Discussing The Tastier Side Of Desktop 3D Printing

July 12, 2023 by Tom Nardi 20 Comments

Not long after the first desktop 3D printers were created, folks started wondering what other materials they could extrude. After all, plastic is only good for so much, and there’s plenty of other interesting types of goop that lend themselves to systematic squirting. Clay, cement, wax, solder, even biological material. The possibilities are vast, and even today, we’re still exploring new ways to utilize additive manufacturing.

But while most of the research has centered on the practical, there’s also been interest in the tastier applications of 3D printing. Being able to print edible materials offers some fascinating culinary possibilities, from producing realistic marbling in artificial steaks to creating dodecahedron candies with bespoke fillings. Unfortunately for us, the few food-safe printers that have actually hit the market haven’t exactly been intended for the DIY crowd.

That is, until now. After nearly a decade in development, Ellie Weinstein’s Cocoa Press chocolate 3D printer kit is expected to start shipping before the end of the year. Derived from the Voron 0.1 design, the kit is meant to help those with existing 3D printing experience expand their repertoire beyond plastics and into something a bit sweeter.

So who better to host our recent 3D Printing Food Hack Chat? Ellie took the time to answer questions not just about the Cocoa Press itself, but the wider world of printing edible materials. While primarily designed for printing chocolate, with some tweaks, the hardware is capable of extruding other substances such as icing or peanut butter. It’s just a matter of getting the printers in the hands of hackers and makers, and seeing what they’ve got an appetite for.

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An Open-Source Antikythera Mechanism

July 11, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 21 Comments

When the Antikythera Mechanism was first discovered, it wasn’t viewed as the wonder that we know it today. Originally the divers who found the device and the first scientists to look at it wrote it off as an astrolabe or other some other common type of clock. It wasn’t until decades later when another set of scientists x-rayed the device and surveyed more of the shipwreck where it was found that it began to become one of the more important archaeological discoveries in history. There have been plenty of attempts to recreate this device, and this replica recreates the mechanisms of the original but is altered so it can be built in a modern workshop.

The build, which took the creators several years of research and development to complete, started off with the known gear schemes found on the original device. However, the group wanted to make it with modern technology including 3D printers and laser cutters, so although they worked from an understanding of the original 2000-year-old device there are some upgrades and changes to accommodate those who want to build this in a modern workshop. Gears made from plastic instead of brass have more friction, which needed to be reduced by building custom bearings machined out of brass. And to complete the machine a number of enclosures of various styles are available to use as well.

Additionally, all of the designs and schematics for this build are open source for anyone to build or modify as they would like, although the group putting this together does plan to sell various parts for this as well. There will be some issues with use, as they point out, since the ancient Greeks didn’t have a full enough understanding of cosmology to get a machine like this to stay accurate for two thousand years, but it’s a fascinating build nonetheless. Reasearchers are still discovering new things about this device too, including the recent find of an earliest possible start date for the machine.

FreeCAD Is Simple, According To This Tutorial

July 5, 2023 by Al Williams 44 Comments

Remember learning to tie your shoes or ride a bike? Like many things, that’s easy once you know how to do it, but seems impossible before you learn. [NovaSpirit] asserts that Freecad is simple, and provides a simple walkthrough to create a part in the video below.

If this were riding a bike, this tutorial would be akin to watching someone ride a bike to pick up tips. You’d probably still want to have someone explain details to you before you attempt it yourself.

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Open Source And Giving Back

June 24, 2023 by Elliot Williams 41 Comments

3D printing YouTuber [Thomas Sanladerer] made a fairly contentious claim in a video about the state of open source hardware and software: namely that it’s not viable “anymore”. You can watch his video for more nuance, but the basic claim is that there are so many firms who are reaping the benefits of open designs and code that the people who are actually doing the work can’t afford to make a living anymore.

[Thomas] then goes on to mention a few companies that are patenting their 3DP innovations, and presumably doing well by it, and he then claims that patenting is probably the right way forward from a business standpoint.

The irony that he says this with a Voron 3D printer sitting behind him was not lost on us. The Voron is, after all, a very successful open-source 3D printer design. It’s just rock solid, has lots of innovative touches, and an extensive bill of materials. They don’t sell anything, but instead rely on donations from their large community to keep afloat and keep designing.

At the same time, a whole bunch of companies are offering Voron kits – all of the parts that you’d have to source yourself otherwise. While not mass-market, these kit sales presumably also help keep some of the 3D printer enthusiast stores that sell them afloat. Which is all to say: the Voron community is thriving, and a number of folks are earning their livings off of it. And it’s completely open.

