Student 3D Prints Eyes

February 15, 2018 by Al Williams 20 Comments

[Ondřej Vocílka] is a student at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. In addition, the 23-year-old lost his vision in his left eye. While attending a lecture on 3D printing, he wondered if he could 3D print an ophthalmic prosthesis — an artificial eye. Turns out, he could. If you don’t speak Czech, you’ll need to call on a translation service like we did.

Unlike conventional glass or plastic eyes, it is trivial to change parameters like color when 3D printing the prosthetic. This is especially important with the iris and the finished product takes about 90 minutes to print. There is additional time required to coat the product with an acrylic layer to mimic the gloss of a natural eye.

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Printed Motorcycle Choke Lever Goes The Distance

February 15, 2018 by Tom Nardi 9 Comments

We all dread the day that our favorite piece of hardware becomes so old that spare parts are no longer available for it, something about facing that mechanical mortality sends a little shiver up the hacker’s spine. But on the other hand, the day you can’t get replacement hardware is also the same day you have a valid excuse to make your own parts.

That’s the situation [Jonathan] found himself in when the choke lever for his Suzuki motorcycle broke. New parts aren’t made for his bike anymore, which gave him the opportunity to fire up Fusion 360 and see if he couldn’t design a replacement using a 2D scan of what was left of the original part.

[Jonathan] put the original part on his flatbed scanner as well one of his credit cards to use for a reference point to scale the image when he imported it into Fusion 360. Using a 2D scanner to get a jump-start on your 3D model is a neat trick when working on replacement parts, and one we don’t see as much as you might think. A proper 3D scanner is cool and all, but certainly not required when replicating hardware like this.

The choke lever is a rather complex shape, one of those geometries that doesn’t really have a good printing orientation because there are overhangs all over the place. That combined with the fact that [Jonathan] printed at .3mm layer height for speed gives the final part an admittedly rough look, but it works. The part was supposed to be a prototype before he reprinted it at higher resolution and potentially with a stronger material like PETG, but after two years the prototype is still installed and working fine. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a “temporary” 3D printed part become a long-term solution.

This is an entry in Hackaday’s

Repairs You Can Print contest

The twenty best projects will receive $100 in Tindie credit, and for the best projects by a Student or Organization, we’ve got two brand-new Prusa i3 MK3 printers. With a printer like that, you’ll be breaking stuff around the house just to have an excuse to make replacement parts.

Laser Galvo Control Via Microcontroller’s DAC

February 15, 2018 by Donald Papp 33 Comments

Mirror galvanometers (‘galvos’ for short) are the worky bits in a laser projector; they are capable of twisting a mirror extremely quickly and accurately. With two of them, a laser beam may be steered in X and Y to form patterns. [bdring] had purchased some laser galvos and decided to roll his own control system with the goal of driving the galvos with the DAC (digital to analog) output of a microcontroller. After that, all that was needed to make it draw some shapes was a laser and a 3D printed fixture to hold everything in the right alignment.

The galvos came with drivers to take care of the low-level interfacing, and [bdring]’s job was to make an interface to translate the 0 V – 5 V output range of his microcontroller’s DAC into the 10 V differential range the driver expects. He succeeded, and a brief video of some test patterns is embedded below.

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Arduino Keyboard Is Gorgeous Inside And Out

February 15, 2018 by Tom Nardi 75 Comments

While the vast majority of us are content to plod along with the squishy chiclet keyboards on our laptops, or the cheapest USB membrane keyboard we could find on Amazon, there’s a special breed out there who demand something more. To them, nothing beats a good old-fashioned mechanical keyboard, where each key-press sounds like a footfall of Zeus himself. They are truly the “Chad” of the input device world.

But what if even the most high end of mechanical keyboards doesn’t quench your thirst for spring-loaded perfection? In that case, the only thing left to do is design and build your own. [Matthew Cordier] recently unveiled the custom mechanical keyboard he’s been working on, and to say it’s an elegant piece of engineering is something of an understatement. It may even look better inside than it does on the outside.

The keyboard, which he is calling z.48, is based around the Arduino Pro Micro running a firmware generated on kbfirmware.com, and features some absolutely fantastic hand-wiring. No PCBs here, just a rainbow assortment of wire and the patience of a Buddhist monk. The particularly attentive reader may notice that [Matthew] used his soldering iron to melt away the insulation on his wires where they meet up with the keys, giving the final wiring job a very clean look.

