Controlling OctoPrint On The Go

March 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

Not too long ago I took the plunge into the world of OctoPrint by shoehorning a Raspberry Pi Zero into a PrintrBot Play, and I have to say, the results were quite impressive. OctoPrint allows you to run your 3D printer untethered from your computer, but without all the downsides of printing off of an SD card. Generally running off of a Raspberry Pi, OctoPrint serves up a very capable web interface that gives you full control over slicing and printing from essentially any device with a modern browser.

That’s all well and good if you’ve got your laptop with you, or you’re sitting at your desktop. But what if you’re out of the house? Or maybe out in the garage where you don’t have a computer setup? OctoPrint is still happily serving up status information and a control interface, you just don’t have a computer to access it. Luckily, there are options for just that scenario.

In this post we’re going to take a look at a couple of options for controlling and monitoring OctoPrint from your mobile device, which can help truly realize its potential. Personally I have an incredible amount of anxiety when leaving a 3D printer running a long job, and in the past I’ve found myself checking every 10 minutes or so to see if it was done. Now that I can just glance at my phone and see an ETA along with status information about the machine, it’s given me the confidence to run increasingly longer and complex prints. Continue reading “Controlling OctoPrint On The Go” →

3D Printing With Mussels And Beets

March 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

What do you get when you combine oven-baked mussels and sugar beets in a kitchen blender? No, it isn’t some new smoothie cleanse or fad diet. It’s an experimental new recyclable 3D printing material developed by [Joost Vette], an Industrial Design Engineering student at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. While some of the limitations of the material mean it’s fairly unlikely you’ll be passing over PLA for ground-up shellfish anytime soon, it does have a few compelling features worth looking into.

For one thing, it’s completely biodegradable. PLA is technically biodegradable as it’s usually made primarily of cornstarch, but in reality, it can be rather difficult to break down. Depending on the conditions, PLA could last years exposed to the elements and not degrade to any significant degree. But [Joost] says his creation degrades readily when exposed to moisture; so much so that he theorizes it could have applications as a water-soluble support material when printing with a multiple extruder machine.

What’s more, after the material has been dissolved into the water, it can be reconstituted and put back into the printer. Failed prints could be recycled directly back into fresh printing material without any special hardware. According to [Joost], this process can be repeated indefinitely with no degradation to the material itself, “A lot of materials become weaker when recycled, this one does not.”

So how can you play along at home? The first challenge is finding the proper ratio between water, sugar, and the powder created by grinding up mussel shells necessary to create a smooth paste. It needs to be liquid enough to be extruded by the printer, but firm enough to remain structurally sound until it dries out and takes its final ceramic-like form. As for the 3D printer, it looks like [Joost] is using a paste extruder add-on for the Ultimaker 2, though the printer and extruder combo itself isn’t going to be critical as long as it can push out a material of the same viscosity.

We’ve seen a number of DIY paste extruder mods for 3D printers, which is a good starting point if you’re getting sick of boring old plastic. Before long you might find yourself printing with living tissue.

[Thanks to Mynasru for the tip]

Creality CR10-S Upgrade Shows The Effect Of Bad Power

March 3, 2018 by Jenny List 39 Comments

The Creality CR10-S is a printer that has become quite popular, and is not an uncommon sight in a hackspace or makerspace. Some models have a slight defect, a smoothing capacitor is of insufficient size, resulting in reduced print quality. [Jozerworx] has replaced the capacitor, and posted a full guide as to how the task can be performed.

Hackaday readers will have among their number many for whom replacing a surface mount electrolytic is no bother at all, indeed we’d expect most 3D printer owners to be able to perform the task. Maybe that the post has such an extensive FAQ and seems to be aimed at newbies to soldering points to 3D printing having moved to a wider market. But it has to be remembered that the value in this piece is not in the work, but in the characterisation. At the end he posts graphs showing the effect of the modification on the temperature of the extruder, and on the temperature noise brought about by the poor capacitor choice. A reduction from a +/- 3 Celcius variation to one of around +- 0.1 Celcius may not seem like much, but it seems it has a significant effect on the reliability of the printer.

So this isn’t the most elite of hacks, on a printer heading for a wider marketplace. But it serves to illustrate that bad quality power regulation can have some surprising effects. It seems every new printer comes with a list of community-developed mods to make it usable, perhaps one day we’ll find a printer that’s at peak performance out-of-the-box.