When [Thomas] complains that some players in the 3DP business landscape aren’t giving back to the open-source community effort, he’s actually calling out a few large-scale Chinese manufacturers making mass-market machines. These companies aren’t interested in pushing the state of the art forward anyway, rather just selling what they’ve got. And sure, there are a million Creality Enders for every Voron 2 out there. And yes, they reap the benefits of open designs and code. But they’re competing in an entirely different market from the real innovators, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

Let us know what you think. (And if you’re reading this in the newsletter format, head on over to Hackaday on Saturday morning to leave us your comments.)

Gumball Coaster Is 3D-Printed Candy Fun

June 23, 2023 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

Marble runs are fun enough on their own, but what if you could eat the marbles? Gumballs are the satisfying answer to that question. To that end, [Adrian Seeley] whipped up a system for producing gumball runs programmatically for entertainment and candy dispensing purposes.

Track descriptions can be coded via basic instructions outlining a marble run, by typing out the order of straights, turns, and ramps that make up the course. Once created as a JSON file, the track description is processed via Javascript to create a tiled physical representation of the track via OpenSCAD, including all necessary support structures. The pieces can then be 3D printed to create an actual physical gumball run that can be easily assembled.

[Adrian] created a small tabletop “gumcoaster” as a prototype. Even at that size, it took 11 hours to assemble. It served as a trial run ahead of a larger version he hopes to build for a candy store display. We’ve seen some great marble runs before too, including those created via procedural generation. Video after the break.

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Powerful Water Pump Is Modular In Nature

June 23, 2023 by Lewin Day 28 Comments

If you’ve got one decently powerful DC motor, you could conceivably build a water pump. Gang up ten of them, however, and you could build something considerably more powerful, as [akashv44] demonstrates.

The design is straightforward, relying on simple impeller pumps driven by RS-775 DC motors. The pump housings and impellers are all 3D printed. They’re designed so that the motor integrates neatly with the pump housing, and so that multiple pumps can easily be ganged up into a single larger unit. [akashv44] demonstrates a build using ten individual pump units with a large manifold, allowing the output of all the pumps to be combined into one single outlet.

The concept is straightforward enough, and running on a 48-volt power supply, it’s clear that the pump can move a significant amount of water. Notably, though, it would be possible to improve significantly with some design changes. Currently, the water path from the pumps must make several 90-degree turns, harming efficiency. We’d love to see the pumps angled nicely into more advanced manifolds which would more smoothly combine the streams together. This would likely result in a far greater output from the system.

In any case, 3D printing pumps is an increasingly popular pastime around here.

3D Printering: Treating Filament Like Paint Opens Wild Possibilities

June 17, 2023 by Donald Papp 27 Comments

New angles and concepts in 3D printing are always welcome, and we haven’t seen anything quite like [Horn & Rhode]’s 3D prints that do not look anything like 3D prints, accomplished with an experimental tool called HueForge. The concept behind it is simple (though not easy), and the results can be striking when applied correctly.

3D prints that *really* don’t look 3D-printed.

The idea is this: colored, melted filament is, in a sense, not that different from colored paint. Both come in various colors, are applied in thin layers, and blend into new colors when they do so. When applied correctly, striking imagery can emerge. An example is shown here, but there are several more both on the HueForge project page as well as models on Printables.

Instead of the 3D printer producing a 3D object, the printer creates a (mostly) flat image similar in structure to a lithophane. But unlike a lithophane, these blend colors in clever and effective ways by printing extremely thin layers in highly precise ways.

Doing this effectively requires a software tool to plan the color changes and predict how the outcome will look. It all relies on the fact that even solid-color filaments are not actually completely opaque — not when printed at a layer height of 0.08 mm, anyway — and colors will, as a result, blend into one another when layered. That’s how a model like the one shown here can get away with only a few filament changes.

Of course, this process is far from being completely automated. Good results require a solid amount of manual effort, and the transmissivity of one’s particular filament choices plays a tremendous role in how colors will actually blend. That’s where the FilaScope comes in: a tool to more or less objectively measure how well (or how poorly) a given filament transmits light. The results plug into the HueForge software to better simulate results and plan filament changes.

Print result, showing results of filament blending.

Tilted to catch the light, giving an idea of how the print is structured.

When done well, it’s possible to create things that look nothing at all like what we have come to expect 3D-printed things to look. The cameo proof-of-concept model is available here if you’d like to try it for yourself, and there’s also an Aztec-style carving that gives a convincing illusion of depth.

[Horn & Rhode] point out that this concept is still searching for a right-sounding name. Front-lit lithophane? Reverse lithophane? Filament painting? Color-blended bas-relief? If you have a better idea, we urge you not to keep it to yourself because [Horn & Rhode] absolutely want to hear from you.