Giant F1 Car Is 3D Printed And Radio Controlled

April 2, 2018 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

The OpenRC F1 car is a radio control car you can 3D print and assemble yourself. You make the parts, glue them together, and then add your RC gear. That’s all well and good, but could it be done… bigger? [3D Printing Nerd] decided to tackle this one at 4x scale.

It goes without saying that this took some work. The model has to be carved up into sections that would actually fit on the printers to hand. This can take some planning to ensure the parts still come out nicely, as they may be printed in different orientations or with different slicer settings than originally intended.

That’s just the start, though. Once they’re printed, the parts need to be accurately aligned and glued together, which is a whole extra set of challenges. Urethane, epoxy and superglue adhesives are all pressed into service here to get the job done.

It’s a multipart build, as it’s a huge undertaking to 3D print anything on this scale. It’s a great example of taking a fun project, and turning up the silly factor to 11. And of course, at the end of the day, you’ve got a gigantic RC car to play with. Perhaps the only bigger RC cars we’ve seen have been… actual cars.

Bringing Fiction To Life With 3D Printing

April 2, 2018 by Tom Nardi 27 Comments

I print something nearly every day, and over the last few years, I’ve created hundreds of practical items. Parts to repair my car, specialized tools, scientific instruments, the list goes on and on. It’s very difficult for me to imagine going back to a time where I didn’t have the ability to rapidly create and replicate physical objects at home. I can say with complete honesty that it has been an absolutely life-changing technology for me, personally.

But to everyone else in my life, my friends and family, 3D printers are magical boxes which can produce gadgets, weapons, and characters from their favorite games and movies. Nobody wants to see the parts I made to get my girlfriend’s 1980’s Honda back on the road before she had to go to work in the morning, they want to see the Minecraft block I made for my daughter. I can’t get anyone interested in a device I made to detect the algal density of a sample of water, but they all want me to run off a set of the stones from The Fifth Element for them.

As I recently finished just such a project, a 3D printed limpet mine from Battlefield 1, I thought I would share some thoughts on the best practices for turning fiction into non-fiction.

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3D Printed Tank Tracks

March 31, 2018 by Al Williams 10 Comments

[Ivan] has been keeping his 3D printers busy with parts he’s experimenting with to build a tracked motion setup for a tank-like vehicle. His design uses several interlocking parts, so if you want to duplicate it, we hope your printer calibration is up to snuff. He’s still printing more parts and promises to release the files once the design proves out.

However, you can see he’s off to a good start. Small pieces fit together and accept a piece of filament as a sort of hinge. Some pins keep the filament from working out. Pads fit into the main parts and hold down with zip ties. The whole flexible tread locks into sprockets and a groove on a drive wheel.

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Learn What Did And Didn’t Work In This Prototyping Post-Mortem

March 30, 2018 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

[Tommy] is a one-man-shop making electronic musical things, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the outstanding prototyping post-mortem he wrote up about his attempt to turn his Four-Step Octaved Sequencer into a viable product. [Tommy] had originally made a hand-soldered one-off whose performance belied its simple innards, and decided to try to turn it into a product. Short version: he says that someday there will be some kind of sequencer product like it available from him, “[B]ut it won’t be this one. This one will go on my shelf as a reminder of how far I’ve come.”

The unit works, looks great, has a simple parts list, and the bill of materials is low in cost. So what’s the problem? What happened is that through prototyping, [Tommy] learned that his design will need many changes before it can be used to create a product, and he wrote up everything he learned during the process. Embedded below is a demo of the prototype that shows off how it works and what it can do, and it helps give context to the lessons [Tommy] shares.

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A High Speed, Infinite Volume 3D Printer

March 29, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

One of the most interesting developments in 3D printing in recent memory is the infinite build volume printer. Instead of a static bed, this type of printer uses a conveyor belt and a hotend set at an angle to produce parts that can be infinitely long in one axis, provided you have the plastic and electricity. For this year’s Hackaday Prize, [inven2main] is exploring the infinite build volume design, but putting a new spin on it. This is a printer with a conveyor belt and a SCARA arm. The goal of this project is to build a printer with a small footprint, huge build volume, no expensive rails or frames, and a low part count. It is the most capable 3D printer you can imagine using a minimal amount of parts.

Most of the documentation for this build is hanging around on the RepRap forums, but the bulk of the work is already done. The first half of this build — the SCARA arm — is well-traveled territory for the RepRap community, and where there’s some fancy math and kinematics going on, there’s nothing too far out of the ordinary. The real trick here is combining a SCARA arm with a conveyor belt to give the project an infinite build volume. The proof of concept works, using a conveyor belt manufactured out of blue painter’s tape. These conveyor belt printers are new, and the bed technology isn’t quite there, but improvements are sure to come. Improvements will also be found in putting a small crown on the rollers to keep the belt centered.

All the files for this printer are available on the Gits, and there are already a few videos of this printer working. You can check those out here.

Let’s Bring Back The Age Of Automatons

March 28, 2018 by Lara Grant 13 Comments

Long before the concept of A.I., as we know it today existed, humans started building machines that seemed to move and even think by a will of their own. For decades we have been building automatons, self-operating machines, designed to resemble humans and animals. Causing the designer to break down human and animal movements, behaviors, and even speech (by way of bellows and air tubes) into predetermined sequential actions.

[Greg Zumwalt] created what he calls a hummingbird themed automaton inspired by his wife’s love of watching hummingbirds gather near their home. His 3D printed and assembled hummingbird automaton moves almost as fluid as its organic counterpart. The design is simple yet created from an impressive number of 97 printed parts printed from 38 unique designs which he includes in his Instructable. Other than meticulous assembly design, the fluid motion lends itself to a process of test fitting, trimming, and sanding all printed parts. Plus adding petroleum jelly as lubrication to the build’s moving parts. Along with the print files, [Greg Zumwalt] also gives you the print settings needed to recreate this precision build and a parts list accounting for all the multiple prints needed for each design. Continue reading “Let’s Bring Back The Age Of Automatons” →

The Essential List Of 3D Printer Accessories

March 28, 2018 by Tom Nardi 108 Comments

You’ve acquired your first 3D printer and are giddy with excitement. But like all new additive manufacturing adventurers, the more you do with your printer the more questions arise. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back.

Getting the most out of your time with a new 3D printer has a lot to do with the tools and accessories on hand and what you do with them. Let’s take a look at a few of the accessories that should accompany every 3D printer, be it in your home, school, or hackerspace. There’s already enough potential aggravation when it comes to 3D printing, the goal here is to ensure you won’t be without a tool or supply when you need it the most.

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