3D Printing A NAS Server Case

July 28, 2019 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

It’s good to back up, and despite that, few of us do. [Brian] we suspect is of the more diligent persuasion, given his strong enthusiasm for network attached storage. Recently, he found himself looking for a new case for his DIY build, and decided to go the 3D printed route.

The case is the design of one [Toby K], who sells the design online. [Brian] set out to produce the case himself using a Prusa i3, investing much time into the process. Total print time for the successful parts alone was over 227 hours, not including the failed parts and reprints.

Assembly caused some headaches, with various hinges and dovetails not fitting together perfectly first time. Not one to shy away from some proper down and dirty making, [Brian] was able to corral the various parts into fitting with a combination of delicate hammering, filing, and reprinting several broken pieces.

Overall, accounting for the filament used and hardware required, [Brian] spent over $200 producing the case. For those who just need a housing for their NAS, it doesn’t make a whole lot of financial sense. But for those who enjoy the build, and like the opportunity to customize their case as they see fit, the time and money can certainly be worth it. As [Brian] states, there aren’t too many cases on the market that ship with his logo on the grill.

We’ve seen other 3D printed case builds before, too. Video after the break.

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The March Toward A DIY Metal 3D Printer

July 26, 2019 by Sharon Lin 20 Comments

[Hyna] has spent seven years working with electron microscopes and five years with 3D printers. Now the goal is to combine expertise from both realms into a metal 3D printer based on electron-beam melting (EBM). The concept is something of an all-in-one device that combines traits of an electron beam welder, an FDM 3D printer, and an electron microscope. While under high vacuum, an electron beam will be used to fuse metal (either a wire or a powder) to build up objects layer by layer. That end goal is still in the future, but [Hyna] has made significant progress on the vacuum chamber and the high voltage system.

The device is built around a structure made of 80/20 extruded aluminum framing. The main platform showcases an electron gun, encased within a glass jar that is further encased within a metal mesh to prevent the glass from spreading too far in the event of an implosion.

Vacuum chamber enclosed in mesh (new gasket shown)

Mold for making silicone gasket

The design of the home-brewed high-voltage power supply involves an isolation transformer (designed to 60kV), using a half-bridge topology to prevent high leakage inductance. The transformer is connected to a buck converter for filament heating and a step up. The mains of the system are also connected to a voltage converter, which can be current-fed or voltage-fed to operate as either an electron beam welder or scanning electron microscope (SEM). During operation, the power supply connects to a 24V input and delivers the beam through a Wehnelt cylinder, an electrode opposite an anode that focuses and controls the electron beam. The entire system is currently being driven by an FPGA and STM32.

The vacuum enclosure itself is quite far along. [Hyna] milled a board with two outputs for a solid state relay (SSR) to a 230V pre-vacuum pump and a 230V pre-vacuum pump valve, two outputs for vent valves, and inputs from a Piranni gauge and a Cold Cathode Gauge, as well as a port for a TMP controller. After demoing the project at Maker Faire Prague, [Hyna] went back and milled a mold for a silicone gasket, a better vacuum seal for the electron beam.

While we’ve heard a lot about different metal 3D printing methods, this is the first time we’ve seen an EBM project outside of industry. And this may be the first to attempt to combine three separate uses for an HV electron beam into the same build.

3D Printer Meets CNC Router To Make Wood Prints

July 25, 2019 by Dan Maloney 29 Comments

We’ve seen plenty of plywood 3D printers before; after all, many early hobbyist machines were made from laser-cut plywood. But this plywood 3D-printer isn’t made from plywood – it prints plywood. Well, sort of.

Yes, we know – that’s not plywood the printer is using, but rather particleboard, the same material that fills the flatpack warehouse of every IKEA store. And calling it a printer is a bit of a stretch, too. This creation, by [Shane Whigton] and his Formlabs Hackathon team, is more of a hybrid additive-subtractive CNC machine. A gantry-mounted router carves each layer of the print from a fresh square of material – which could just as easily be plywood as particleboard. Once a layer is cut, the gantry applies glue to it, puts a fresh sheet of material on top, and clamps it down tight. The router then carves the next layer, and so on up the stack. The layer height is limited to the thickness of the material – a nominal 3/4″ (19 mm) in this case – and there’s a remarkable amount of waste, but that’s not really the point. Check out the printer in action and the resulting giant Benchy in the video below.

Seeing all that particleboard dust and glue got us thinking: what about a 3D-printer that extrudes a paste of sawdust mixed with glue? We imagine that would be a bit like those giant printers that extrude concrete to build houses.
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I Love The Smell Of ABS Plastic In The Morning

July 23, 2019 by Bryan Cockfield 17 Comments

One lesson we can learn from the Vietnam War documentary Apocalypse Now is that only crazy people like terrible smells just for fun. Surely Lt. Col. Kilgore would appreciate the smell of 3D printers as well, but for those among us who are a little less insane, we might want a way to eliminate the weird (and not particularly healthy) smell of melting ABS plastic.

While a simple solution would be a large fume hood or a filter to prevent inhaling the fumes, there are more elegant solutions to this problem. [Mark]’s latest project uses an electrostatic precipitator (ESP) to remove the volatile plastic particles from the air. Essentially it is a wire with a strong voltage applied to it enclosed in a vessel of some sort. The voltage charges particles, which then travel to a collecting electrode. Commercial offerings also include an X-ray generator to help clean the air, but [Mark] found this to be prohibitively expensive.

