3d Printer hacks

2764 Articles

Why Chopped Carbon Fiber In FDM Prints Is A Contaminant

December 21, 2025 by 36 Comments

A lot of claims have been made about the purported benefits of adding chopped carbon fiber to FDM filaments, but how many of these claims are actually true? In the case of PLA at least, the [I built a thing] channel on YouTube makes a convincing case that for PLA filament, the presence of chopped CF can be considered a contaminant that weakens the part.

Using the facilities of the University of Basel for its advanced imaging gear, the PLA-CF parts were subjected to both scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Micro CT imaging. The SEM images were performed on the fracture surfaces of parts that were snapped to see what this revealed about the internal structure. From this, it becomes apparent that the chopped fibers distribute themselves both inside and between the layers, with no significant adherence between the PLA polymer and the CF. There is also evidence for voids created by the presence of the CF.

To confirm this, an intact PLA-CF print was scanned using a Micro CT scanner over 13 hours. This confirmed the SEM findings, in that the voids were clearly visible, as was the lack of integration of the CF into the polymer. This latter point shouldn’t be surprising, as the thermal coefficient of PLA is much higher than that of the roughly zero-to-negative of CF. This translates into a cooling PLA part shrinking around the CF, thus creating the voids.

Continue reading “Why Chopped Carbon Fiber In FDM Prints Is A Contaminant” →

A Tiny Reflecting Telescope For Portable Astronomy

December 20, 2025 by 11 Comments

For most of us who are not astronomers, the image that comes to mind when describing a reflecting telescope is of a huge instrument in its own domed-roof building on a mountain top. But a reflecting telescope doesn’t have to be large at all, as shown by the small-but-uncompromising design from [Lucas Sifoni].

Using an off-the-shelf mirror kit with a 76mm diameter and a 300mm focal length, he’s made a pair of 3D-printed frames that are joined by carbon fibre rods. The eyepiece and mirror assembly sit in the front 3D-printed frame, and the eyepiece is threaded so the telescope can be focused. There’s a 3D-printed azimuth-elevation mount, and once assembled, the whole thing is extremely compact.

Continue reading “A Tiny Reflecting Telescope For Portable Astronomy” →

A device within a vertical rectangular frame is shown, with a control box on the front and an LCD display. Within the frame, a grid of syringes is seen held upright beneath two parallel plates.

Building A Multi-Channel Pipette For Parallel Experimentation

December 20, 2025 by 6 Comments

One major reason for the high cost of developing new drugs and other chemicals is the sheer number of experiments involved; designing a single new drug can require synthesizing and testing hundreds or thousands of chemicals, and a promising compound will go through many stages of testing. At this scale, simply performing sequential experiments is wasteful, and it’s better to run tens or hundreds of experiments in parallel. A multi-channel pipette makes this significantly simpler by collecting and dispensing liquid into many vessels at once, but they’re, unfortunately, expensive. [Triggy], however, wanted to run his own experiments, so he built his own 96-channel multi-pipette for a fiftieth of the professional price.

The dispensing mechanism is built around an eight-by-twelve grid of syringes, which are held in place by one plate and have their plungers mounted to another plate, which is actuated by four stepper motors. The whole syringe mechanism needed to move vertically to let a multi-well plate be placed under the tips, so the lower plate is mounted to a set of parallel levers and gears. When [Triggy] manually lifts the lever, it raises the syringes and lets him insert or remove the multi-well. An aluminium extrusion frame encloses the entire mechanism, and some heat-shrink tubing lets pipette tips fit on the syringes.

[Triggy] had no particularly good way to test the multi-pipette’s accuracy, but the tests he could run indicated no problems. As a demonstration, he 3D-printed two plates with parallel channels, then filled the channels with different concentrations of watercolors. When the multi-pipette picked up water from each channel plate and combined them in the multi-well, it produced a smooth color gradient between the different wells. Similarly, the multi-pipette could let someone test 96 small variations on a single experiment at once. [Triggy]’s final cost was about $300, compared to $18,000 for a professional machine, though it’s worth considering the other reason medical development is expensive: precision and certifications. This machine was designed for home experiments and would require extensive testing before relying on it for anything critical.

Continue reading “Building A Multi-Channel Pipette For Parallel Experimentation” →

Cheap 3D Printer Becomes CNC Wood Engraver

December 19, 2025 by 10 Comments

3D printers are built for additive manufacturing. However, at heart, they are really just simple CNC motion platforms, and can be readily repurposed to other tasks. As [Arseniy] demonstrates, it’s not that hard to take a cheap 3D printer and turn it into a viable wood engraver.

The first attempt involved a simple experiment—heating the 3D printer nozzle, and moving it into contact with a piece of wood to see if it could successfully leave a mark. This worked well, producing results very similar to a cheap laser engraving machine. From there, [Arseniy] set about fixing the wood with some simple 3D-printed clamps so it wouldn’t move during more complex burning/engraving tasks. He also figured out a neat trick to simply calibrate the right Z height for wood burning by using the built in calibration routines. Further experiments involved developing a tool for creating quality G-Code for these engraving tasks, and even using the same techniques on leather with great success.

