

Just because [Cliff] has gone through the trouble of putting together these tutorials doesn’t mean you can’t pull out an STM Discovery board and make your own microcontroller video hacks. [Cliff] has an entire library of for graphics to allow others to build snazzy video apps.