3d Printer hacks

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CNC Plotter Uses Only The Good DVD Drive Parts

January 31, 2015 by 7 Comments

It wasn’t that long ago that wanting to own your own 3D printer meant learning as much as you possibly could about CNC machines and then boostrapping your first printer. Now you can borrow time on one pretty easily, and somewhat affordably buy your own. If you take either of these routes you don’t need to know much about CNC, but why not use the tool to learn? This is what [Wootin24] did when building a 3D printed plotter with DVD drive parts.

Plotters made from scrapped floppy, optical drives, and printers are a popular hand, and well worth a weekend of your time. This one, however, is quite a bit different. [Wootin24] used the drives to source just the important parts for CNC precision: the rods, motors, motors, and bearings. The difference is that he designed and 3D printed his own mounting brackets rather than making do with what the optical drive parts are attached to.

This guide focuses on the gantries and the mechanics that drive them… it’s up to you to supply the motor drivers and electrical side of things. He suggests RAMPS but admins he used a simple motor driver and Arduino since they were handy.

A Modular Thumbstick Extension For Gamers With Disabilities

January 31, 2015 by 11 Comments

Hackaday alum [Caleb Kraft] has been busy working on control modifications for gamers with disabilities. His latest release is a modular system of thumbstick extensions for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Since starting The Controller Project, one of [Caleb’s] goals has been to create a system to facilitate the use of analog thumbsticks. Now that he has a few controller mods under his belt, [Caleb] decided to attack the problem head on. Rather than print a custom adapter for each gamer, he’s created a set of 3D printed extensions which can be mixed and matched to produce the perfect controller mod.

The base fits perfectly over the Xbox thumbstick. The fit is tight enough to stand up to some serious gaming, but can be easily removed with no permanent change to the controller. Extensions stack on top of the base to build up a large easy to grasp stick. There are straight and angled extensions to accommodate specific disabilities. The stick can be capped off with a rounded tip or an easy to grip knob. The exertions are designed to fit together loosely for testing. Once the gamer finds a perfect stack of extensions, a bit of glue locks everything together.

The best part is that [Caleb] has released the files for the entire system. 3D printers are becoming common enough that nearly everyone has access to a printer, or knows someone who does.  Click past the break to see [Caleb] demonstrate the modular thumbstick extension system!

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OctoPrint On Router

Dumpster Dive Results In 3D Print Server Project

January 27, 2015 by 25 Comments

3D Printers are super convenient when you need a part quickly. However, they can be seriously inconvenient if the 3D printer has to be tethered to your computer for the duration of the entire print. [Matt] purchased a Makerfarm i3v printer and has been using it a bunch. The only thing he wasn’t crazy about was having it occupy his computer while printing objects. Then one day [Matt] was dumpster diving (don’t roll your eyes, we all do it) and found a Netgear WNDR3700v1 WiFi router. This particular router has a USB port and it made [Matt] think, “can I use this to run my printer?”

[Matt] started by checking out 3D print server software OctoPrint and found out that it was entirely written in Python. He had a feeling that he could get Python running on that found Netgear router. The first step was to install OpenWrt to the router and configure it as a client. That was straight forward and went well.  The router only had one USB port so a hub was necessary in order to connect a USB drive and the printer. The USB drive was necessary because the router itself did not have enough memory for OctoPrint. Installing OctoPrint to the router was a little complicated and took a bit of trial and error but [Matt] figured out the best method and documented that on his site for anyone interested in doing the same. So now, [Matt] can use his computer’s web browser to access OctoPrint on the Netgear router, start a print and go back to using his computer without fear of a failed print. OctoPrint and the router are now solely responsible for controlling the printer.

If you’re interested in more ways to remotely control your printer, check this out.

Formlabs 3d printed speaker

3D Printed Speaker Pushes Rapid Prototyping Boundaries

January 27, 2015 by 34 Comments

We think Formlabs has really figured out the key to advertising their line of 3D printers — just design really cool stuff that you can 3D print in resin, and release them publicly! To celebrate a firmware upgrade to the Form 1+, they’ve designed and released this really cool 3D printed speaker which you can make yourself.

