Touring Deezmaker, The First Good 3D Printer Store In The World

January 23, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

When we visited the Crash Space hackerspace earlier this week, it came to our attention we were staying mere blocks away from Deezmaker, a 3D printer store in beautiful Pasadena that is home base for the Bukobot and Bukito printers, an awful lot of awesome printed plastic things, and [Rich] a.k.a [whosawhatsis], creator of the RepRap Wallace and all this stuff. Obviously a tour was in order.

Inside Deezmaker is a treasure trove of printed baubles and a fishbowl full of a herringbone planetary gear systems free for the taking. They have printers running all the time, a very nice lab for [whosawhatsis], and enough work space to host a few workshops every week.

In the video below, [Diego], the big cheese of Deezmaker takes us around the shop showing off his wares. [whosawhatsis] also makes an appearance showing off his latest invention, the Bukito printer. It’s a very small and incredibly portable printer that can be powered by batteries. They’re using a 3-cell 5000mAh lipo battery when they take the Bukito camping. I didn’t catch how long the battery lasts, but it’s more than enough to squirt out a few of the gear systems they give away.

Video after the break.

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3D Printering: Making A Thing In Autodesk 123D

January 22, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 27 Comments

In the continuing battle against 3D printers used exclusively for fabricating plastic octopodes and useless trinkets, here’s yet another installment of a Making A Thing tutorial. If you’ve ever wanted to make one single object in multiple 3D design softwares, this is for you.

Previously, we’ve built a ‘thing’ in a few different 3D modeling programs, including:

See that ‘Read more…’ link below? You might want to click that.

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A Quick And Simple Filament Joiner For Multi-Color Prints

January 20, 2014 by Adam Fabio 26 Comments

Filament splicer

[Malcolm] was having a grand time with his new 3D printer. He was getting tired of monochromatic prints, though. Not having a machine with multiple extruders, he went looking for a way to join pieces of filament. There were a few designs on Thingiverse, but they required milled parts that he didn’t have the tools to recreate. Rather than invest in a mill, [Malcolm] decided to build his own filament joiner. He started by raiding his wife’s hair care tools. His first test was a curling iron. It had the heat, but lacked a good surface to join the filament. [Malcolm’s] next test was a ceramic hair straightener, which he found to be the perfect tool.

The splicing process is simple. Start with a hot iron, then lay two pieces of filament on top of the short end of the iron. They soften quickly and melt together. [Malcolm’s] real trick is to slightly pull the joint once the two pieces have joined. Pulling causes the filament to stretch, slightly reducing the diameter of the joint. A thinner joint helps prevent extruder jams as the joint passes through. This method works great for PLA. We’d love to see if it works for ABS as well.

Click past the break for an example piece and for [Malcom’s] instructional video.

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3D Printering: Making A Thing With SketchUp

January 15, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

printering

Imagine for a second it’s the mid-1980s and you’re looking in to desktop publishing setups. Those new LaserJets and LaserWriters are pretty cool, but imagine the desktop publishing world if you couldn’t create your own documents. Yes, it seems absurd to have a printing press that won’t create unique documents.

Now flash forward 30 years to the world of desktop manufacturing and rapid prototyping. There are dozens of repositories for 3D printable objects, but making something of your own design is apparently a dark art and arcane knowledge to everyone buying 3D printers for plastic octopodes and bottle openers.

This week, by popular demand, we’re going to be making a ‘thing’ in SketchUp Make. It’s free, easy, and surprisingly versatile despite its limited tool set. Common sense and Google algorithms dictate I link to previous tutorials in this series below:

And now on with the show. You’re gonna want to click the ‘read more’ link.

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Creating PCBs With 3D Resin Printers

January 14, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

PCB

The folks over at Full Spectrum Laser are Kickstarting their own 3D printer – a stereolithography machine like the Form 1 and B9 Creator printers. During their testing, they discovered a new application for these SLA printers that should prove to be very useful for the makers and builders using machines – manufacturing PCBs with UV-sensitized copper clad boards.

Full Spectrum Laser’s printer – the Pegasus Touch – uses a near UV laser and a galvo system to build objects in UV-curing resin layer by layer. In retrospect it seems pretty obvious a UV laser would expose UV sensitive boards, but this discovery simply reeks of cleverness and is a nice ‘value added’ feature for the Pegasus printer.

The Pegasus printer has a laser spot size of 0.25mm, meaning the separation between traces on Pegasus-produced PCBs will be just under 10 mils. That’s a bit larger than the limits of laser printer-based PCB fabrication but far, far less complicated. Making a PCB on an SLA printer is as easy as removing the resin tank and putting a sensitized board on the build platform. Draw some traces with the printer, and in a few minutes you have an exposed board.

We’d really like to see if this technique can also be used with other SLA printers. if anyone out there would like to experiment, be sure to send the results into the tip line.

Video from Full Spectrum Laser below.

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Fastening 3D Printed Parts

January 13, 2014 by James Hobson 23 Comments

PC100358

Ever been curious on how to fasten 3D printed parts together? There are lots of ways to do it — but what’s the best way? [Chris Lopez] works in a machine shop and decided to do some testing of how best to tap 3D printed parts, so you don’t have to!

The typical ways to add fasteners in 3D printed parts include designing the thread right into the part (only works for big threads), adding a press-fit insert, drilling and tapping it like any other material, inserting a Heli-Coil, or even by using ultrasonic weld inserts. In fact, this Stratasys blog post actually goes into some good detail on the pros and cons of each!

But, there’s a much easier way. To tap a hole normally you need to locate it accurately, make a pilot hole with a center drill — ensuring it is straight and true — then drill through with the undersized tap drill, and finally, thread it with a tap. Luckily, your 3D printer takes care of almost all these steps. By simply designing your holes to be the tap drill size you can hand tap fairly strong threads in your 3D printed parts. Just make sure your wall thicknesses and or infill settings are high enough to make sure there is material to engage!

[Chris] also goes into some detail on creating captive nut geometry — but for that you’re going to have to check out his blog. And if you’re interested in another style of fastening 3D printed parts, why not inset magnets into them while they are printing?

The 2014 Line Of MakerBots

January 10, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 85 Comments

makerbots

With the Consumer Electronics Show over, it’s finally time to take a look at the new line of MakerBot printers (here’s the press release). Unlike MakerBot’s previous offerings with a one size fits all business model, they’re branching out with a product line that can only be described as, ‘regular, small, and large’.

The new MakerBots include an updated Replicator that’s just slightly larger than the previous version. It includes Ethernet, an option for WiFi, an on-board camera, and a control panel with a 3.5″ LCD and rotary encoder. This new Replicator will retail for $2900, $700 more than the current Replicator (single extruder).

The other new MakerBots include the stripped down and small Replicator Mini. It’s a no-frills machine with a build volume of 10 x 10 x 12.5 cm (~4 x 4 x 5 in) with 200 micron resolution. Also in the new lineup is the Replicator Z18, an impressively large printer with a 30.5 x 30.5 x 45.7 cm (12 x 12 x 18 in) build volume, 100 micron resolution, plastic sides for a heated build volume, and all the bells and whistles on the new Replicator. The Mini will sell for $1375 and the Z18 is expected to sell for $6500.

The updated Replicator is available now, and the Mini and Z18 will be available sometime in the next few months.