3d Printer hacks

2542 Articles

Buttons, Sliders, And Touchpads All 3D Printed With PrintPut

September 24, 2015 by 7 Comments

[Jesse Burstyn] and some colleagues at Queen’s University and Carleton University (both in Canada) are delivering a paper at the INTERACT 2015 about PrintPut, their system for printing sensors directly into 3D printed objects. Using a printer with dual extrusion and conductive ABS filament, they have successfully formed capacitive touch sensors, digital resistive sensors, and analog resistive sensors.

In practice, this means they can print buttons, sliders, and even touch pads directly into objects. They also have a design for several pressure sensors and a flex sensor. The system includes scripts for the Rhinoceros 3D CAD package. Designers can create a model in any CAD package they want (including Rhinoceros) and then use these scripts to define the interactive areas.

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FPGA CNC

September 21, 2015 by 18 Comments

When you think of a CNC controller you probably think of a PC with a parallel port or some microcontroller-based solution like a Smoothie Board. [Mhouse1] has a different idea: use FPGAs as CNC controllers.

FPGAs inherently handle things in parallel, so processing G code, computing curves and accelerations, and driving multiple stepper motors at one time would not be an issue at all for an FPGA. Most computer-based designs will have slight delays when trying to drive everything at once and this introduces some mechanical jitter. Even worse jitter occurs when you have an old PC trying to run everything when some other task takes over the CPU.

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3D Printed Battery Forms

September 19, 2015 by 19 Comments

What’s the worst thing that can happen when you are trying to show off a project? Dead batteries might not be the absolute worst thing, but it is pretty close to the top of the list. [KermMartian] has this problem every year at World Maker Faire with demos based around calculators. At first, he tried wedging power supply wires into the calculator using dead batteries to hold the wires in place. However, it didn’t take much wear and tear before the wires would pull out.

The solution? A 3D printed battery form that accepts metal hardware that can connect to the external power supply. The AAA-sized plastic batteries insert into the calculator’s battery compartment and the small machine screws and washers form the connection points.

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Automated Bubble Gun Just Because

September 16, 2015 by 12 Comments

After a recent trip to Disney Land, [Thomas] came home with an electric bubble gun. [Thomas] is a full-grown man. But since when did that stop us having fun blowing bubbles?? Obviously, a project was to be had using this fun little toy. So he decided to automate it.

So after taking some measurements with his trusty calipers, [Thomas] got on the computer and started designing an enclosure for the bubble gun using SolidWorks. It’s pretty simple. He designed it to hold the bubble gun in place, and allow him to attach a small RC servo motor in order to trigger the switch. Hooking that up to an Arduino Micro and he was now able to trigger it remotely.

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Hack Your Rib Cage With Titanium 3D Printing

September 16, 2015 by 31 Comments

A Spanish hospital recently replaced a significant amount of a man’s rib cage and sternum with a titanium replacement. Putting titanium inside people’s chests is nothing new, but what made this different was the implant was 3D printed to match his existing bone structure.

An Australian company, Anatomics, created the 3D print from high-resolution CT scans of the patient. They used a printer provided by an Australian Government corporate entity, CSIRO, that helps bring technology to Australian companies.

Biomedical printing has been in the news quite a bit lately and we’ve covered CT scan to 3D model conversions more than once. Is this the dawn of the age of the cyborg? Maybe it’s really mid morning. Many people walk around with pacemakers, Vagus nerve stimulators, and plenty of more conventional titanium hardware in them now.

While the ethics of replacing a cancer patient’s rib cage is pretty clear, the real issue will be when people want enhancements just for the sake of it (think of the controversy surrounding runners with prosthetic legs, for example). It might seem far-fetched, but as replacements become better than originals, some people will want to opt for replacements for perfectly good body parts.

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Thermal Vision HUD

Thermal Vision HUD Isn’t Only For Fighter-Jets!

September 15, 2015 by 37 Comments

In case you weren’t aware, thermal vision units have seen huge price reductions lately. There’s a few on the market for under $300! While that might still seem expensive, remember, it’s thermal-freaking-vision. [Tim] bought a Seek Thermal as soon as it was available, and just recently finished his first project with it — giving his car a thermal HUD for driving at night.

The Seek Thermal is a small thermal imaging unit that has a micro USB attachment for phones. Simply plug it in, and your phone becomes the preview window. But for mounting on your car, you can’t have it behind a window, because most glass is not transparent to heat wavelengths, so [Tim] had to get creative.

He designed and 3D printed a magnetic mount for it to sit on the hood of his car. But in the case any debris from the road hit it, he wanted to protect the lens. So he started looking up thermally transparent materials — turns out they’re really expensive.

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Brewing Tea Too Stressful? 3D Print A Tea Steeper

September 13, 2015 by 29 Comments

When you want to relax with a nice hot cup of tea, the last thing you need is the stress of dunking the teabag in and out of the hot water, right? [Andylear] got tired of it and he has a 3D printer, so he set about solving the problem.

The solution uses a standard mini servo and the VarSpeedServo Arduino library. This library uses interrupts to control speed and position of up to 8 servos. All servos can operate at once and you can control both the position of the servo and the speed of the motion required to get it there. Commands can be asynchronous or you can wait for them to complete and you can even send sequences of commands to each servo.

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