The ESP is built into a small tube through with the air can flow, and the entire device itself is housed in the printing enclosure. The pictures show the corona discharge in the device, and [Mark] plans to test it over the next few months to determine its effectiveness. He does note, however, that the electrostatic discharge creates ozone, which has its own set of problems, so he recommends against building one on your own. Ozone at least still smells like victory.

External Buffer Boosts 3D Printer Filament Splicing On The Palette 2

July 21, 2019 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

There was a time when most of us thought the next logical step for desktop 3D printing was to add additional extruders and hotends, allowing the machine to print in multiple colors or materials. Unfortunately such arrangements quickly become ungainly, and even with just two extruders, calibration can be a nightmare. Because of this, development has been trending towards systems that use just one hotend and simply alternate the filament being fed into it. But such systems have their own problems.

Arguably the biggest issue is how long it takes to switch filaments. The Palette 2 uses a physical buffer of spliced filament to try and keep ahead of the printer, but as [Kurt Skauen] demonstrates, there are considerable performance gains to be had by building a bigger buffer. He says there’s still some calibration issues to contend with, but judging by the video after the break, we’d say he is certainly on the right track.

The buffer is necessary to give the spliced filament time to cool and bond before being fed into the printer, but as currently designed, the machine simply can’t store enough of it to keep up with high print speeds. The stock buffer area holds 125mm worth of spliced filament, but the modification [Kurt] has designed adds a whopping 280mm on top of that to reach more than three times the stock capacity.

He’s successfully tested printing at speeds as high as 200mm/s with his upgraded buffer, a big improvement over what he was seeing with the original buffer area. This despite the fact that Mosaic (the company that produces the Palette) claim the original buffer size was already more than sufficient. It seems we’ve found ourselves in the middle of a debate between Mosaic and some very vocal members of the community, and while we don’t want to take sides, it’s hard to ignore [Kurt]’s findings.

Want to make your own? [Kurt] has released all the information necessary for others to duplicate his work, including the STLs for all printed parts and a list of the bearings, springs, and fasteners you’ll need to put it together. It looks like a fairly large undertaking, but with the potential for such a considerable speed boost, we don’t doubt others will be willing to take the plunge. One person who printed and assembled an earlier version of the buffer upgrade reports their print speeds with a 0.8 mm nozzle have more than doubled.

The Palette has come a long way from we first saw it in 2016, and since then, Prusa has thrown their orange hat into the ring with their own filament-switching upgrade. Neither machine is without its niggling issues, but they’re still probably our best shot at taking desktop 3D printing to the next level.

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3D Printed Snap Gun For Automatic Lock Picking

July 17, 2019 by Pat Whetman 31 Comments

At a far flung, wind blown, outpost of Hackaday, we were watching a spy film with a bottle of suitably cheap Russian vodka when suddenly a blonde triple agent presented a fascinating looking gadget to a lock and proceeded to unpick it automatically. We all know very well that we should not believe everything we see on TV, but this one stuck.

Now, for us at least, fantasy became a reality as [Peterthinks] makes public his 3D printed lock picker – perfect for the budding CIA agent. Of course, the Russians have probably been using these kind of gadgets for much longer and their YouTube videos are much better, but to build one’s own machine takes it one step to the left of center.

The device works by manually flicking the spring (rubber band) loaded side switch which then toggles the picking tang up and down whilst simultaneously using another tang to gently prime the opening rotator.

The size of the device makes it perfect to carry around in a back pocket, waiting for the chance to become a hero in the local supermarket car park when somebody inevitably locks their keys in their car, or even use it in your day job as a secret agent. Just make sure you have your CIA, MI6 or KGB credentials to hand in case you get searched by the cops or they might think you were just a casual burglar. Diplomatic immunity, or a ‘license to pick’ would also be useful, if you can get one.

As mentioned earlier, [Peter’s] video is not the best one to explain lock picking, but he definitely gets the prize for stealth. His videos are below the break.

In the meantime, all we need now are some 3D printed tangs.

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Isomorphic Keyboards With CV Out

July 13, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

A piano keyboard can be much more than a linear row of white keys and black keys. Over the history of the keyboard, different arrangement have been made, and in the late 19th century, the Janko keyboard was developed. This keyboard that was a series of buttons laid out on a hexagonal grid. The idea being that every scale in every key is fingered the same. Chords with large intervals are easier. It also looks cool.

To date, making a MIDI Janko keyboard (with CV out) was an exercise in buying a lot of buttons and programming a microcontroller. But this 3D print from [TomsJensen] adapts what is probably the most popular MIDI keyboard in production to a Janko layout.

We have seen something like this before with [John Moriarty] building a system that adapts a standard piano keyboard and any full-size MIDI controller into an isomorphic keyboard. However, if you want to play with modular synths you need a keyboard with CV out, the cheapest and most popular being the Arturia Keystep. That’s a smaller keyboard and requires a complete redesign.

This project is up on OnShape with the files up on Thingiverse should you want to print your own. Sure, it’s just a small modification to an already popular MIDI keyboard, but if you’ve got some plastic sitting around it would be great to try out.