Bench-top Laser Engraver Does Some Cutting Too

March 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

Grab that stack of old optical drives you have in the corner and get to work building this laser engraver. [Groover] is taking a no-nonsense approach to the build and we think it is just simple enough to be accessible to a very wide audience.

The physical assembly uses sleds from two optical drives. These are mounted some angle bracket. Since lasers cut at one specific focal length, there is not need for a Z axis (simplifying the build greatly). In fact, we think the hardest part of the assembly is retrieving the laser diode from a DVD-R drive and packaging it for use with this setup.

The electronics are a combination of a couple of consumer products. Two pre-fab motor drivers are used to command the stepper motors on the optical sleds. These receive their commands from an Arduino. A package called GRBL reads in G-code ([Groover] shows how to generate this from Inkscape) and in turn sends commands to the Arduino.

The results are quite remarkable. It can engrave wood with great resolution and contrast. The video after the break even shows it cutting out shapes from construction paper. Now we still want our own full-size laser cutter, but this project is much more fiscally possible for us.

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Laser-cut Noise Maker Resembles Violin

March 10, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

This looks very much like a violin but it sounds very much like someone abusing a family of cats. [Ranjit] came with the idea of building a violin using laser cut parts. It doesn’t follow the normal curved shape we’re used to seeing with string instruments. This is because the parts were all cut from flat stock, including the sides of the instrument. The boxy shape that resulted invokes visions of early video game objects and is why this is called the 8-bit violin.

After the break you can see a video of [Bre Pettis] playing the laser-cut instrument. It’s pretty bad, but not in that five-year-old picking up an instrument for the first time sort of way. Yes the best violinists spend a lifetime honing their craft, but they also play on instruments hand carved by master Luthiers who also spend a lifetime perfecting their skills. Don’t get us wrong though, we think it’s just as much fun as that 3D printed guitar.

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CNC-built R2-D2 Brings Childhood Dreams To Life

March 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 7 Comments

As a kid, [Wes] always dreamed of building a full-size, functional R2-D2 droid from Star Wars. While most youthful aspirations such as this fall to the wayside amid adult responsibilities and commitments, he did not allow his dreams to disappear along with his childhood.

He began his droid-building journey armed only with his dreams and some assistance from the friendly folks over at R2Builders. The entire replica was built using MDF, wood, and styrene sheeting, along with just one tool: a CNC machine. He walks you through the every step of the construction, stopping to give recommendations on CNC hardware, software, etc. along the way. He also provides Gcode files for each of the pieces he has constructed, which should be a huge help to anyone looking to build a R2-D2 clone of their own.

It looks like he is just getting around to fitting motors into the leg housings of his R2-D2 replica, but we can’t wait to see what it looks like once he has all of the electronics and other details finished.

If you are interested in more R2-D2 coverage, look no further than right here.

Chilling Drinks With Your Friends’ Faces

March 7, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

facecube

3D printing of Kinect-mapped models seems to be all the rage lately. [Nirav] caught the bug and has developed software which allows him to join in the fun. Frustrated by the lack of documentation and source code for the Fabricate Yourself project, he set out to create his own open-source process for scanning people and objects to share with the hacking community.

His software allows you to aim the Kinect and capture a 3D scan of any object, after which you need to use MeshLab or similar software to turn the scan into a STL file for printing. He says that the process is a bit tedious at the moment, but he is working hard to condense it down into a single step.

While he can scan and print pretty much anything he wants, his ultimate goal is to create ice cube trays for his friends featuring molds of their faces. The project has a lot of promise, though we’re not sure about our friends crunching on our faces after finishing their drink.

Inkscape Plugin For Engraving Fonts

March 6, 2011 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Windell] developed an Inkscape extension called Hershey Text that helps you process fonts into vector representations. If you’ve tried to 3D print, plot, or mill text in the past you may have run across the problem of generating vector paths that deal with the outline and fill of the text appropriately. The problem stems from how fonts are defined; either by the area that they enclose, or by the path that is used to draw the outline. Check out [Windell’s] tutorial for this extension where he explains each of these issues and shows how to overcome them.

The image above illustrates the stroke options, which allow you to vector multiple paths to best fill in the correct parts of each character using path-based hardware. The package includes a wide variety of interesting font sets that are in the public domain, and includes tools such as a glyph map generator that make it very user friendly.

Open Source 5-axis CNC Router

March 4, 2011 by Mike Szczys 44 Comments

This 5-axis CNC router could soon be an open source tool. [Mike Calvino] built it for the School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. It can be used as a router or as a plasma cutter/welder. Now he’s trying to raise some money that will underwrite his time and effort to develop and release instructions, design files, and specifications to make it an open source hardware project.

It is extremely large, and in addition to the X, Y, and Z axes that you’d expect to find on CNC machinery, it can tilt and rotate the cutting tool. This is not something you’re likely to build at home. But the availability of plans would be a huge contribution toward making machine tools accessible at a relatively small price tag. It’s not hard to image universities building this as a class project. We also think it would be a perfect group project for you and your buddies over at the local Hackerspace to undertake. Check out some milling action in the clip after the break.

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Encase Yourself In Carbonite With Kinect

February 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

kinect_plastic_renders

There never seems to be a lull in the stream of new and novel hacks that people create around Microsoft’s Kinect. One of the more recent uses for the device comes from [Interactive Fabrication] and allows you to fabricate yourself, in a manner of speaking.

The process uses the Kinect to create a 3D model of a person, which is then displayed on a computer monitor. Once you have selected your preferred pose, a model of the image is rendered by a 3D plastic printer. Each scan results in a 3cm x 3cm plastic model complete with snap together dovetail joints allowing the models to be combined together. A full body scan can be constructed with three of these tiles, resulting in a neat “Han Solo trapped in Carbonite” effect.

Currently only about 1/3 of Kinect’s full resolution is being used to create these models, which is pretty promising news to those who would try this at home. Theoretically, you should be able to create larger, more detailed images of yourself provided you have a 3D printer at your disposal.

Keep reading for a quick video presentation of the fabrication process.

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