Benchtop Fume Extractor Cuts The Cord, Clears The Air

February 4, 2018 by 32 Comments

What good is safety gear that isn’t used because it’s annoying and gets in the way of getting the job at hand completed? None, really, and the solder fume extractor is one item that never seems to live in harmony with your workspace. They’re often noisy, they obstruct your vision, and a power cord draped across your bench is a sure way to ruin your soldering zen.

To fix those problems, [Nate] has built a nice battery powered solder fume extractor that’s so low profile and so quiet, you won’t mind sharing a bench with it. Based on a standard 80-mm case fan, the extractor has a built-in 18650 battery for power and a USB charging port. There are nice little features, like a speed control and a low-battery indicator. The fan mounts to a pair of custom PCBs, which form the feet for the fan. [Nate] claims to have run the fan for 12 hours straight on battery before needing a charge, and that it’s so quiet he needs to add a power indicator to the next version. Also making an appearance in rev 2 will be a carbon filter to catch the fumes, but as [Nate] notes, better to spread them around for now than let them go directly up his nose.

Are you in the hacking arts for the long haul? Let’s hope so. If you are, make sure you’re up on the basics of mitigating inhalation hazards.

Repairs You Can Print: Nintendo 3DS XL Lives Again!

February 4, 2018 by 18 Comments

Handheld game consoles have a hard life, and even the most well-built models can sometimes fail. The Nintendo 3DS XL, for example, can fail at its hinge, which is what happened to the one owned by [Mark]. Would he fix the hinge? No, he had a far simpler if a little less flexible solution, a 3D-printed bracket that clips over the whole device.

Sometimes the best pieces of work are also the simplest ones, and this one certainly fits that bill on both counts. When your console dies, you want it fixed, and though this doesn’t extend as far as providing a working hinge action it should allow you to play without further damaging anything. It’s not impossible to imagine that it could be made to incorporate a flexible zig-zag section to produce a closeable hinge, but if your Nintendo is broken you’ll care little for such niceties. The project can be downloaded from its Thingiverse page.

A common failure that we’d expect to accompany a broken hinge would be a faulty flexible ribbon cable. Fortunately, those are fixable on the 3DS, too.

Repairs You Can Print: 3D Printing Is For (Solder) Suckers

February 2, 2018 by 17 Comments

[Joey] was about to desolder something when the unthinkable happened: his iconic blue anodized aluminium desoldering pump was nowhere to be found. Months before, having burned himself on copper braid, he’d sworn off the stuff and sold it all for scrap. He scratched uselessly at a solder joint with a fingernail and thought to himself: if only I’d used the scrap proceeds to buy a backup desoldering pump.

Determined to desolder by any means necessary, [Joey] dove into his junk bin and emerged carrying an old pump with a broken button. He’d heard all about our Repairs You Can Print contest and got to work designing a replacement in two parts. The new button goes all the way through the pump and is held in check with a rubber band, which sits in a groove on the back side. The second piece is a collar with a pair of ears that fits around the tube and anchors the button and the rubber band. It’s working well so far, and you can see it suck in real-time after the break.

We’re not sure what will happen when the rubber band fails. If [Joey] doesn’t have another, maybe he can print a new one out of Ninjaflex, or build his own desoldering station. Or maybe he’ll turn to the fire and tweezers method.

Continue reading “Repairs You Can Print: 3D Printing Is For (Solder) Suckers” →

Repairs You Can Print: Fixing A Chewed Up Remote

February 1, 2018 by 17 Comments

What is it about remote controls? They’re like some vortex of household chaos, burrowing into couch cushions while accusations fly about who used it last. Or they land in just the right spot on the floor to be stepped on during a trip to the bathroom. And don’t get us started about the fragility of their battery case covers; it’s a rare remote in a house with kids whose batteries aren’t held in by strips of packing tape.

But [Alex Rich]’s Bose radio remote discovered another failure mode: imitating a dog chew toy. Rather than fork out $90 for a replacement, [Alex] undertook a 3D-printed case to repair the chewed remote. He put an impressive amount of reverse engineering into the replacement case, probably expending much more than $90 worth of effort. But it’s the principle of the thing, plus he wanted to support some special modifications to the stock remote. One was a hardware power switch to disconnect the batteries entirely, hidden in the bottom shell of the case. The second was the addition of a link to his thermostat to adjust the volume automatically when the AC comes on. That required a Trinket inside the remote and a few mods to make room for it.

