Casting Engagement Rings (Or Other Small Metal Parts!)

December 10, 2014 by James Hobson 12 Comments

[Paul Williams] wrote in to tell us about his most recent and dangerous endeavor. Marriage.

As a masters student in Mechanical Engineering, he wanted to give his wife (to be) to be a completely unique engagement ring — but as you can imagine, custom engagement rings aren’t cheap. So he decided to learn how to make it himself.

During the learning process he kept good notes and has produced a most excellent Instructable explaining the entire process — How to make the tools you’ll need, using different techniques and common problems you might have. He even describes in detail how to make your own mini-kiln (complete with PID control), a vacuum chamber, a wax injector and even the process of centrifugal casting. Continue reading “Casting Engagement Rings (Or Other Small Metal Parts!)” →

Making T-Glase Crystal Clear

December 8, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

There are 3D printing filaments out there with a lot of interesting properties. Whether it’s the sanded-down MDF feel you get from Laywood, the stretchy and squishy but somehow indestructible feel of Ninjaflex, or just regular ‘ol PLA, there’s a filament out there for just about any use. Even optically clear printed objects. Yes, you can now do some post-processing on printed parts to make T-glase crystal clear.

The big advance allowing translucent parts to be made clear is a new product from Smooth-On that’s meant to be a protective and smoothing coating for 3D printed objects. With PLA, ABS, and powder printed parts, this coating turns objects shiny and smooth. Strangely – and I don’t think anyone planned this – it also has the same index of refraction as T-glase. This means coating an object printed with T-glase will render the layers invisible, smooth out the tiny bumps in the print, and turn a single-walled object clear.

There is a special technique to making clear objects with T-glase. The walls of the print must be a single layer. You’ll also want a perfect layer height on your print – you’re looking for cylindrical layers, not a nozzle that squirts out to the side.

The coating for the pictures above was applied on a makeshift lathe built out of an electric drill and a sanding pad. This gave the coating a nice, even layer until it dried. After a few tests, it was determined lenses could be printed with this technique. It might not be good enough for 3D printed eyeglasses, but it’s more than sufficient for creating windows for a model, portholes for an underwater ROV, or anything else where you want nothing but light inside an enclosure.

Kid Designs His Own Prosthetic Arm At A Summer Camp

December 7, 2014 by James Hobson 18 Comments

Ever heard of the summer camp called Superhero Cyborgs? It’s where [Coby Unger] met nine-year-old [Aidan Robinson] and helped him design his very own custom prosthetic arm.

The camp is put on by KIDmob for kids who have various limb disabilities, and helps give them the tools and guidance to be able to make their very own prosthetics. Some of the designs the children come up with are cool, useful, pretty and sometimes not overly functional — but [Aidan’s] designs really intrigued [Coby] who is a designer and part of the staff at Pier 9, a world-class fabrication facility (and makerspace) run by Autodesk.

There’s a lot of problems with prosthetics for children. They’re very expensive, kids don’t stay the same size, and even though they might cost a lot, they don’t necessarily work that well. [Aidan] had a few commercial options but didn’t like any of them, so much so that he preferred not wear them period. But when he attended the camp he realized he had the ability to design a prosthetic that he’d actually want to wear.

Continue reading “Kid Designs His Own Prosthetic Arm At A Summer Camp” →

Raspberry PiPhone Thermostat Monitors Your Entire House — Or At Least That’s The Plan

December 6, 2014 by James Hobson 18 Comments

[Jeff McGehee] or how he likes to be known, [The Nooganeer] just finished his first big tech project after finishing grad school. It’s a connected thermostat that makes use of his old iPhone 4, and a Raspberry Pi.

Ever since [The Nooganeer] bought his first home with his wife back in the spring of 2014, he’s had ever consuming dream of adding home automation to every appliance. As he puts it…

Home automation has always been a fascination of mine. How much time and irritation would I save if I didn’t have to worry about turning things on and off, or wonder in which state they were left? How much more efficient would my home be? Wouldn’t it be cool to always know the state of every power consumer in my home, and then be able to record and analyze that data as well?

His first challenge was making a smart thermostat — after all, heating and cooling your house typically takes the most energy. Having used a Raspberry Pi before he figured it would be the best brain for his system. After researching a bit about HVAC wiring, [The Nooganeer] settled on a Makeatronics Solid State Relay board to control the HVAC. This allows him to use the GPIO’s on the Raspberry Pi in order to control the furnace and AC unit. Continue reading “Raspberry PiPhone Thermostat Monitors Your Entire House — Or At Least That’s The Plan” →

Scanning On The Cheap

December 6, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

[Will] recently stumbled across the MakerBot Digitizer, a device that’s basically a webcam and a turntable that will turn a small object into a point cloud that can then be printed off on a MakerBotⓇ 3D printer. Or any other 3D printer, for that matter. The MakerBot Digitizer costs $800, and [Will] wondered if he could construct a cheaper 3D scanner with stuff sitting around his house. It turns out, he can get pretty close using only a computer, a webcam, and a Black and Decker line laser/level.

