3D Printing Air Filter System Does A Lot

January 14, 2021 by Al Williams 29 Comments

We know we aren’t supposed to eat a lot of sugar, but we still have ice cream. We also know we probably shouldn’t be inhaling solder smoke and 3D printer fumes, but we do that too. Not [Mike Buss]. His 3D printer has a major exhaust system.

We can sympathize with his process. He mentions he started out just wanting a fan running with some filters. Then he decided to add a way to turn the fan on and off when printing. Then he added sensors to detect fumes and fire. Data collection was almost an afterhthought.

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Hacking A 3D Pen For Better Performance

January 13, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 9 Comments

When 3D pens first became available, many assumed them to be gimmicky or part of a general fad that would eventually die out. Like most revolutionary technologies, though, they’ve found a firm foothold, especially in the art community where the ability to 3D print in freehand is incredibly valuable. There are still some shortcomings with the technology, though, but [tterev3] recently tore into a 3doodler pen to make some necessary upgrades.

First, this pen has some design choices that are curious, to say the least. The cooling fan runs regardless of temperature, and it has pushbuttons for start and stop rather than a momentary button that controls the extrusion. To fix these issues, as well as change the filament size, improve the cooling, and provide greater control over the extrusion speed, [tterev3] completely rewrote the firmware, changed the microcontroller on the PCB, and made several hardware upgrades to accommodate these changes. He also went ahead and installed a USB-C port for charging, which should be standard practice on all low-voltage consumer electronics by now anyway.

The detail work on this project is impressive, given the small size of the pen itself and the amount of precision hardware needed to make the changes. Especially regarding the replacement of the microcontroller on the board itself, which is an impressive feat even without the incredibly small dimensions. The firmware upgrade is available on his GitHub page as well if you have your own 3doodler that needs modifications, and if you’re still struggling to find uses for these handy devices, we’ve seen them used with interesting effect to build drones.

Sand Plotter Built With 3D Printer Parts

January 13, 2021 by Lewin Day 23 Comments

Sand plotters are beautiful machines. They can make endless patterns, over and over again, only to wipe away their own creation with each new pass. Having seen the famous Sisyphus sand sculpture online, [Simon] decided to make his own.

The build came together quickly, thanks to [Simon]’s well-stocked workshop and experience with CNC motion platforms. The frame was built out of wood, with a combination of hand-cut and lasercut parts. After fabric-wrapping the outer rim turned out poorly, rope was substituted instead for a stylish, organic look. LEDs were installed inside to light the sand for attractive effect. The metal ball is moved through the sand via a magnet attached to an XY platform mounted on the back of the table. The platform is built out of old 3D printer parts, with a Creality CR10S Pro chosen for its ultra-quiet stepper drivers. Initial attempts to make the system near-silent were hung up by the crunching sound of the ball rolling over the sand; this was fixed by instead mounting the ball on a foam pad. While the ball is now dragged instead of rolling, the effect is one of blissful quiet instead of crunching aggravation.

The final build is incredibly attractive, and something we’d love to have as a coffee table as a conversation piece. We’ve seen [Simon]’s work around here before, too – with the water-walking RC car a particular highlight. Video after the break.

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3D Printing In Five Axes Makes The World Flat

January 12, 2021 by Al Williams 23 Comments

Just when you thought your 3D printer was hot stuff, along comes a 5D printer. Two doctoral students at Penn State want to add two more axes to get rid of overhangs. This means that instead of supports or breaking objects into pieces, the printer simply orients the print so each region of the part is printing as if it were flat. Of course, 5D printers aren’t really new, even though you don’t hear much about them. However, the paper details a new algorithm that eliminates manually defining print regions and rotations.

You do this all the time manually when you’re setting the print up. For example, if you want to print a letter T, you could print it with supports under the cross pieces or flip it upside down and print it with no support at all. The difference here is the printer can flip the workpiece itself to different angles and can change it on the fly during printing. The printer might print the shaft of the T, rotate it to draw half of the crossbar, then rotate it 180 degrees to print the other half. In all three zones, the print head is depositing materials flat with no overhang. In a simple case like a T that doesn’t really require a special machine or an algorithm, but in the general case, you often can’t just rotate a model to avoid using supports.

