Power Supply Uses Thin Form Factor

April 19, 2021 by Al Williams 8 Comments

We’ve seen lots of power supply projects that start with an ATX PC power supply. Why not? They are cheap and readily available. Generally, they perform well and have a good deal of possible output. [Maco2229’s] design, though, looks a lot different. First, it is in a handsome 3D-printed enclosure. But besides that, it uses a TFX power supply — the kind of supply made for very small PCs as you’d find in a point of sale terminal or a set-top box.

Like normal PC supplies, these are inexpensive and plentiful. Unlike a regular supply, though, they are long and skinny. A typical supply will be about 85x65x175mm, although the depth (175mm) will often be a little shorter. Compare this to a standard ATX supply at 150x86x140mm, although many are shorter in depth. Volume-wise, that’s nearly 967 cubic centimeters versus over 1,800. That allows the project to be more compact than a similar one based on ATX.

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3D Printing A Long Range Nerf Blaster

April 15, 2021 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

The modified Nerf scene used to be about getting the absolute maximum performance out of Hasbro’s off-the-shelf foam dart blasters. The community quickly found the limits of plastic parts made down to a price, and an underground market for heavier springs and CNC-machined upgrades sprung up. Eventually, however, the advent of 3D printing and cheaper home machine tools led to a rise in popularity of bespoke blasters. [Zach] has long advocated for their supremacy, and has made a long-range blaster aimed at newcomers to the hobby. (Video, embedded below.)

The blaster is built around the popular Caliburn spring-powered design, originally created by [Captain Slug]. Modifications by [Zach] involve a longer barrel, relocated side-feeding magazine port, and other modifications designed to suit the long-range sniping role. There’s even a special “rifled” stabiliser on the end designed to reduce the effects of muzzle blast from disturbing the dart as it leaves the barrel.

It’s a design that very much builds on the efforts of the wider Nerf community, and is all the better for it. [Zach] has shared files and links to parts bundles to help get enterprising builders up and running with a minimum of fuss. We’d love to take the long blaster out for a round or three ourselves – it may just be time to fire up the 3D printer!

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Removable Extruder Pulls Out The Stops On Features

April 13, 2021 by Sonya Vasquez 17 Comments

For all of us fascinated with 3D printing, it’s easy to forget that 3D printer jams are an extra dimension of frustration to handle. Not to mention that our systems don’t really lend themselves well to being easily disassembled for experiments. For anyone longing for a simpler tune-up experience, you’re in luck. [MihaiDesigns] is dawning on what looks to be a cleanly designed solution to nozzle-changing, servicing, and experimenting.

The video is only 39 seconds, but this design is packed with clever editions that come together with a satisfying click. First, the active part of the extruder is detachable, popping in-and-out with a simple lever mechanism that applies preload. For consistent attachment, it’s located with a kinematic coupling on the side with a magnet that helps align it. What’s neat about this design is that it cuts down on the hassle of wire harnesses; tools are set to share the same harness via an array of spring-loaded pogo pins. Finally, a quick-change extruder might be neat on its own, but [MihaiDesigns] is teasing us with an automatic tool change feature with a handy lever arm.

This is a story told over multiple sub-60-second videos, so be sure to check out their other recent videos for more context. And for the 3D printing enthusiasts who dig a bit further into [MihaiDesigns’] video log, you’ll be pleased to find more magnetic extruder inventions that you can build yourself.

The world of tool-changing 3D printers is simply brimming with excitement these days. If you’re curious to see other machines with kinematic couplings, have a peek at E3D’s toolchanger designs, Jubilee, and [Amy’s] Doot Changer.

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Dynamic Build Platforms For 3D Printers Remove Supports And Save Material

April 10, 2021 by Bob Baddeley 31 Comments

We’re all too familiar with the 3D printing post-processing step of removing supports, and lamenting the waste of plastic on yet another dwindling reel of filament. When the material is expensive NinjaFlex or exotic bio-printers, printing support is downright painful. A group at USC has come up with a novel way of significantly reducing the amount of material that’s 3D printed by raising portions of the bed over time, and it makes us wonder why a simpler version isn’t done regularly.

In the USC version, the bed has a bunch of square flat metal pieces, with a metal tube underneath each. The length of the tube determines the eventual height of that square. Before the print is made, the bed is prepared by inserting the appropriate length tubes in the correct squares. Then, during the print, a single motor pushes a platform up, and based on the height of the pin, that portion of the bed raises appropriately, then stops at the right height.

