CNC Egg Decorating

March 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Lacking the patience to do it by hand, GeekPhysical built a CNC machine to decorate Easter eggs. We do mean eggs from chickens used to celebrate the Christian holiday of Easter, not hidden nuggets in technology used to amuse geeks. The results seen in their video (after the break) are quite impressive considering that the printing medium is not perfectly round nor perfectly smooth. The hardware design is ingenious; one servo rotates the egg, another is mounted on one side of the egg and moves a track in an arc so that a felt-tipped pen will follow the curve of the shell. The pen moves in an out along that track through the use of a third servo physically removed by a Bowden cable. We were able to get a closer look at the hardware via their Flickr set and the device is indeed Arduino powered. This fun build is a great way to celebrate the season!

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Heated Aluminum Bed For MakerBot

March 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Keith] built this aluminum-plate heated build stage for his MakerBot 3D printer. We just saw a different MakerBot heated build stage yesterday that relied on glass as the printing surface. Keith’s design is similar to the aluminum RepRap bed but scaled down for the MakerBot. He had a piece of aluminum machined the to correct dimensions, and perfectly flat to use as the printing surface. The yellow surface is caused by Kapton tape applied to the top of the plate. This heat-resistant covering is perfect to print on, resulting in glossy smooth surfaces that are easy to remove once the printed part has cooled. He’s working on improving his mounting technique to achieve prefect level so that he can print without a raft.

[Keith’s] writeup is phenomenal. He’s sharing knowledge in a way that is useful even if you’re not building the exact same kind of project. Follow his lead with your own write-ups, then let us know once you’ve posted them.

[Thanks Marty]

Heated MakerBot Build Stage

March 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

This heated build stage seeks to make 3D printing with the MakerBot a little easier. When hot ABS or PLA meet the cold, cruel world they have a tendency to warp. This was concern for [Devlin Thyne] when he was developing our Hackaday badges. What you see above is 10 Ohm nichrome embedded in clear silicone, then sandwiched in between two plates of glass. The device is made to interface with the MakerBot and includes a thermister for temperature sensing. With a small firmware upgrade you can now set the build stage temperature which should make larger printed objects a bit easier to deal with. A while back we saw a hotbed for the RepRap, but this implementation should be cheaper and easier for the smaller MakerBot applications.

ARM-based CNC Mill Needs No Computer

March 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Fedeortiz12] and his team are nearing completion of their CNC mill (english translation). They set out to build a standalone machine that takes G-code in the RS274/NGC format from an SD card and machines parts accordingly. At the heart of the system is an ARM LPC2148 controller with a character LCD and control pad for operation. The guys have made a teaser video showing the project being tested with a felt-tipped pen. Take a look after the break.

We’d like to see the final product milling PCBs. We’ve always been a little jealous of the PCB milling setup that [imsolidstate] has in his shop.

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Graffiti Machine Sprays For You

March 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Ben’s] father was a metalworker and the combination of being around metal fabrication for most of his life and getting a couple of art degrees brought together a satisfying combination of hacking skills. Above you can see a Graffiti Machine that he built, which we’ll look at in-depth after the break.. This isn’t the first CNC machine he’s worked on. [Ben] became interested in rapid prototyping but was put off by the cost of commercial cutters, which led him to build his own CNC plasma cutter.

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3D Printing On A Much Larger Scale

March 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 44 Comments

The end goal of this giant rapid prototyping machine is to print buildings. We’re not holding our breath for a brand new Flintstones-esque abode, but their whimsical suggesting of printed buildings on the moon seems like science fiction with potential. The machine operates similar to a RepRap but instead of plastic parts, it prints stone by binding sand with epoxy. This method is not revolutionary, but hasn’t really been seen in applications larger than a square meter or so. It’s fun to see the things we dabble in heading for industrial production applications.

[Thanks Juan]

Precision Grinder Is A Thing Of Beauty

February 23, 2010 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

This beautifully crafted grinder would make any machining enthusiast salivate.It features a fixture for holding your work at any angle or orientation to the grinding wheel but the slotted bed also allows for other attachments to be used. Two of the examples shown in this highly detailed (machine porn) writeup include sharpening bits and light surface grinding. There’s not much more to say because the pictures speak for themselves.

[Thanks Bud]