Used Soda Stream Cylinder Becomes DIY Canned Air

March 17, 2020 by 16 Comments

Soda Stream machines use a cylinder of compressed CO2 to carbonate beverages, and cylinders that are “empty” for the machine’s purposes in fact still have a small amount of gas left in them. User [Graldur] shared a clever design for using up those last gasps from a cylinder by turning it into a makeshift compressed air gun, the kind that can blow crumbs or dust out of inconvenient spots like the inside of a keyboard. It’s 3D printed in PETG with a single seal printed in Ninjaflex.

[Graldur]’s 3D printed assembly screws onto the top of an “empty” cylinder and when the bottom ring is depressed like a trigger, the valve is opened slightly and the escaping gas is diverted through a narrow hole in the front. As a result, it can be used just as you would a can of compressed air. The gas outlet even accommodates the narrow plastic tubes from WD-40 cans (or disposable compressed air cans, for that matter) if more precision is required.

The design is intended for use with nearly-empty cylinders, but even so, [Graldur] also points out that it has been designed such that it can never fully actuate the cylinder’s release valve no matter how hard one presses, so don’t modify things carelessly. We also notice the design keeps the user’s hand and fingers well away from the business end of things.

This device also reminds of somewhat of a past experiment which used 3D printing to create serviceable (albeit low pressure) 3D printed compressed air tanks in custom shapes.

Yet More Takata Airbags Are Causing Fatalities Despite Different Propellant Chemistry

March 17, 2020 by 63 Comments

Takata Corporation has become well known as a lesson in product safety, thanks to their deadly airbags which were installed in cars worldwide. Despite filing for bankruptcy in 2017, their shadow lingers on as the biggest product recall in history continues to grow ever larger. Over time, the story grows deeper, as investigators find new causes for concern and deaths continue to mount.

In late 2019, another Takata recall was announced — one which caused fresh worry among industry officials familiar with the case. Up to this point, the defective parts produced by Takata were the models based on ammonium nitrate propellants, a chemical that other manufacturers had deemed too dangerous to use. However, there have been reports of other models using different chemistries having fatally injuring motorists, raising the question of whether any Takata airbag could be considered safe.

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John Deere And Nebraska’s Right To Repair, The Aftermath Of A Failed Piece Of Legislation

March 9, 2020 by 100 Comments

For the past few years now we’ve covered a long-running battle between American farmers and the manufacturers of their farm machinery, over their right to repair, with particular focus on the agricultural giant John Deere. The manufacturer of the familiar green and yellow machinery that lies in the heart and soul of American farming has attracted criticism for using restrictive DRM and closed-source embedded software to lock down the repair of its products into the hands of its dealer network.

This has been a hot-button issue in our community as it has with the farmers for years, but it’s failed to receive much traction in the wider world. It’s very encouraging then to see some mainstream coverage from Bloomberg Businessweek on the subject, in which they follow the latest in the saga of the Nebraska farmers’ quest for a right to repair bill. Particularly handy for readers wishing to digest it while doing something else, they’ve also recorded it as an easy-to-listen podcast.

We last visited the Nebraska farmers a couple of years ago when they were working towards the bill reaching their legislature. The Bloomberg piece brings the saga up to date, with the Nebraska Farm Bureau failing to advance it, and the consequent anger from the farmers themselves. It’s interesting in its laying bare the arguments of the manufacturer, also for its looking at the hidden aspect of the value of the data collected by these connected machines.

It’s likely that the wider hardware hacker community and the farming community have different outlooks on many fronts, but in our shared readiness to dive in and fix things and now in our concern over right to repair we have a common purpose. Watching these stories at a distance, from the agricultural heartland of the European country where this is being written, it’s striking how much the farmers featured are the quintessential salt-of-the-earth Americans representing what much of America still likes to believe that it is at heart. If a company such as John Deere has lost those guys, something really must have gone wrong in the world of green and yellow machinery.

Header image: Nheyob / CC BY-SA 4.0

Clean Air And A Gentle Breeze In Your Hoodie

March 5, 2020 by 18 Comments

Hoodies are great, and rightfully a hacker’s favorite attire: they shield you from the people around you, keep your focus on the screen in front of you, and are a decent enough backup solution when you forgot your balaclava. More than that, they are also comfortable, unless of course it is summer time. But don’t worry, [elkroketto] has built a solution to provide the regular hoodie wearer with a constant breeze around his face, although his Clean Air Bubble is primarily tackling an even bigger problem: air pollution.