If you need to mark some patterns on wood and you already have a 3D printer, this could be a great way to go. [Arseniy] used it to great effect in the production of a plywood dance pad. We’ve featured some other great engraver builds over the years, too, including this innovative laser-based project. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Cheap 3D Printer Becomes CNC Wood Engraver” →

ABB arm printing a vase

Surplus Industrial Robot Becomes Two-ton 3D Printer

December 19, 2025 by 24 Comments

As the saying goes — when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you a two-ton surplus industrial robot arm, if you’re [Brian Brocken], you apparently make a massive 3D printer.

The arm in question is an ABB IRB6400, a serious machine that can sling 100 to 200 kilograms depending on configuration. Compared to that, the beefiest 3D printhead is effectively weightless, and the Creality Sprite unit he’s using isn’t all that beefy. Getting the new hardware attached uses (ironically) a 3D printed mount, which is an easy enough hack. The hard work, as you might imagine, is in software.

As it turns out, there’s no profile in Klipper for this bad boy. It’s 26-year-old controller doesn’t even speak G-code, requiring [Brian] to feed the arm controller the “ABB RAPID” dialect it expects line-by-line, while simultaneously feeding G-code to the RAMPS board controlling the extruder. If you happen to have the same arm, he’s selling the software that does this. Getting that synchronized reliably was the biggest challenge [Brian] faced. Unfortunately that means things are slowed down compared to what the arm would otherwise be able to do, with a lot of stop-and-start on complex models, which compromises print quality. Check the build page above for more pictures, or the video embedded below.

[Brian] hopes to fix that by making better use of the ABB arm’s controller, since it does have enough memory for a small buffer, if not a full print. Still, even if it’s rough right now, it does print, which is not something the engineers at ABB probably ever planned for back before Y2K. [Brian]’s last use of the arm, carving a DeLorean out of styrofoam, might be closer to the original design brief.

Usually we see people using 3D printers to build robot arms, so this is a nice inversion, though not the first.

Continue reading “Surplus Industrial Robot Becomes Two-ton 3D Printer” →

Make Your Own Tires For RC Cars

December 16, 2025 by 15 Comments

You can buy a wide range of RC car tires off the shelf. Still, sometimes it can be hard to find exactly what you’re looking for, particularly if you want weird sizes, strange treads, or something that is very specifically scale-accurate. In any of these cases, you might like to make your own tires. [Build It Better] shows us how to do just that!

Making your own tires is fairly straightforward once you know how. You start out by producing a 3D model of your desired tire. You then create a two-piece negative mold of the tire, which can then be printed out on a 3D printer; [Build It Better] provides several designs online. From there, it’s simply a matter of filling the tire molds with silicone rubber, degassing, and waiting for them to set. All you have to do then is demold the parts, do a little trimming and post-processing, and you’ve got a fresh set of boots for your favorite RC machine.

[Build It Better] does a great job of demonstrating the process, including the basic steps required to get satisfactory results. We’ve featured some other great molding tutorials before, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Make Your Own Tires For RC Cars” →

Printing With PHA Filament As Potential Alternative To PLA

December 14, 2025 by 31 Comments

PLA (polylactic acid) has become the lowest common denominator in FDM 3D printing, offering decent performance while being not very demanding on the printer. That said, it’s often noted that the supposed biodegradability of PLA turned out to be somewhat dishonest, as it requires an industrial composting setup to break it down. Meanwhile, a potential alternative has been waiting in the wings for a while, in the form of PHA. Recently, [JanTec Engineering] took a shot at this filament type to see how it prints and tests its basic resistance to various forms of abuse.

PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates) are polyesters that are produced by microorganisms, often through bacterial fermentation. Among their advantages are biodegradability without requiring hydrolysis as the first step, as well as UV-stability. There are also PLA-PHA blends that exhibit higher toughness, among other improvements, such as greater thermal stability. So far, PHA seems to have found many uses in medicine, especially for surgical applications where it’s helpful to have a support that dissolves over time.

As can be seen in the video, PHA by itself isn’t a slam-dunk replacement for PLA, if only due to the price. Finding a PHA preset in slicers is, at least today, uncommon. A comment by the CTO of EcoGenesis on the video further points out that PHA has a post-printing ‘curing time’, so that mechanical tests directly after printing aren’t quite representative. Either you can let the PHA fully crystallize by letting the part sit for ~48 hours, or you can speed up the process by putting it in an oven at 70 – 80°C for 6-8 hours.

Overall, it would seem that if your goal is to have truly biodegradable parts, PHA is hard to beat. Hopefully, once manufacturing capacity increases, prices will also come down. Looking for strange and wonderful printing filament? Here you go.

Continue reading “Printing With PHA Filament As Potential Alternative To PLA” →