Printing Puppy Prosthetics

May 4, 2015 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

When [aimzzz] met this puppy born without arms, the need for some assistive hardware was obvious. We love it that rapid prototyping techniques have become so accessible that something like building a wheelchair for a puppy is not just affordable, but a lot of fun too!

The main part of the projects is a cradle which will be comfortable for the dog. 3D printing is a great choice here because it can be customized to suit the needs of a particular dog. We remember seeing another dog named Derby who has 3D printed legs that make room for the biological legs that aren’t functioning correctly. In the case of this wheelchair, the cradle could be altered make room for legs.

The rest of the build is purely mechanical. Aluminum tubing, tubing connectors, and wheels combine with the printed cradle (and some padding material) to make for one sweet ride. It takes a bit of training to get used to, but as you can see after the break this makes mobility quite easy and intuitive for the pup.

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3D Printed Headgear Turns You Into A Sim

May 1, 2015 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Stop what you’re doing and dust off that 3D Printer, you’re going to want this headgear for your next party. [Daniel Harari] has created the perfect start of a phenomenal The Sims costume with this Bluetooth-enabled plumb bob.

The iconic crystalline shape will be familiar to anyone ever exposed to the game. It served as a handle and indicator for each virtual character in the popular life-simulation video game. On a short build deadline (a party), [Daniel] found a model of the shape he wanted on Thingiverse. He printed it in translucent green PLA so that LEDs inside would make it glow.

A headband and an aluminum pipe connect this to the wearer. Inside the printed enclosure is a an intricately packaged set of electronics that include an Arduino pro mini, low-side transistors to control six RGB LEDs, and an HC-05 Bluetooth module to connect to his phone. Batteries were mounted on the side of the pipe but we bet a bit of head scratching could re-imaging the battery type and get it inside the enclosure as well.

[Daniel] muses about adding brainwave sensing to control the LEDs. For this build he didn’t even need to write an app; he was able to get an already available color-picker to work. We’d like to see this combined with sentiment; a concept starting to gain popularity which samples social media and ascertains mood to change the display base what is found.

You realize what’s missing from his writeup? We couldn’t find any pictures of him wearing the thing!

3D Printing An Arcade Controller

May 1, 2015 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

A keyboard and mouse simply can’t stand in for games originally meant to be played with a joystick and buttons. We are of course thinking of coin-op here and building your own set of arcade controls is a great project to give back some of the thrill of those classics. But these are not trivial builds and may push your comfort zone when it comes to fabrication. Here’s one alternative to consider: 3D printing an arcade controller housing.

[Florian] already had experience building these using laser cut acrylic and MDF. This is his first foray into a 3D printing build method for the controller body. The top is too large to easily produce as a single piece on inexpensive printers. He broke it up into sections; eleven in total. When the printing is complete he chemically welds them together using a slurry of acetone and leftover ABS.

We think one possible extension of this technique would be to build a mounting system that would allow you to swap out segments (instead of welding them all) while you dial in the exact placement that you want for each component. You know, like when you decide that rectangular button pattern doesn’t fit your hand. That said, this looks like a beautiful and functional build. At the least it’s a great way to practice your 3D printing skills and you end up with a wicked controller at the end of it.

3D Printering: Laser Cutting 3D Objects

April 30, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

3D printing can create just about any shape imaginable, but ask anyone who has babysat a printer for several hours, and they’ll tell you 3D printing’s biggest problem: it takes forever to produce a print. The HCI lab at Potsdam University has some up with a solution to this problem using the second most common tool found in a hackerspace. They’re using a laser cutter to speed up part production by a factor of twenty or more.

Instead of printing a 3D file directly, this system, Platener, breaks a model down into its component parts. These parts can then be laser cut out of acrylic or plywood, assembled, and iterated on much more quickly.

You might think laser-cut parts would only be good for flat surfaces, but with techniques like kerf bending, and stacking layer upon layer of material on top of each other, just about anything that can be produced with a 3D printer is also possible with Platener.

To test their theory that Platener is faster than 3D printing, the team behind Platener downloaded over two thousand objects from Thingiverse. The print time for these objects can be easily calculated for both traditional 3D printing and the Platener system, and it turns out Platener is more than 20 times faster than printing more than thirty percent of the time.

You can check out the team’s video presentation below, with links to a PDF and slides on the project’s site.

Thanks [Olivier] for the tip.

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New 3D Printing Techniques At AMUG 2015

April 27, 2015 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Sometimes there’s a lot of perks to working for a cutting edge tech company while also being a writer here at Hackaday. This week I had the opportunity to attend AMUG 2015 — the Additive Manufacturing User Group conference in Jacksonville, Florida.

I saw companies big and small, checked out the newest techniques like metal printing and mold making, and met a ton of interesting people. Join me after the break for the rundown and a video summary of my experience.

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3D Printed Wind Turbine Uses Bamboo

April 21, 2015 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Using wood and aluminum for wind turbines is one thing, but how about 3D printing the blades and using bamboo to hold them together?

[Jeff Heidbrier] of Hero Electronics decided to try something new. He designed his own wind turbine to use cheap and readily available bamboo, with 3D printed parts. It’s a vertical axis wind turbine, unlike the typical wind mills you see generating power. The blades were printed on a Thing-O-Matic (nice to see they still exist in the wild!), and the turbine blades are about a foot long.

To make sure everything was level, he used a laser level to ensure his bearing system worked well. All in all, it looks pretty sturdy, but who knows how it will hold up to mother nature. Unfortunately there’s no clip of it actually being used outside, but I guess that just means we’ll have to wait for part 2.

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Making Funhouse Mirror Lenses

April 16, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

[Robb] has had a little experience making lenses from scratch. His first attempt was for a DIY projector, and while the lens was a little blurry, it did work rather well for something carved out of a block of acrylic. Now he’s taking his experiments with lenses even further with DIY optics that turn everything into a funhouse mirror.

There were two techniques tested while making these lenses. The first was the old standby, CNC milling. A piece of acrylic was put in a CNC and carved with a 1/2″ ball mill. The second technique was 3D printing on a very fancy and very expensive Objet Connex 500. Neither of these methods produce a ready to use lens; to get a finished lens out of the machined or printed objects, [Robb] had to wet sand with 240, 320, 400, 600, 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit sandpaper. After a few hours worth of sanding, the parts were polished with a scratch remover.

Making a lens like this isn’t really that novel – it’s basically the same way lenses have been made for 500 years. The real trick here is making funhouse mirror style lenses. These lenses were created by raytracing in Rhino and Neon. It’s tricky; the index of refraction for acrylic is a little lower than glass, and the refraction for 3D photoresin is a bit higher than glass.

With those models in hand, it’s a relatively simple matter of making some very cool and very strange lenses.