Make An Electroplating Marker, Because Plating Complex Objects Is Hard

May 8, 2019 by Donald Papp 22 Comments

If an object is conductive or has been given a conductive coating, it can be given a metal skin via electroplating. Electroplating is a simple process that is perfectly accessible to anyone in possession of vinegar, salt, a power supply, and some metal such as copper or nickel.

The process might be simple, but as with all such things there are a few gotchas. One of them is this: because electricity follows the path of least resistance, recessed areas of an object may not electroplate well (or at all) no matter how long the object is left immersed. To address this, [Brodie Fairhall] designed a 3D printed electroplating marker. The marker is essentially a more refined version of brush plating, and allows more precision and control than full immersion in an electrolyte bath.

[Brodie] created an excellent video that explains all one needs to start electroplating, and demonstrates using his marker to electroplate complex recessed shapes. Watch him coat a 3D-printed cat pendant in both copper and nickel in the video embedded below. It’s concise, well-edited, and chock full of useful tips.

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An Easy Camera Slider Build

May 8, 2019 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

As smartphone cameras improve with each new generation, making quality video content is getting easier all the time. This means it takes a little more to stand out, so it pays to get creative with your cinematography. A slider is a great way to get some different shots, and you can build one pretty cheaply too (Youtube link, embedded below).

For smooth motion, [Nikodem Bartnik] used aluminium extrusion for the rails, along with some roller bearing wheels designed to suit. The wheels are built into a 3D printed carriage, which is also fitted with a spherical clamping camera mount. It’s all wrapped up with some socket head cap screws and 3D printed brackets to tie it all together.

Dimensional accuracy is key to the smooth operation of a slider, so you’ll want to have your printer set up well if you’re going to attempt this one. [Nikodem] demonstrates the slider is capable of taking the weight of an mid-range SLR with a tastefully sized lens, but if you’re going for something telephoto, you might want to go for something bigger. You could also consider a motorized rig instead. Video after the break.

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Building Keyboards With Resin Printers

May 7, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

Aside from putting a whole lot of tact switches on a board, no one has quite figured out how to make very small keyboards for wearable projects. [Madaeon] might have the answer, and it’s using a resin-based 3D printer to create a flexible keyboard without silicone.

The world of small keyboards is filled with what are effectively the squishy parts of a remote control. This uses a piece of silicone and tiny carbon ‘dots’ on the underside of each button. Press the button, and these carbon dots bridge two traces on a PCB, closing a switch. No one has yet mastered home-casting silicone, although the people behind the ESP32 WiPhone have been experimenting with aluminum molds.

Instead of going down the path of casting and curing silicone, [Madaeon] decided to use 3D printing, specifically resin 3D printing, using a very flexible resin. The build process is what you would expect — just some button-shaped objects, but this gets clever when it comes to bridging the connections on the keyboard matrix. This is done with conductive paint, carefully applied to the underside of each button.

Right now this is a viable means of getting a tiny keyboard easily. The color is a garish pink, and the labels on each button aren’t quite as visible as anyone would like, but the latter can be fixed with silkscreening, just like how it’s done on the silicone buttons for remote controls.

3D Printed Weather Station Gets A Wireless Upgrade

May 5, 2019 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

A weather station can be anything from a fun home science exercise, all the way up to a useful tool for planning and weather prediction. [Rob Ward] is one such person who has developed their own weather station, and it recently got a wireless upgrade.

We first featured [Rob]’s work back in 2018, noting that a largely 3D-printed weather station was a particularly useful tool for the home experimenter. The utility of this is now improved, with the addition of a 433 MHz wireless link from the weather sensors back to the base station. Over on Github, [Rob] does a great job of explaining the basics of the Manchester encoding scheme used, and has developed a system that can decode signals from Oregon Scientific weather stations, too.

[Rob] uses the weather station to report weather conditions at Lake Tyers Beach, providing useful information for anyone in the area who might be considering a visit to the coast. It’s not quite as fun as asking whoever’s around on the CB road channel, but it’s a darn sight more accurate for your trouble. Video after the break.

