Automated Bed Leveling With Our 3D Printer

April 23, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

Anyone with a RepRap or other 3D printer knows how much of a pain leveling the bed is. To get a good quality print, the bed – the surface the printer prints on – must be exactingly level, and may the engineering gods help you if your surface has the slightest bump in it. [Atntias] is developing a solution to this problem: an auto leveling platform that shouldn’t require any parts at all if you already have a metal bed.

The idea is incredibly simple: Just ground your metal bed, and apply a small voltage to the tip of your hot end. [Atntias]’ code (available on GitHub) probes the surface of the bed and shoots out a 3D mesh of your current bed profile. This can be used as a GCode offset, so the bottom of your print is always directly on the top of the bed.

Although the utility of leveling a bed down to the micron level is of questionable utility for 3D printers, it’s vitally important if you want to mill a PCB on your printer. [Atntias] says his idea is currently being implemented into the Marlin firmware, so it looks like another firmware update is in our future.

Thanks go to [technodream] for sending this one in. Check out the video after the break to see the bed leveling process in action.

Continue reading “Automated Bed Leveling With Our 3D Printer” →

Joinery Sure To Be Useful On Your Next Sheet Goods Enclosure

April 16, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

It’s hard to be an expert at everything, but this collection of wood joinery techniques will make your next project look like you’ve just finished your degree in mechanical engineering. They’re targeted for use in projects where thin sheets of plywood are CNC cut to make enclosures and parts. [Sean Ragan] mentions that these are not new, but we haven’t come across such a large collection of examples as this.

The joints shown above address a series of different needs. You’re probably already familiar with the joint on the bottom right which makes nice corners for a box, providing a lot of surface area for gluing. But just above that is a simple variation on the idea which includes slots for square nuts. This type of mechanical fastener brings strength while keeping the option to take the joint apart again

To the top left you can see a design that includes a snap lock. As the two pieces are slotted together, the barbs flex until they find their mating openings and hold the pieces firmly together. Below that are some bulbed finger joints which don’t need glue to hold themselves together.

[Sean’s] post goes on and on with these designs. He even covers the laser-cut bendable hinges which we are quite fond of.

Putting QR Codes In Copper

April 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

Former Hackaday contributor [mikeysklar] has been trying to etch a QR code into a sheet of copper. Although his phone can’t read the CuR codes he’s made so far, he’s still made an impressive piece of milled copper.

The biggest problem [mikey] ran into is getting Inkscape to generate proper cnc tool paths instead of just tracing a bitmap image. He’s got the CNC part of his build under control, but he still can’t find a QR code reader that will register his work.

We’re no stranger to QR codes here at Hack a Day, and it’s very possible the only thing that could be stopping [mikey]’s QR code from being read by a phone is the contrast of the image. We’re thinking a little bit of printer’s ink forced into the non-copper part of the PCB would make the QR code register. Since [mikey] already has a very nice negative etching of his QR code, he could easily use his new board as a printing plate, making infinite paper copies of his copper-based QR code.

If you’ve got any ideas on how [mikey] can get his QR code working, post them in the comments.

A Six-year Adventure Into The World Of CNC Fabrication

April 11, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 51 Comments

Hackaday doesn’t always get the entire back story of a build. The usual assumption is that someone decided to build something, and with just a little bit of effort the project makes it into the Hackaday tip line. This doesn’t do justice to the builder, with skills honed after years of practice and experience. A 200-word summary is deceiving, and makes everything look almost too easy. [Michal] decided to buck that trend and sent in his half-decade long adventure of becoming one of the best micro-scale machinists we’ve ever seen.

In 2006, with years of robots made out of hot glue and cardboard behind him, and the quality of 3D printers not up to his exacting specifications, [Michal] snapped. He sunk the better part of $3000 into a Roland MDX-15 desktop mill. After several months of futzing about with acrylic sheet, [Michal] came across the wonderful machining properties of modeling board.