Speaking of the keys, they are Gateron switches with DSA Hana caps. If none of those words mean anything to you, don’t worry. We’re through the Looking Glass and into the world of the keyboard aficionado now.

Finally, the case itself is printed on a CR-10 with a 0.3 mm nozzle and 0.2 mm layers giving it a very fine finish. At 70% infill, we imagine it’s got a good deal of heft as well. [Matthew] mentions that a production case and a PCB are in the cards for the future as he hopes to do a small commercial run of these boards. In the meantime we can all bask in the glory of what passes for a prototype in his world.

We’ve seen some exceptionally impressive mechanical keyboards over the years, including the occasional oddity like the fully 3D printed one and even one that inexplicably moves around. But this build by [Matthew] has to be one of the most elegant we’ve ever come across.

Repairs You Can Print: Fixing Pegboard Clips That Break Too Easily

February 14, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

Right now, we’re running the Repairs You Can Print Contest, where one lucky student and one lucky organization will win the fancy-schmancy Prusa i3 MK3, with the neato multi-extrusion upgrade. [Budiul] is a student, so he figured he would repair something with a 3D printer. Lucky for him, the pegboard in his workshop was completely terrible, or at least the pegboard hooks were. These hooks were made out of PVC, and after time, more and more hooks broke. The solution? Print his own, and make them stronger in the process.

[Budiul] started his fix by taking the remaining, unbroken hooks on his pegboard wall organizer and measuring the relevant dimensions. These were modeled in Creo 4.0, printed out, and tested to fit. After many errors and failed models, he finally got a 3D printable version of his plastic pegboard hooks.

Of course, replacing PVC pegboard hooks with ABS hooks really isn’t that great of a solution. To fix this problem of plastic pegboard hooks for good, he printed the hooks in halves, with a channel running down the middle. This channel was filled with some steel wire and acetone welded together. The result is a fantastically strong pegboard hook that will hold up to the rigors of holding up some tools.

While printing out pegboard hooks might not seem like the greatest use of time, there are a few things going for this hack. Firstly, these aren’t the pegboard hooks made out of steel rod we all know and love; this is some sort of weird proprietary system that uses plastic molded hooks. If they’re made out of plastic anyway, you might as well print them. Secondly, being able to print your own pegboard hooks is a severely underrated capability. If you’ve ever tried to organize a workbench, you’ll know that you’ll never be able to find the right hook for the right spot. There is, apparently, a mystical superposition of pegboard hooks somewhere in the universe.

This is a great hack, and a great entry for the Repairs You Can Print contest. You can check out a video of the hack below.

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The Most Utilitarian 3D Print Has The Widest Reach

February 13, 2018 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

3D Printing is often heralded as a completely new fabrication method, creating things that simply cannot be manufactured in other ways. While this is true, the widest reaching usefulness of 3D printers isn’t for pushing the limits of fabrication. The real power is in pushing the limits of manufacturing for individuals who need one-off parts.

The proof point is in the story shown above. A missing key on a keyboard could have meant an otherwise fine piece of hardware headed for recycling, but was saved by a single part printed on a desktop 3D printer. Multiply this by the increasing number of people who have access to these printers and you can see how using 3D printing for repairs will have a huge impact on keeping our gear in service longer.

We want to see how you’ve saved things from the rubbish pile. Show them off in Hackaday’s Repairs You Can Print contest. The best Student entry and the best Organization entry (think Hackerspace) will each win a high-end 3D Printer. But anyone can enter, with the top twenty entries receiving $100 credit for Tindie.

If you’re like us though, these prizes are just icing on the cake. The real reward is showing what some think is mundane but the Hackaday crowd believes is worth celebrating. Check out all the entries so far and join us below for a few highlights.

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OpenSCAD: Tieing It Together With Hull()

February 13, 2018 by Elliot Williams 40 Comments

What’s your favorite OpenSCAD command? Perhaps it’s intersection() or difference()? Or are you a polygon() and extrude() modeler? For me, the most useful, and maybe most often overlooked, function is hull(). Hull() does just what it says on the can — creates a convex hull around the objects that are passed to it as children — but that turns out to be invaluable.

Hull() solves a number of newbie problems: making things round and connecting things together. And with a little ingenuity, hull() can provide a nearly complete modelling strategy all on its own. If you use OpenSCAD and your creations end up with hard edges, or you spend too much time figuring out angles, or if you just want to experience another way to get the job done, read on!

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