The build started off with a webcam mounted right next to the laser line level. Software consisted of Python using OpenCV, numpy, and matplotlib to grab images from the webcam. The software looks at each frame of video for the path of the laser shining against the object to be scanned. This line is then extracted into a 3D point cloud and reconstructed in MeshLab to produce a 3D object that might or might not be 3D printable.

This is only [Will]’s first attempt at creating a scanner. He’s not even using a turntable with this project – merely manually rotating the object one degree for 360 individual frames. It’s extremely tedious, and he’ll be working on incorporating a stepper motor in a future version.

This is only attempt number 1, but already [Will] has a passable scanned object created from a real-world thing.

Prints In Space (Said In “Pigs In Space” Voice)

December 6, 2014 by Rich Bremer 5 Comments

3D Printing on Earth is soooo last year. Recently, NASA has sent a 3D Printer to the International Space Station in order to test printing capability in space. The agency’s ultimate goal is to have a means to make parts and tools for astronauts that are far away from earth.

So, why should NASA have all of the extra-terrestrial printing fun? Three 15 year-olds thought that same thing and decided to build their own space printer. It’s goal, however, is a bit different from the one on the ISS. This printer is made to print on other celestial bodies such as the moon or Mars, not in a space station. The students call their project the DELTA 3 and as its name implies, is a delta-style printer and that’s where all similarities with conventional printers end. This printer has tank tracks so that it can maneuver itself around the planet. There is no print bed. The printer prints directly to the surface of which it is resting on. The frame is open at the front of the printer so that it can back up leaving a free-standing print in its wake. It certainly beats the hot-glue versions seen before and we think this is the Automated Build Platform of the future, today!

The DELTA 3’s electronic controls are also quite different from the norm. There is a Lego EV3 controller that is responsible for navigating the printer around obstacles to find a suitable print area. Once a location has been picked out, the EV3 triggers the standard Arduino Mega/RAMPS combo to coordinate the printing.

The young creators brought their DELTA 3 to the World Robot Olympiad just last month. They came in 4th in their division.

[via 3Dprint.com]

E-Waste Printer Looks Nice, Prints Really, Really Small

December 5, 2014 by Rich Bremer 22 Comments

Prices of 3D Printers have certainly been falling quite a bit over the last few years. Even so, it is still, at a minimum, a few hundred dollars to get going in the hobby. [mikelllc] thought it would be a fun challenge to see if he can build a functional 3D printer for under $100.

To stay under his budget, [mikelllc] took a reasonable route and decided to use as many recycled parts as he could. In every DVD and floppy drive, there is a stepper motor, lead screw and carriage that is used to move the read/write head of the drive. These assemblies will be used to drive the 3 axes of the printer. Two DVD drives and one floppy drive were dissembled to access the needed components.

Luckily [mikelllc] has access to a laser cutter. He made the frame from 5mm acrylic sheet stock. All of the pieces have slots and tabs to ease assembly and keep everything straight and square. The motors and frames from the DVD and floppy drives are mounted to the acrylic frame pieces in strategically pre-planned holes. The Y axis is responsible for moving the print bed back and forth. It is mounted on screws so that it can be adjusted to ensure a level bed.

A little DVD drive stepper motor just isn’t powerful enough to be used as an extruder motor so a standard NEMA17 motor was purchased for this task. The motor is part of a MK7/MK8 style direct drive extruder that is made from mostly 3D printed parts. The extruder is mounted on the frame and a bowden tube guides the filament to the hot end mounted to the printer’s moving carriage. Remotely mounting the extruder motor keeps it’s mass off of the axes, which in this case may be too heavy for the small, scavenged drive stepper motors.

The electronics are standard RepRap type and the same with for the hotend. The recycled motors work well with the RepRap electronics. After all that hard work, the printable area is a mere 37mm x 37mm x 18mm, but that’s not the point of this project! [mikelllc] met his goal of building a super cheap printer from recycled parts. He has also made the extruder and laser cut frame files available for download so anyone can follow in his footsteps. If you’re digging this e-waste 3D Printer but want a larger print volume, check out this printer.