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Industrial Stack Light Keeps An Eye On Prusa Mini

January 9, 2021 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

When most people want to keep tabs on what their 3D printer is up to while they’re out and about, they’ll install OctoPrint on a Pi and be done with it. But what if you’re just on the other side of the room? Inspired by the stack lights used on factory floors, [Jeff Glass] decided to add a similar system to his Prusa Mini so he could see what it’s up to at a glance.

It turns out you can get these lights pretty cheaply online from the usual retailers, and as [Jeff] explains in the video after the break, driving them is about as easy as it gets. Rather than being some kind of addressable device, they generally have a single common 12 or 24 volt DC wire and ground lines for each color. With a USB controlled relay board, kicking on the appropriate light is simple from your operating system of choice.

What ended up being a bit harder was finding out what the Prusa Mini was up to. The printer offers up a simple status web page, but it has a few oddball quirks that make it difficult to scrape; such as presenting a little pop-up message that you have to manually close each time you load the page. But after spending some time with the powerful Selenium library for Python, he was able to create a script that worked its way through the UI and pulled the relevant status messages. Obviously the resulting code is Prusa specific, but the general concept would work on other printers assuming you can find a reliable way to pull the device’s current status.

After coming up with a wall mounted enclosure for the electronics that doubles as a mount for the light itself, [Jeff] can now see if his printer needs attention from clear across the room. An especially nice feature when the printer is all buttoned up inside of its enclosure.

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Turning A CMM Into A 3D Printer

January 6, 2021 by Matthew Carlson 47 Comments

There are two paths to owning a 3D printer: purchasing one or crafting your own 3D printer designed to your own exacting specifications. [Roetz 4.0] has decided to go this latter route and converted a 1.3-ton air-bearing Coordinate-measuring machine (CMM) into an FDM 3D printer. (Video, embedded below.)

A CMM is a tool used to precisely measure the geometry of an object via gently lowering a calibrated probe. We’ve seen scratch build printers before, but this particular build benefits from having the CMM machinery and its 18 air bearings. The CMM head is moved by [Roetz 4.0]’s own custom system, but it takes advantage of the bearings. After some careful CAD planning as well as a fair bit of milling, lathing, and prototyping, he had buttery smooth controlled motion.

With an off the shelf driver board wired together with a large red button, he was ready for a maiden test print. A determination to finish before the year was out pushed things along. There are still a few quirks to fix, like the hole in the air drying system but those can be tackled next year. Ultimately, we think the results are stunning and it was a journey we were glad to go on with [Roetz 4.0]. The final episode of the series is after the break.

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Heat Turns 3D Printer Filament Into Springs

January 6, 2021 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

The next time you find yourself in need of some large-ish plastic springs, maybe consider [PattysLab]’s method for making plastic springs out of spare filament. The basic process is simple: tightly wind some 3D printer filament around a steel rod, secure it and wrap it in kapton tape, then heat it up. After cooling, one is left with a reasonably functional spring, apparently with all the advantages of annealed plastic.

The basic process may be simple, but [PattysLab] has a number of tips for getting best results. The first is to use a 3D-printed fixture to help anchor one end of filament to the steel rod, then use the help of an electric drill to wind the filament tightly. After wrapping the plastic with kapton tape (wrap counter to the direction of the spring winding, so that peeling the tape later doesn’t pull the spring apart), he suspends it in a pre-heated oven at 120 C for PLA and 160 C for PETG. How long does it stay in there? [PattysLab] uses the following method: when the spring is wound, he leaves a couple inches of filament sticking out to act as a visual indicator. When this segment of filament sags down, that’s his cue to begin the retrieval process. After cooling, the result is a compression or extension spring, depending on how it was wound before being heated.

[PattysLab] shared a short video on this Reddit post that shows both springs in action, and the process is all covered in the video, embedded below.

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