Yes, this project dates from a few years back, but [Alex] only just brought it to our attention for the Repairs You Can Print contest. Got some special unobtanium part that you were able to print to get out of a jam? Enter and win prizes to add to the glory of fixing something yourself.

Travel In Style On An Electric Air Sled

February 1, 2018 by 41 Comments

What do you do during the winter months in Ohio? Sledding of course! Sledding normally takes place on hills, but [Peter Sripol] is no slave to the terrain. He’s built an air sled to conquer the barren wastelands of unplowed parking lots. Air sleds aren’t as outlandish as you might think — the Soviet Union had decades of success with them.

The project starts with toboggan style plastic sled. [Peter] built a frame into the plastic using an aluminum square. The frame is used to support a motor pod at the back of the sled. The motor, of course, comes from his DIY electric plane project. Don’t worry — [Peter] didn’t cannibalize his plane. The plane’s motors are being upgraded, and this is one of the originals.

The motor itself is quite a beast. It’s a 150cc equivalent brushless outrunner motor from HobbyKing. It’s not cheap either at around $450 USD.  The motor is controlled by an equally beefy brushless controller wired into a standard R/C car receiver. A pistol grip transmitter makes a great wireless throttle for the system.

Steering is a much more mechanical affair. The sled’s rudder is controlled much like that of an airplane. A steel cable pull-pull system is connected to a stick mounted in front of the pilot. The unreinforced styrofoam rudder turned out to be a weak point in the build — check out the video after the break to see the full story.

Continue reading “Travel In Style On An Electric Air Sled” →

Repairs You Can Print: Racing The Clock For A Dishwasher Fix

January 31, 2018 by 38 Comments

No matter how mad your 3D printing skills may be, there comes a time when it makes more sense to order a replacement part than print it. For [billchurch], that time was the five-hour window he had to order an OEM part online and have it delivered within two days. The race was on — would he be able to model and print a replacement latch for his dishwasher’s detergent dispenser, or would suffer the ignominy of having to plunk down $30 for a tiny but complicated part?

As you can probably guess, [bill] managed to beat the clock. But getting there wasn’t easy, at least judging by the full write-up on his blog. The culprit responsible for the detergent problem was a small plastic lever whose pivot had worn out. Using a caliper for accurate measurements, [bill] was able to create a model in Fusion 360 in just about two hours. There was no time to fuss with fillets and chamfers; this was a rush job, after all. Still, even adding in the 20 minutes print time in PETG, there was plenty of time to spare. The new part was a tight fit but it seemed to work well on the bench, and a test load of dishes proved a success. Will it last? Maybe not. But when you can print one again in 20 minutes, does it really matter?

Have you got an epic repair that was made possible by 3D printing? We want to know about it. And if you enter it into our Repairs You Can Print Contest, you can actually win some cool prizes to boot. We’ve got multiple categories and not that many entries yet, so your chances are good.

Repairs You Can Print: The Zipper Box

January 31, 2018 by 10 Comments

Picture it: winter, a few years ago. [Ted Yapo]’s son is sent to the front lines of a snowball war. He rises to the task, pelting kid after kid with ease and taking down the Johnson twins with a two-fisted trebuchet maneuver. As he hunkers down to form the last snowball needed to claim victory, the unthinkable happens: the zipper box on his coat breaks and falls silently into the snow. Unaware, he leaps to his feet to take his final shot and the whole zipper unfurls, exposing him to both the cold and the enemy. They won the war, but at what cost?

[Ted] figured the coat was done for. He thought about replacing the zipper entirely, but that was going to be a lot of work. He cast a forlorn look around his workshop and his gaze fell upon the 3D printer in the corner. I can rebuild it! He thought. I have the technology! He was off to design a new box in OpenSCAD and had sturdy ABS replacement zipper box in no time. He installed it with dab of Duco cement, and the rest is history. That coat saw two more winters and countless snowball wars before [Private Yapo] presumably grew out of the thing.

Zippers are the unsung heroes of clothing. If you don’t know much about zippers, sink your teeth into [Dan Maloney]’s recent ode to the quickest fastener we’ve got.