This is a significant savings over having a matrix of linear motors or servos to control each square, at the cost of having to prepare the pins for each print.

But it has us wondering; since CURA and other slicing software have the ability to pause at height, what if the slicing software could allow for the placement of spacer blocks of a known size? The user would have a variety of reusable spacer blocks, and position them in the software, and the slicer would build the support material starting on top of the block. It could print a rectangle on the base layer to aid in proper placement of the blocks during printing, and pause at the correct heights to let the user insert the blocks. At the end of the print a lot less support material has been used.

For situations where you want to leave your print to run unattended, or if the cost of the material is low enough that it doesn’t justify the effort, then maybe this isn’t worth it. Another problem might be heating that platform, though since only support material will be printed on it, some curling won’t matter much. What do you think?

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Solid Tips For Casting Colored Silicone Tires

April 5, 2021 by Donald Papp 13 Comments

For people who work with wheeled robots or RC vehicles, sooner or later one gets interested in making custom tires instead of dealing with whatever is available off the shelf. [concreted0g]’s preferred method is to design and 3D print wheel hubs, then cast some custom silicone tires to fit over them. Of course, the devil is in the details and this process can be a bit messy, so he’s shared useful tips on how to get reliable results with simple materials.

The casting material is cheap silicone caulking from a hardware store, and color can be added with a small amount of cheap acrylic paint. A few drops of glycerin added to the silicone thins it out slightly and helps it flow into a mold better. Mix well (the paint will also serve as a visual indicator of how well it is mixed), then scoop the mixture into the mold while trying to avoid creating air pockets. If your mold is in two pieces, assemble the mold and remove any overflow, then let it sit undisturbed for at least several hours while it cures.

Mounting the resulting tire to a wheel hub can be done with a thin film of super glue, which seems to work perfectly well for small tires and is easy to apply.

The rules are going to be a bit different for big objects. We know that silicone caulking can have difficulty fully curing when it’s applied thickly, especially when sealed into a mold with little to no airflow. In such cases, adding cornstarch (in about a 5:1 ratio of silicone to cornstarch by volume) is all that it takes to cure even thick wads of goop in less than an hour. Stirring cornstarch in tends to introduce more air bubbles into the mixture, but for larger pieces that can be an acceptable tradeoff. Cheap silicone caulking is versatile stuff, one just needs to know what to expect, and take a few steps to deal with the messiness.

Need something tougher? Maybe check out using slices of automotive silicone hose for robot wheels to get something that works just as well, but is a lot more durable.

3D Printer As Robot: The Functograph

April 3, 2021 by Al Williams 12 Comments

A 3D printer is really a specialized form of robot. Sure, it isn’t exactly Data from Star Trek, but it isn’t too far from many industrial robots. Researchers from Meiji University made the same observation and decided to create a 3D printer that could swap a hot end for other types of robotic manipulators. They call their creation the Functgraph. (Video, embedded below.)

Some of the tasks the Functgraph can do including joining printed parts into an assembly, breaking support material, and more. The surprise twist is that — unlike traditional tool change schemes — the printer prints its own end effectors together with the print job and picks them up off the build plate.

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Micro Quadcopter Designed In OpenSCAD

April 2, 2021 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

Quadcopters are fantastical things, and now come in a huge variety of flavours, from lithe featherweight racers to industrial-grade filming rigs worth tens of thousands of dollars. The Beatle-1 from [masterdezign] comes in at the smaller scale, and its body was created entirely in code.

To create the Beatle-1, [masterdezign] used OpenSCAD, a 3D modelling program that uses code rather than visual tools for producing geometry. Thus, with a series of Boolean operations, extrusions and rotations, a basic lightweight quadcopter frame is created in a handful of lines of text. Then, it’s just a simple job of 3D printing the parts, wiring up four Olimex F1607 motors and hooking up a flight controller and the little drone is ready for takeoff.

The Beatle-1 serves as not only a fun flying toy but also a great example of applying OpenSCAD modelling techniques to real-world applications. Parts are available on Thingiverse for those wishing to roll their own. 3D printed drone frames are popular, and we’ve seen a few around these parts before. Video after the break.

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