3D Print A Drill-Powered Helicopter Toy Because It’s Simply Fun

May 14, 2024 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

These days, you can get a fully remote-control helicopter that you can fly around your house for about $30. Maybe less. Back in the day, kids had to make do with far simpler toys, like spinning discs that just flew up in the air. [JBV Creative] has built a toy just like that with his 3D printer. It may be simple, but it also looks pretty darn fun.

The design is straightforward. It uses a power drill to spin up a geartrain, which in turn drives a small disc propeller. Spin the propeller fast enough and it’ll launch high into the air. The geartrain mounts to the drill via the chuck, and it interfaces with the propeller with a simple toothed coupler. Alternatively, there’s also a hand-cranked version if you don’t have a power drill to hand.

Launching is easy. First, the drill spins the propeller up to speed. Then, when the drill’s trigger is released, it slows down, and the propeller spins free of the toothed coupler, with the lift it generates carrying it into the sky.

Files are available online for those interested. We could imagine this toy could make the basis for a great design competition. Students could compete to optimise the design with more effective gear ratios or better airfoils. We’ve seen similar designs before, too. Video after the break.

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3D Printing In Custom PLA With A TPU Core

May 4, 2024 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

[Stefan] from CNC Kitchen explored an unusual approach to a multi-material print by making custom PLA filament with a TPU core to make it super-tough. TPU is a flexible filament whereas PLA is hard almost to the point of being brittle. The combo results in a filament with some unusual properties, inviting some thoughts about what else is possible.

Cross-section of 3D print using white PLA with a red TPU core.

[Stefan]’s video covers a few different filament experiments, but if you’d like to see the TPU-PLA composite you can skip ahead to 18:15. He first creates the composite filament by printing an oversized version on a 3D printer, then re-forming it by running it through a Recreator to resize it down to 1.75 mm.

We have seen this technique of printing custom filaments before, which is useful to create DIY multi-color filaments in small quantities right on a 3D printer’s print bed with no special equipment required. This is an effective method but results in filament with a hexagonal profile, which works but isn’t really ideal. By printing his custom composite at 4 mm diameter then resizing the filament down to 1.75 mm, [Stefan] was able to improve overall printability.

That being said, TPU and PLA have very different characteristics and don’t like to adhere to one another so the process was pretty fiddly. TPU-cored PLA might be troublesome and uncooperative to make, but it can be done with some patience and fairly simple equipment.

Despite the difficulties, test prints were pretty interesting. PLA toughness was roughly doubled and under magnification one can see a lattice of TPU strands throughout the prints which are unlike anything else. Check it out in the video, embedded below.

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A Vernier Take On A 3D Printer Extruder Indicator

May 3, 2024 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

A common way to visualize that a 3D printer’s extruder motor — which feeds the filament into the hot end — is moving is to attach a small indicator to the exposed end of the motor’s shaft. As the shaft turns, so does the attached indicator.

Small movements of the motor are therefore turned into larger movements of something else. So far, so simple. But what about visualizing very small extrusions, such as those tiny ones made during ironing?

[Jack]’s solution is a Vernier indicator for the extruder. Even the smallest movements of the extruder motor’s shaft are made clearly visible by such a device, as shown in the header image above. Vernier scales are more commonly found on measurement tools, and the concept is somewhat loosely borrowed here.

The usual way these lightweight indicators are attached is with a small magnet, and you can read all about them and see examples here.

This new design is basically the same, it simply has a background in a contrasting color added into the mix. [Jack]’s design is intended for the Bambu A1 printer, but the idea can be easily adapted. Give it a look if you find yourself yearning for a bit more visibility in your extruder movements.

3D Printed Adapter Helps You Eat Chicken Nuggets On The Highway

April 27, 2024 by Lewin Day 62 Comments

So often, we see 3D printers used to create some nifty little tool for a tricky little job. Maybe it’s to lock cams together for a timing belt change, or to work as a jig for soldering some complex device. However, some hacks are even simpler than that. [maker_guy] realized that eating nuggets in the car could be easier than ever with a little printed adapter.

The print is simple. It’s a round caddy for the nugget sauces given out by Chick-fil-A restaurants. Why round? Because it lets the nugget sauce sit neatly in your car’s cupholder at an accessible height. Put the sauce tub in the adapter, peel it open, and you can dip to your heart’s content.

