3D Printer Revives Large Format Camera

July 19, 2020 by Jenny List No comments

With a quarter-century of more of consumer digital cameras behind us, it’s easy to forget that there was once another way to see your photos without waiting for them to be developed. Polaroid Land cameras and their special film could give the impatient photographer a print in about a minute, but sadly outside a single specialist producer, it is no longer a product that is generally available. [The Amateur Engineer] sought an alternative for a large format camera, by adapting a back designed for Fuji Instax film instead.

Lomography, the retailer of fun plastic cameras, had produced an Instax back for one of their cameras, and to adapt it for a Tachihara large format camera required a custom 3D-printed frame. Being quite a large item it had to be printed in three pieces and stuck together with epoxy. Then a series of light leaks had to be chased down and closed up. The result is a working Instax back for the camera, which appears to deliver the photographic goods.

We’ve seen a few digital backs for larger cameras produced with scanners, but we rather like this linear CCD one.

Tool Changing 3D Printers Shouldn’t Break The Bank

July 18, 2020 by Jenny List 12 Comments

One of the Holy Grails of desktop 3D printing is the ability to print in multiple materials, for prints that mix colours or textures. There are printers with multi-way hot ends, add-ons that change your filament, or printers with tool changers, that swap hot ends as needed. [Amy] has taken the final route with her Hypercube, and her Doot Changer allows her to print in two materials with ease. Best of all, she tells us it only cost her $20 to make.

For those not familiar with Hypercube-style printers, they have a roughly cubic frame made using aluminium extrusion. On the rear upper rail are a couple of receptacles with metal locating pins onto which a hot-end unit can be slotted. The printer carriage has a magnetic coupling that can pick up or disengage a hot end from its receptacle at will, as can be seen in action in a short video clip.

All the parts can be found on Thingiverse, and there is a photo album with plenty of eye-candy should you wish to see more. Meanwhile as far as tool changers go, we’ve been there before in great depth.

This Soap Dispenser Will Crush Your Germs

July 17, 2020 by Sharon Lin 12 Comments

When it comes to cleaning your hands, [Arnov Sharma] is not messing around. He built an automatic soap dispenser using ultrasonic sensors, a stepper motor for activating the pump, and 3D printed components for housing a bottle of soap – a spectacular display of over-engineering. At least he won’t be needing to stand in line at the supermarket for motion detection soap dispensers anytime soon.

Initially, he had the idea to build the dispenser using a common servo motor-based method. This would involve activating motors to push down on the plunger for the soap bottle to dispense soap. Instead, he for a different approach that ended up being fairly straightforward in theory, although the execution is pretty involved.

Model of the soap dispenser made in Fusion 360

He started off by 3D printing the compartment where the soap bottle would sit and the structural support for the Z-axis rail that would be pushing down on the soap bottle. It’s similar to the type of linear actuator you might find in a 3D printer or PCB mill, where a motor controls a rotating screw that moves the carriage across a belt. (We presume the linear rail came first, and the ultrasonic soap dispenser second.)

In this build, there are two additional rods added to help support the lever pressing down on the soap dispenser.

The setup is controlled by an Arduino, which triggers the movement from the linear actuator if it receives a signal from an ultrasonic sensor. He’s added the model files and Arduino code for other makers curious about building a similar project. Check out his video for the soap dispenser in action – the stepper motor definitely makes for a much more powerful plunge than you might expect.

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Make Your Own Filament

July 17, 2020 by Al Williams 52 Comments

According to [Alex] it is easy to make your own rolls of 3D printing filament, even though existing off-the-shelf solutions don’t work very well. His explanation for this is economics. He built a filament extruder using a high torque induction motor and gearbox that was locally sourced. He argues that shipping heavy gear around would make a similar extruder commercially unattractive. He sunk about $600 into the device but estimates that a company would need to charge at least $1,500 or more for the same thing. That may seem steep but as [Alex] points out, a 1 kg roll of filament really only has about 750 grams for filament and plastic pellets cost $2 to $3 per kilogram.