Determined to do something useful with this modeling board, [Michal] started looking into resin casting. Casting in resin is a common technique in the artist and model maker communities to mass produce small plastic parts. After getting his hands on eight liters of polyurethane resin, [Michal] made a useful part guiding the direction his skill set would grow in the coming years.

After years of experimenting with techniques, materials, and mediums, [Michal] eventually honed his craft and was able to finally start building real robots. These projects were a far cry from the cardboard and milk jug contraptions made earlier in his career. [Michal] was now producing incredibly precise gear assemblies with accuracies within 0.002 mm.

You may remember [Michal] from his robot with pivoting wheels we showcased last week. He got a lot of email from people wanting to know how to start delving into his unique blend of artistry, engineering, and craftsmanship. The good news is you can now learn from his mistakes, so a planetary gearbox shouldn’t take more than a few months to finish.

Wooden CNC Touch Probe

April 10, 2012 by Mike Nathan 3 Comments

diy-touch-probe

[Gary] sent a few pictures of his latest project our way via Flickr, which we thought a few of you CNC owners might be interested in. He has been working with his CNC machine a lot lately and decided it was about time he built a touch probe for his rig.

His initial goal was to use the touch probe to ensure his CNC table was perfectly level, but we’re thinking it will be helpful for a lot of different projects in the future. [Gary] says he was really looking to put together a proof of concept device, but that things worked out so well he had to share.

His probe seems to work very well, even without the fit and finish of others we’ve seen in the past. The body of the probe itself was built using several layers of quarter inch plywood, housing three sets of two screws. The screws are wired together in order to form a closed circuit when the brass probe is inserted. When the probe makes contact with a solid object, the circuit is broken, and the coordinates of the probe’s head are recorded.

Though [Gary] admits that he was not super careful when it came to building the probe, we think the results speak for themselves. For a first iteration its scanning abilities are pretty impressive – we can’t wait to see version 2.

Print In Chocolate, Sugar, And Clay With A Universal Paste Extruder

April 10, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

With a glut of Easter candy acquired over the last week, you might be thinking what to do with mountains of chocolate and other sugary delights. How about sending them through a 3D printer with [RichRap]’s universal paste extruder?

[RichRap]’s extruder uses a common 10cc syringes slowly squeezed by an off-the-shelf stepper motor. Chocolate wasn’t the only goal for this build; [RichRap] also tested out cake icing, corn chip dough, muffin and sponge cake batter with his new toy. The most interesting paste in our humble opinion is porcelain ceramic clay. [RichRap] was able to make some very nice 3D printed greenware, but we’ll withhold our judgement until the ceramic parts are fired later this week.

After the break you can check out the introduction video for the Universal Paste Extruder, as well as a quick glimpse of [RichRap]’s very cool porcelain clay prints. We’re very interested in the ceramics printed with this extruder, if only for printing reprap parts that will be exposed to plastic-melting temperatures. Of course, all the files to build your own paste extruder are up on Thingiverse.

Tip ‘o the hat to [Josef Prusa] for sending this one in.

Continue reading “Print In Chocolate, Sugar, And Clay With A Universal Paste Extruder” →

CNC Conversions With [Bob]

April 7, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

[Bob Berg] emailed in to request that we take a look at his website. We did, and we liked what we saw! [Bob] has done a couple CNC mill conversions and documented the process quite thoroughly.

The first one listed on his site is a Sieg x-3, seen above. [Bob] explains that the first thing he did when he received it was tore it apart and cleaned it meticulously. We’re not sure if [Bob] was being insanely neat, or if he bought a used dirty unit. Either way, you can’t argue that a nice clean machine is the way to start. After a short while using it the way it was, he added a digital read out for a little more accuracy. From there, he went for a fully motorized conversion.

Keep looking around his site. There is another full build (a lather master RF45) as well as some miscellaneous other projects that are quite interesting.