Designed by [Adam Lebovitz], the speaker can be printed in just a few jobs, using their flexible resin for the dynamic components. It even sounds pretty damn good.

As you can see in the following exploded view of the speaker, almost the entire thing is 3D printed out of just two materials — minus some copper wire, 37 disc magnets, and one cap screw.

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3D Printed Surfboard

January 26, 2015 by 25 Comments

You whippersnappers these days with your 3D printers! Back in our day, we had to labor over a blank for hours, getting all sweaty and covered in foam dust. And it still wouldn’t come out symmetric. Shaping a surfboard used to be an art, and now you’re just downloading software and slinging STLs.

Joking aside, [Jody] made an incredible surfboard (yes, actual human-sized surfboard) out of just over 1 kilometer of ABS filament, clocking 164 hours of printing time along the way. That’s a serious stress test, and of course, his 3D printer broke down along the way. Then all the segments had to be glued together.

But the printing was the easy part; there’s also fiberglassing and sanding. And even though he made multiple mock-ups, nothing ever goes the same on opening night as it did in the dress rehearsal. But [Jody] persevered and wrote up his trials and tribulations, and you should give it a look if you’re thinking of doing anything large or in combination with fiberglass.

Even the fins are 3D printed and the results look amazing! We can’t wait for the ride report.

Shaka.

“Scotty” Is More Hungry 3D-printing Fax Machine Than Teleporter

January 25, 2015 by 40 Comments

Researchers at the Hasso Plattner Institute have created “Scotty,” a so-called teleportation system. While the name is a clear homage to the famous Star Trek character, this is not the Sci-Fi teleporting you may be expecting. The system is composed of two 3D printers (they used a pair of MakerBot Replicators). The “sender” printer has a camera and built-in milling machine. It uses deconstructive scanning – taking the picture of an object’s layer, then grinding that layer down to expose the next layer – and then sends the encrypted data to a “receiver” printer with a RasPi to decrypt the data so that it can immediately print the object. The ultimate idea behind this is that there is only one object at the end of the process.

It’s a disservice describing Scotty as a teleporter. By the researchers’ definition of a teleporter, the lowly fax machine is on par with Scotty – and it doesn’t destroy the original. The researchers claim that this destructive-reconstuctive method preserves the uniqueness of a given object, as long as any sentimentality. We can agree with the unique aspect: the less copies of something means it retains it intrinsic value in the marketplace. The sentimentality – not so much. We’ve all had a moment in our lives where a treasured item of ours, worthless to everyone else, was destroyed. Either we’d get a replacement or someone else would give us one to silence our wailing, but it wasn’t quite the same. If you could clone your dead pet, subconsciously you’d know it’s not going to be the same Fluffy. It’s that exact thing, atoms and all, that has the emotional attachment. Trying to push that psychological perspective onto Scotty’s purpose is irksome.

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Closed Loop Control For 3D Printers

January 20, 2015 by 129 Comments

One of the bigger problems with any CNC machine or 3D printer is the issue of missed steps when moving the toolhead. If a stepper motor misses a step, the entire layer of the print – and every layer thereafter – will be off by just a tiny bit. Miss a few more steps, and that print will eventually make its way into the garbage. [Misan] has the solution to this: closed loop control of DC motors for a 3D printer.

Most printer firmwares use an open loop control system for moving their motors around. Step a few times in one direction, and you know where the nozzle of a 3D printer will be. Missed steps confound the problem, and there’s no way for the firmware to know if the nozzle is where it should be at any one time.

[Misan]’s solution to this was a DC motor coupled to an optical encoder. Both the motor and the encoder are connected to an Arduino Pro Mini which receives step and direction commands from the printer controller. The controller takes care of telling the motor where to go, the Arduino takes care of making sure it gets there.

The entire build is heavily derived from ServoStrap, but [Misan] has a very cool demo of his hardware: during a print, he can force the X and Y axes to either side, and the Arduino in each motor will move the print head back to where it needs to be. You can check that out below.

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