There are other costs, of course, like the electricity required to heat and move the plastic. Still, the system appears to use about $1 of electricity for every 10 kg of filament. You can see the process in the video below.

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FreeCAD Vs SolveSpace

July 16, 2020 by Al Williams 59 Comments

When you are ready to design real things, you’ll find simple CAD programs can be pretty limiting. Serious modern designs tend to use parametric modeling where you don’t necessarily set dimensions and positions of everything but instead constrain the design by describing the relationship between different elements. For example, you can create a vertical line and constrain other lines to be parallel, perpendicular, or form a given angle with that line. There are many tools that can do that, including FreeCAD and SolveSpace, two programs that [Joko Engineeringhelp] uses to create a complex compressor blade and it really shows the differences and similarities between the two tools.

You probably don’t need this particular design, but watching over someone’s shoulder while they do a complex design can be very valuable. Being able to see the differences between the two tools might convince you to learn one or the other or maybe even switch.

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No Assembly Required For This Compliant Mechanism Dial Indicator

July 15, 2020 by Dan Maloney 10 Comments

If you’ve ever had the good fortune — or, after a shop mishap, the misfortune — to see the insides of a dial indicator, you’ll know the workings of these shop essentials resemble nothing so much as those of a fine Swiss watch. The pinions, gears, and springs within transmit the slightest movement of the instrument’s plunger to a series of dials, making even the tiniest of differences easy to spot.

Not every useful dial indicator needs to have those mechanical guts, nor even a dial for that matter. This compliant mechanism 3D-printed dial-free indicator is perfect for a lot of simple tasks, including the bed leveling chores that [SunShine] designed it for. Rather than print a bunch of gears and assemble them, [SunShine] chose to print the plunger, a fine set of flexible linkage arms, and a long lever arm to act as a needle. The needle is attached to a flexible fulcrum, which is part of the barrel that houses the plunger. Slight movements of the plunger within the barrel push or pull on the needle, amplifying them into an easily read deflection. When attached to the head of a 3D-printer and scanned over the bed, it’s easy to see even the slightest variation in height and make the corresponding adjustments. Check it out in the video below.

We’re big fans of compliant mechanisms, seeing them in everything from robot arms and legs to thrust vectoring for an RC plane. This might look like something from a cereal box, and it certainly doesn’t have the lasting power of a Starrett or Mitutoyo, but then again it costs essentially nothing, and we like that too.

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Printed It: Print-in-Place PCB Gripper

July 15, 2020 by Tom Nardi 10 Comments

The goal of Printed It is to showcase creations that truly embrace the possibilities offered by desktop 3D printing. The most obvious examples are designs that can be printed quickly and cheaply enough that they’re a valid alternative to commercially available products. But as previous entries into the series have shown, there are also technical considerations. Is it simply a duplicate of something that could be produced via traditional means, or does the design really benefit from the unique nature of 3D printing?

A perfect example is the Print-in-Place PCB Holder/Gripper created by SunShine. This design is able to hold onto PCBs (or really, whatever you wish) without any additional components. Just pull it off the bed, and put it to work. While having to add a rubber band or generic spring would hardly be an inconvenience, there’s always something to be said for a design that’s truly 100% printable.

The secret is the dual flat spiral springs integrated into the device’s jaws. While most of the common thermoplastics used in desktop 3D printing are relatively stiff, the springs have been designed in such a way that they can be printed in standard PLA. The backside of the jaws have teeth that mesh together, so the energy of the springs is combined to provide a clamping force. Serrations have been added to the jaws to catch the edge of the PCB and help stabilize it.

Visually, it’s certainly striking. The design largely eschews right angles, giving it an almost biological appearance. Many have compared it to the head of a mantis, or perhaps some piece of alien technology.

There’s no question that the design leverages the strengths of 3D printing either; there’s no other way to produce its intricate interlocking components, especially without the use of any sort of fasteners. In short, this design is an ideal candidate for Printed It. But there’s still one question to answer: does it actually work?

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