So simple, yet a game changer all the same.

No more delicately balancing Zesty Buffalo by the gearstick while you try and chow down. Nor will your seat covers be tainted with Honey Mustard!

“Not a hack!” you scream. “It’s frivolous nonsense!” To that I say, are you a nugget eater or not? I myself partake, and I can absolutely see the value in this. You see, us journalists work hard. We’re often stuck eating substandard food in our cars on the way from one thing to another, like so many others in busy professions. If a smart little 3D-printed adapter can make mealtime easier and save some mess, I’m calling that a win.

You should never be afraid to use your creativity to make tools to improve your life. Parts are on Thingiverse if you need to print your own. Mod it to suit McDonald’s product if you need. Heck, print in black and it’d look like a stock part of the car!

You don’t have to like this simple adapter, but you can’t deny its utility! Share your own nifty little adapter ideas in the comments.

Dual-Wavelength SLA 3D Printing: Fast Continuous Printing With ROMP And FRP Resins

April 22, 2024 by Maya Posch 10 Comments

As widespread as 3D printing with stereolithography (SLA) is in the consumer market, these additive manufacturing (AM) machines are limited to a single UV light source and the polymerization of free-radical polymerization (FRP) resins. The effect is that the object is printed in layers, with each layer adhering not only to the previous layer, but also the transparent (FEP or similar) film at the bottom of the resin vat. The resulting peeling of the layer from the film both necessitates a pause in the printing process, but also puts significant stress on the part being printed. Over the years a few solutions have been developed, with Sandia National Laboratories’ SWOMP technology (PR version) being among the latest.

Unlike the more common FRP-based SLA resins, SWOMP (Selective Dual-Wavelength Olefin Metathesis 3D-Printing) uses ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), which itself has been commercialized since the 1970s, but was not previously used with photopolymerization in this fashion. For the monomer dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) was chosen, with HeatMet (HM) as the photo-active olefin metathesis catalyst. This enables the UV-sensitivity, with an added photobase generator (PBG) which can be used to selectively deactivate polymerization.

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Manual Supports For 3D Printing

April 21, 2024 by Al Williams 14 Comments

[MakerSpace] wanted to 3D print an RFID card holder. On one side is a slot for a card and on the other side has recesses for the RFID antenna. They used these to control access to machines and were milling them out using a CNC machine. Since there were no flat surfaces, he had to turn on supports in the slicer, right? No. He does use supports, but not in the way you might imagine.

Inspired by creating cast iron using sand casting, he decided to first 3D print a reusable “core” using PETG. This core will support future prints that use PLA. When printing the actual item, the printer lays down the first few layers and pauses. This allows you to stick the core in and resume the print. After the print completes, you can remove the core, and the results look great, as you can see in the video below.

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3D Printer Streaming Solution Unlocks Webcam Features

April 20, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

While 3D printer hardware has come along way in the past decade and a half, the real development has been in the software. Open source slicers are constantly improving, and OctoPrint can turn even the most basic of printers into a network-connected powerhouse. But despite all these improvements, there’s still certain combinations of hardware that require a bit of manual work.

[Reticulated] wanted an easy way to monitor his prints over streaming video, but didn’t have any of the cameras that are supported by OctoPrint. Of course he could just point a cheap network-connected camera at the printer and be done with it, but he was looking for a bit better integration than that. In the process, he demonstrates how to unlock some features hidden in inexpensive webcams.

He set about building something that wouldn’t require buying more equipment or overloading the limited hardware responsible for the actual printing. A few of his existing cameras have RTMP support, which allows a fairly straightforward setup with YouTube Live once Monaserver is set up to handle the RTMP feeds from the cameras and OBS Studio is configured to stream it out to YouTube. Using the OctoPrint API, he was able to pull data such as the current extruder temperature and overlay it on the video.

One of the other interesting parts of this build is that not all of [Reticulated]’s cameras have built-in RTMP support but following this guide he was able to get more of them working with this setup than otherwise would have had this capability by default. Even beyond 3D printing, this is an excellent guide (and tip) for getting a quick live stream going for whatever reason. For anything more mobile than a working 3D printer, though, you might want to look at taking your streaming setup mobile instead.