Mini Spool System For 3D Printing Pen Tidies Things Up

October 5, 2017 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

3D printing pens may be toys to some, but they can be genuinely useful tools to repair 3D prints, rescue a support structure, or weld together different pieces. However, [BManx2000] found that the way the filament simply sticks out of the back of a 3D printing pen like a bizarre tailfeather was troublesome.

The solution? A Mini Spool System for 3D Printing Pens, with which you can use your 3D printing pen to weld together the parts after printing them. The unit holds 1.75mm filament coiled under its own tension in a tidy package that doesn’t interfere with feeding. Since different 3D pens are shaped differently, the interface to the pen is a separate piece that can be modified or changed as needed without affecting the rest of the design.

We’ve seen some interesting innovations with filament holders before, like this entirely 3D printed filament holder, but a mini spool for a 3D pen is definitely a new one.

Refurbishing An Old P3Steel

October 4, 2017 by Pedro Umbelino 15 Comments

In the aftermath of the London Unconference, after the usual ~~beer drinking~~ networking at the pub, I meet Javier Varela, one of our many readers that were present. It turns out my fellow Iberic friend is involved in some interesting hardware projects, one of them being the OVM20 Lite board. I was looking for an excuse to mess around with my old Prusa and this was the perfect one. The P3Steel 3D printer was just getting dusty on my basement and it printed just fine in the past. Until one day…

Based on Arduino Mega 2560 with the RAMPS 1.4, it was a pretty standard and cheap option to get some years ago (and still is). My additional modifications or upgrades from the standard options was a LCD screen and the DRV8825 stepper drivers.

What happened was that one fine day the prints started to skew. No matter how hard I tried, it skewed. I checked the driver’s potentiometer, I went back to the motor specifications, I swapped drivers around, and I even flashed another firmware. If the print was big enough, it will get messed up. Sometimes even small prints failed. When you are debugging something like this for hours, there comes a point in time that you start to suspect everything. Was it overheating the drivers? If so, why did this never happened before? Maybe the power supply is fluctuating and coming to the end of its life? Some messed up capacitor in the board? Was it RAMPS’ fault or Arduino? A motor starting to fail? A mechanical issue? I had a fine-tuned Marlin firmware that I manually tweaked and slightly changed, which I had no backup off after the flashing. In retrospect, I actually checked for a lot of things that couldn’t really be related to the problem back then but I also learned quite a lot.

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3D Printing On The Subway; Or Anywhere Else!

October 4, 2017 by Inderpreet Singh 55 Comments

3D-Printed wearable electronics are on the rise, however our own [Naomi Wu] flipped it around and made a wearable 3D printer which not only is portable but also manufactures on the move!

The project starts with a baby carrier that was locally purchased, and the extra fat was trimmed off leaving behind only the primary harness and square frame. This square frame is left intact to provide stability to the mounted printer as well as some level of comfort to the wearer. [Naomi] then drills a number of new holes in the delta printer in question, of which fortunately the top is made of plastic. Using swivel screws and long screws, the upper part connects with the harness. The receptacle clamp for the upper part is 3D-printed as well, and provides a modular rigid fixture for the machine.

The lower part also uses a 3D-printed triangular base that has a slot for the carrier frame which attaches with the bottom part of the delta using screws. The project is powered via two 3 Ah batteries that are kept in place behind the printer using custom clamps made with PLA. The whole project works on the move, as demonstrated by [Naomi] in the video below.

From dissecting the baby carrier to puncturing holes in a harness using a screwdriver heated by a blow torch, this project has a lot of DIY in it. For those looking for a more productive motorised wearable, check out Adding Haptic Feedback For The Disabled. Continue reading “3D Printing On The Subway; Or Anywhere Else!” →

3D Printing Aluminum With Nanoparticles

September 25, 2017 by Al Williams 20 Comments

We love our 3D printers. But sometimes we really wish we could print in metal. While metal printing is still out of reach for most of us, HRL Labs announced a powdered aluminum printing process that they claim is a breakthrough because it allows printing (and welding) of high-strength aluminum alloys that previously were unprintable and unweldable.

The key is treating the metal with special zirconium-based nanoparticles. The nanoparticles act as nucleation sites that allow the aluminum to form the correct microstructure. The full paper on the process appears in Nature.

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3D Printing At Maker Faire

September 23, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

The current trend of cheap, desktop, consumer 3D printers arguably began at the World Maker Faire in New York several years ago. What began with just a single printer exploded into a mindless proliferation of extrusion boxes, and by 2012, every single booth had to have a 3D printer on display no matter how applicable a CNC machine was to what they were actually selling.

Now we’re in the doldrums of the hype cycle and 3D printers just aren’t cool anymore. This year at the World Maker Faire, 3D printers were relegated to a tiny corner of the faire, right next to the portajohns. It’s the smallest showing of 3D printing I’ve ever seen at the New York Maker Faire.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the state of 3D printing isn’t constantly improving. 3D printers have never been cheaper, more capable, or more popular. This is how technology works, really: it doesn’t get good until it gets boring. Still, there were some impressive displays of the current state of 3D printing at the World Maker Faire this weekend. You can check that out below.

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See This Mesmerizing 3D Printed Water Droplet Automaton

September 21, 2017 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

*Water Experiment No. 33* by [Dean O’Callaghan]

Most modern automata are hand-cranked kinetic sculptures typically made from wood, and [videohead118] was inspired by a video of one simulating a wave pattern from a drop of liquid. As a result, they made a 3D printed version of their own and shared the files on Thingiverse.

In this piece, a hand crank turns a bunch of cams that raise and lower a series of rings in a simulated wave pattern, apparently in response to the motion of a sphere on a central shaft. The original (shown in the animation to the right) was made from wood by a fellow named [Dean O’Callaghan], and a video of it in its entirety is embedded below the break.

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3D Prints That Fold Themselves

September 17, 2017 by Adil Malik 1 Comment

3D printing technologies have come a long way, not only in terms of machine construction and affordability but also in the availability of the diverse range of different printing materials at our disposal. The common consumer might already be familiar with the usual PLA, ABS but there are other more exotic offerings such as PVA based dissolvable filaments and even carbon fiber and wood infused materials. Researchers at MIT allude to yet another possibility in a paper titled “3D-Printed Self-Folding Electronics” also dubbed the “Peel and Go” material.

The crux of the publication is the ability to print structures that are ultimately intended to be intricately folded, in a more convenient planar arrangement. As the material is taken off the build platform it immediately starts to morph into the intended shape. The key to this behavior is the use of a special polymer as a filler for joint-like structures, made out of more traditional but flexible filament. This special polymer, rather atypically, expands after printing serving almost like a muscle to contort the printed joint.

Existing filaments that can achieve similar results, albeit after some manual post-processing such as immersion in water or exposure to heat are not ideal for electronic circuits. The researchers focus on this new materials potential use in manufacturing electronic circuits and sensors for the ever miniaturizing consumer electronics.

If you want to experiment printing extremely intricate structures, check out how [_primoz_] brilliant technique revolutionized how the 3D printing community prints thin fibers, bristles, and lion sculptures.

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