3D Printed Mini-Printer Enables Obsession With Lists

January 1, 2017 by James Hobson 8 Comments

When going about a busy day, a hard copy listing all your tasks helps if you aren’t inclined to pull up a notepad — or whatever app you use — on your phone each time; doubly so if you want to pin it up in one place to refer to. Besides, using a full sheet of paper for a few items is impractical — and wasteful. To that end, [Jed Hodson] has concocted a mini printer for all your listing needs.

[Hodson] designed and 3D printed the case, making the files available for download and instructions on how to assemble it. Being an IoT device, the printer uses a Photon board to connect to the Internet, wherein Microsoft Flow is used to liaise between the Adafruit printer and Wunderlist — the list app [Hodson]’s chosen for this project.

Continue reading “3D Printed Mini-Printer Enables Obsession With Lists” →

Smartphone Case For The Retro Gamer

December 30, 2016 by James Hobson 8 Comments

A well-designed phone case will protect your phone from everyday bumps with only as much style flair as you’d like. While protection is usually the only real function of a case, some designs — like [Gabbelago]’s Emucase — add specific utility that you might not have known you needed.

Contrary to most cases, the Emucase fits over your phone’s screen, and the resulting facelift emulates the appearance of a Game Boy for easier — you guessed it — Game Boy emulation play on your smartphone.

Cannibalizing a USB SNES gamepad for its buttons and rubber contact pads, Gabbelago then threaded some wire through the contacts, securing it with copper tape and glue; this provides a measurable level of capacitance to register on the touchscreen. Using heat to bend the sides of the 3D printed case so it can attach to the phone is probably the trickiest part of this cool project. Check out his build instructions for any pointers you need.

Continue reading “Smartphone Case For The Retro Gamer” →

Sorting Resistors With 3D Printing And A PIC

December 30, 2016 by Al Williams 20 Comments

If you aren’t old enough to remember programming FORTRAN on punched cards, you might be surprised that while a standard card had 80 characters, FORTRAN programs only used 72 characters per card. The reason for this was simple: keypunches could automatically put a sequence number in the last 8 characters. Why do you care? If you drop your box of cards walking across the quad, you can use a machine to sort on those last 8 characters and put the deck back in the right order.

These days, that’s not a real problem. However, we have spilled one of those little parts boxes — you know the ones with the little trays. We aren’t likely to separate out the resistors again. Instead, we’ll just treasure hunt for the value we want when we need one.

[Brian Gross], [Nathan Lambert], and [Alex Parkhurst] are a bit more industrious. For their final project in [Bruce Land’s] class at Cornell, they built a 3D-printed resistor sorting machine. A PIC processor feeds a resistor from a hopper, measures it, and places it in the correct bin, based on its value. Who doesn’t want that? You can see a video demonstration, below.

Continue reading “Sorting Resistors With 3D Printing And A PIC” →

Fully 3D Printed Snow Blower

December 30, 2016 by James Hobson 12 Comments

For anyone living in cooler climates, the annual onslaught of snow means many hours shoveling driveways and sidewalks. After a light snow, shoveling might seem a waste of time, while a snow blower would be overkill. If only there were a happy middle ground that required minimal effort; perhaps an RC snow groomer with a 3D printed snow blower would work.

We featured an earlier version of this project last year. This year’s model features a slipper clutch — combined with a differential from a heavy RC truck — to forestall damage to the attachment if you happen to hit any rocks or ice chunks. The blades are also thicker and lack teeth in this iteration, as they would catch on anything hard and shatter the blade more often than not. Designed by [Spyker Workshop] (aka [The_Great_Moo]) the snow blower attaches to the front of RC snow groomer — which is originally meant to act like a plow. Seeing the snow blower attachment in action, we’re inclined to believe that he may be onto something.

Continue reading “Fully 3D Printed Snow Blower” →

Liar’s 3D Printing: Multiple Colors With One Extruder

December 27, 2016 by Al Williams 12 Comments

Good 3D printers now have multiple hot ends. You ought to be able to print in different colors or print support material. However, a lot of us don’t have multiple hot ends. Turns out, you don’t have to have multiple hot ends to print in multiple colors. To accomplish that you need a lot of patience and the willingness to tell bald-faced lies. Don’t worry, though, you’ll only be lying to some computer hardware and software, so that doesn’t count.

You may have seen people talk about putting a pause between layers to switch from one color to another. That works, but it limits your options. For example, if you want to put some colored text on a different colored background, you have to either have the text poke out, or it has to be “under” the background. It can’t be flush if you only have a single extruder and hot end. My method is a lot more trouble, but it can generate good results.

Keep in mind, with hobby-grade printers, multiple color printing has a lot of problems even if you do have multiple extruders. This isn’t a panacea. But you can get results on par with a similar printer that has multiple heads.

Bottom Line Up Front

Here are a few pictures of test prints that use this technique. A Monoprice Mini printer with the stock extruder and hot end created them using different PLA filament. On the left is a test cube, with a color spot in the middle of the layers (as well as some spots on the top surface you can’t see). To the right is a plate with my call sign in a contrasting color. It is hard to tell in the picture, of course, but there is one surface. The text is at the same height as the yellow surface.

I didn’t spend a lot of time making these prints since I was more focused on perfecting the methodology. The layer heights aren’t very fine, the infill is sparse, and the print speed was fast. However, you could invest time into making better-looking prints. You can also use the usual techniques that you use with a “real” multi-extrusion printer (such as priming towers, ooze shields, etc.).

Continue reading “Liar’s 3D Printing: Multiple Colors With One Extruder” →

3D Printing With Yarn And Silicone

December 24, 2016 by Elliot Williams 8 Comments

This one is apparently a few years old, but the idea looks so good that we’re left wondering whatever happened to it.

[Seyi Sosanya] made what amounts to a 3D printer, but one that prints in a unique way: wrapping yarn around pillars and then post-dipping them in a silicone glue. The result is a tough, flexible 3D mesh that’s lightweight and looks fairly resilient. We’re not at all sure what it’s good for, but watching the video about the project (embedded below) makes us want to try our hand at this sort of thing.

So what happened? Where did this project go? Is anyone else working on a glue-plus-fabric style printer? Is anyone doing this with carbon fiber and epoxy? We can also imagine that with the right adhesive this could be used less like a loom and more like a traditional FDM machine, although weaving the layers together may provide additional strength in what would be the Z direction, and for that you’d need the supports.

Continue reading “3D Printing With Yarn And Silicone” →

IKEA Table 3D Printer

December 22, 2016 by Pedro Umbelino 43 Comments

In this Instructable, [Wayne Mason-Drust] shares the step by step guide on how to make a cool, good-looking, 3D printer based on the Ikea LACK table. From an Ikea lantern weather station to a fully printed CNC based on an Ikea table, it’s almost safe to say that a 3D printer Ikea hack was overdue.

The idea to use a Ikea table as a base for a 3D printer first came to [Wayne] as he used this table to support other 3D printer he had working in his business. He realized that, even after five years of use, the table showed no signs of wear or distortion. So he decided to start to work on a 3D printer based on this precise table, the one that used to hold the printer.

[Wayne] stacked two together and named it Printtable (pun intended?). This open source, cartesian rep-rap 3D printer looks pretty slick. With a build area of 340mm X 320mm and 300mm on the Z axis and a price tag for the parts starting as low as $395, seems like a pretty decent 3D printer. With some work sourcing the parts, maybe it can be even lower.

Or we can just wait until Ikea starts selling them.

Continue reading “IKEA Table 3D Printer” →