Wanting to block out any environmental factors from the air he breathes, [elkroketto] got himself a thrift store hoodie to cut holes in the back, and attach two radial fans that suck in the air through air filtering cloths. A 3D printed air channel is then connected to each fan, and attached on the inside of the hood, blowing the filtered air straight into his face. Salvaging a broken drill’s battery pack as power supply and adding a 3D printed clip-in case for the step-up converter, the fans should provide him a good 5 hours of fresh air. Of course, one could also add a solar charging rig if that’s not enough.

Keep in mind though, while a wearable air filter might sound particularly useful in current times, [elkroketto] specifically points out that this is not for medical use and won’t filter out any airborne diseases.

New Depths For IMac Repair

March 3, 2020 by 17 Comments

There’s not much economic sense in fixing a decade-old desktop computer, especially when it’s the fancy type with the screen integrated into the body of the computer, and the screen is the thing that’s broken. Luckily for [JnsBn] aka [BEAN] the computer in question was still functional with a second monitor, so he decided to implement a cheap repair to get the screen working again by making it see-through.

The only part of the screen that was broken was the backlight, which is separate from the display unit itself. In order to view at least something on the screen without an expensive replacement part, he decided to remove the backlight altogether but leave the display unit installed. With a strip of LEDs around the edge, the screen was visible again in addition to the inner depths of the computer. After a coat of white Plasti Dip on the inside of the computer, it made for an interesting effect and made the computer’s display useful again.

While none of us, including the creator, recommend coating the inside of an iMac with Plasti Dip due to the risk of fire and/or other catastrophic failure, there’s not much to lose otherwise. Just don’t shove this one into the wall. Continue reading “New Depths For IMac Repair” →

How To Slice Lightweight Aircraft Parts For 3D Printing

February 21, 2020 by 5 Comments

Historically, remote control aircraft were produced much like their early full-sized counterparts. Wooden structures were covered with adhesives and taut fabric membranes. Other techniques later came to the fore, with builders looking to foam and other materials. Of course, these days 3D printers are all the rage, so perhaps one can simply print out a whole plane? As [sahevaantaneja] discovered, it’s not that easy!

One of the foremost problems is the process of slicing. This is where 3D geometry is transformed into the G-code which defines the path taken by the 3D printer during production of a component. Slicer software is generally optimised for working with mostly-solid objects, and some tweaks can be required when working with thin-walled designs.

These challenges come to bear with an aircraft design, which, by necessity must be lightweight. [sahevaantaneja] does a great job of explaining the journey of discovery in which their design was optimised to work with conventional slicers. This allowed the various components to be printed without errors, while retaining their strength to survive in flight.

The design was successful in test flights –  a great reward after much experimentation. We’ve seen other 3D printed designs take flight, too. Video after the break.

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The Art Of USB Dongle Repair

February 20, 2020 by 40 Comments

Faced with a broken USB dongle for our wireless devices, most of us would likely bin the part and order a replacement, after all the diminutive size of those things probably means hard to impossible repairability, right? Well, [The Equalizor] took it as a challenge and used the opportunity to practice his microscopic soldering skills just for funsies.

The wireless adapter in question, which came from one of his clients who accidentally bent it while it was plugged into a laptop, refused to be recognized by a computer under any circumstances. After sliding out the metal casing for the USB plug and snapping off the plastic housing, [The Equalizor] discovered that the slightly bent exterior hid a deeply cracked PCB. Then, with an inspection of the severed traces and lifted components, it was simply a matter of reflowing solder a few times to try to make the board whole again. Once the dongle was confirmed working, a new 3D shell was printed for it, replacing the original which had to be broken off.

It might not seem extraordinary to some people, but this video is a good example to show that repairs to delicate electronics in such a small scale are feasible, and can serve to reduce the amount of electronic waste we constantly dump out. Just because some electronics seem dauntingly elaborate or beyond salvaging, it doesn’t always mean there isn’t light at the end of the tunnel. You can see the work performed on this tiny dongle after the break.

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