Printed It: Custom Enclosure Generator

March 2, 2018 by Tom Nardi 39 Comments

You’ve written your firmware code, etched your own PCB, and now it’s time to put that awesome new project of yours into an enclosure. Unfortunately, all you have is a generic Radio Shack project box that you picked up when they were clearing out their inventory. If you put your project in that, it’ll have all the style and grace of a kid wearing hand-me-down clothes. Your project deserves a tailor-made enclosure, but the prices and lead time on custom plastic enclosures are prohibitive for one-off projects.

In Ye Olde Olden Days, the next step might have been to start bending some sheet metal. But it’s the 21st century, and we’ve got mechanization on our side. The “Ultimate Box Maker” by [Heartman] is a fully parametric OpenSCAD design which allows you to generate professional looking enclosures by simply providing your desired dimensions and selecting from a few optional features. In a couple of hours, you’ll have a custom one-of-a-kind enclosure for your project for a few cents worth of filament.

That’s the idea, at least. For this edition of “Printed It”, I’ll be taking a look at the “Ultimate Box Maker” by generating and printing a basic enclosure. As somebody whose Radio Shack was out of enclosures by the time I got there and who doesn’t want to slice his hand open folding sheet metal, I’m very interested in seeing how well this design works.

Continue reading “Printed It: Custom Enclosure Generator” →

Review Of The Moai SLA 3D Printer

February 26, 2018 by Al Williams 26 Comments

It is funny how we always seem to pay the same for a new computer. The price stays the same, but the power of the computer is better each time. It would appear 3D printers may be the same story. After all, it wasn’t long ago that sinking a thousand bucks or more on a 3D printer wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Yet today you can better printers for a fraction of that and $1,300 will buy you an open source Moai SLA printer as a kit. [3D Printing Nerd] took a field trip to MatterHackers to check the machine out and you can see the results in the video below.

The printer uses a 150 mW laser to make parts up to 130 mm by 130 mm by 180 mm. The laser spot size is 70 micron (compare that to the typical 400 micron tip on a conventional printer). The prints require an alcohol bath after they are done followed by a UV curing step that takes a few hours.

Continue reading “Review Of The Moai SLA 3D Printer” →

Screw Drive Tank Is Radio Controlled, 3D Printed

February 25, 2018 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Screw drives are something that we don’t see a lot of – they’ve got an interesting set of attributes making them useful on soft ground, but woe betide you if your local transport department catches you trying to belt one of these up the freeway. After a long development period, [Ivan] has finally perfected his screw drive tank.

This is something that’s been in the works for a long time. It’s a primarily 3D-printed build, showing just how easy it is to build complex machines from scratch in this day and age of rapid prototyping. Over time, [Ivan] has experimented with different screw shapes and taken feedback from his audience on how to improve the craft. With some changes to the gearing and drive layout, the tank returned to the beach, with great success. Powered by twin brushless motors and controlled by off-the-shelf RC gear, the tank has no trouble scooting about the sand.

The project shows the value in iterative design, with [Ivan] taking time to lay out all the parts which have changed since the last revision. It’s a project that is now a five-part series, and we can’t wait to see where it goes next. There’s every chance an amphibious version could be in the works. For something on the larger scale, check out this screw drive tractor set to conquer Canada.

Continue reading “Screw Drive Tank Is Radio Controlled, 3D Printed” →

Casting Metal Parts And Silicone Molds From 3D Prints

February 25, 2018 by Lara Grant 35 Comments

The invention of the relatively affordable 3D printer for home use has helped bring methods used to produce parts for prototypes, samples, and even manufacturing, closer to designers. This tutorial on how to cast metal parts from 3D printed silicone molds is a perfect example of how useful a 3D printer can be when you are looking to make a custom and durable metal part at home.

After 3D printing a mold design using an Ultimaker 2 [Matt Borgatti] casts the mold using Smooth-On Mold Star 15 that can withstand heat up to 450 °F (232 °C), which he points out is ideal for the low-temp metal casting alloy tin-bismuth comprised of 58% Bismuth and 42% Tin with a melting point of 281 °F.

You may have heard of molds created from 3D printed parts before, but what makes this tutorial great is that the author, [Matt Borgatti], really sets you up to be successful. He offers up plenty of insights including mold-making techniques and terminology like why you would need a well and runners designed as part of your mold when casting with metal.

You can either reproduce his designs or use the tutorial to create your own which makes it a good start for beginners as well as another method to file away for people who already have experience 3D printing molds. This post is also really a twofer. Not only do you get detailed instructions for the method but [Matt Borgatti] uses his casted metal part for a flat-pack camera arm he designed to document projects with which you can also build using his files found on Thingiverse.

To create molds for precision parts and to learn more about using a 3D printer as a tool in the casting process, check out this method for creating higher resolution molds with a resin printer.

Continue reading “Casting Metal Parts And Silicone Molds From 3D Prints” →