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Toolpath Painting Brings Out That First Layer Sparkle

May 5, 2019 by Sonya Vasquez 7 Comments

In the 3D-printing community, [Mark Peeters] may be known-and-loved for his drooloop printing, but that’s not enough to stop him from pushing the spectrum of printing tricks even further. Dubbed Toolpath Painting, [Mark] is taking that glorious sheen from the bottom layer of a 3D print and putting it to work to make eye-catching deliberate visual displays.

[Mark’s] work comes in two flavors. The first capitalizes on a fairly wide 2mm nozzle and translucent filaments to create vibrant sun catchers. The second relies on the reflective patterns of an opaque filament where the angle of the extrusion lines determine the type of sheen. [Mark’s] progress is beautifully captured on his twitter feed where he rolls out variations of this style.

Photographs simply don’t do justice to this technique, but you need not be left unsatisfied. Mark has left us with a thorough introduction to creating these patterns on your own printer in the video after the break.

Eager to put that printer to work on other avant-garde styles? Have a look at some other inspirational techniques from a prior MRRF, or have a go at texturing your prints with some velocity painting.

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3D Printing A Lifting Body Aircraft

April 29, 2019 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

When you think of unconventional aircraft, flying wings have had plenty of time in the sun over the last few decades. With striking designs like the B-2 Spirit and F-117A Nighthawk on the flight line, it’s no surprise. The lifting body never really caught on, however, and it languishes in ignominy to this day. Despite their obscurity, [rctestflight] decided to 3D print a few lifting bodies for himself and take them out for a field test (YouTube video, embedded below).

Most aircraft have a body designed with low drag, and wings designed to provide lift. Lifting body aircraft focus the body design on providing that lift and often have no real wing to the design, needing only control surfaces to compliment the body. For this project, several different designs were constructed, with the craft being drop-launched from a multirotor at significant altitude. Initial tests were hamstrung by stability problems, both due to center of gravity issues and uncertain aerodynamic phenomena. The early designs were particularly prone to suddenly entering an unrecoverable flat spin. Later modifications included the addition of further stabilizers, which helped performance somewhat.

3D printing is a great way to experiment with aerodynamic phenomena, as it’s easy to create all manner of complicated geometries to tinker with. [rctestflight] has done solid work developing a basic craft, and we’d love to see the work continue with powered tests and more development. If flying wings are more your jam, though, you can 3D print those too. Video after the break.

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Benchmarking A Garbage Disposal Using The 3DBenchy Tugboat

April 29, 2019 by Ted Yapo 8 Comments

We’ve always had a love-hate relationship with 3DBenchy, the tugboat-shaped 3D printer calibration target. On one hand, it’s incredibly useful to have a common, widely used, and challenging benchmark object to evaluate printer performance and improve tuning, but we’d somehow like to get back the countless frustrated hours we’ve spent trying to get the damn thing perfect with various printers. So, it was with no little joy that we watched the video below by [Eric R Mockler], in which he uses 3DBenchy prints to benchmark his newest acquisition: a new-in-box garbage disposal he scored off Craigslist. Take that, tugboat!

[Eric] is considering using the disposal as the first step in a failed-print-recycling method to ultimately turn the waste back into filament, presumably to print more tugboats. The tiny bits produced by the disposal should provide a reasonable substitute for pelleted plastic feedstock going into a filament extruder, if the disposal is up to the task, that is. Reasoning that any device capable of grinding chicken bones should handle little plastic tugboats just as well, [Eric] gave it shot, and found that the ⅓-horsepower disposal had no problem grinding even 100%-infill PLA prints.

The video is short and to-the-point, so we’ll even excuse the portrait orientation, just this once. If you’re considering recycling your failed prints, too, you’ll also need a filament extruder, and we’ve got you covered with a low-cost version, or a high-throughput one.

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