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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Retrotechtacular: Better Living Through A-Bombs

July 11, 2023 by Al Williams 42 Comments

Usually, if you are listening to people debate about nuclear issues, it is one of two topics: how to deal with nuclear weapon stockpiles or if we want nuclear power plants in our backyard. But there was a time when the US and the USSR had more peaceful plans for nuclear bombs. While peaceful plans for nuclear bombs might sound like an oxymoron, there was somewhat of a craze for all things nuclear at some point, and it wasn’t clear that nuclear power and explosives wouldn’t take over many industries as the transistor did, or the vacuum tube before it.

You may have heard about Project (or Operation) Plowshare, the US effort to find a peaceful use for all those atom bombs. The Atomic Energy Commission video below touts the benefits “for all nations.” What benefits? Mostly moving earth, including widening the Panama Canal or creating a new canal, cutting highways through mountains, assisting mining and natural gas production, and creating an artificial harbor. There was also talk of using atomic blasts to create new materials and, of course, furthering the study of the atom.

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Testing the World's Thinnest Boombox with a modular setup containing the basic components.

Supercon 2022: Joe Grand And The Thinnest Boombox

July 10, 2023 by Maya Posch 4 Comments

Boomboxes are one of those status symbols that define the 1980s and part of the 1990s, being both a miracle of integration and the best way to share your love of music with as many people as possible. Naturally, this led Joe Grand to figure that it would make it a perfect subject for a modern take on such an iconic device. The primary inspiration for this came from a piezo speaker developed by TDK called the ‘PiezoListen’. These are piezo devices that can be less than a millimeter thick, while still claiming to reproduce a broad range of audio frequencies.

Just having these speakers is only part of the solution, of course, which led Joe down the rabbithole of not only figuring out the components that should go into the system, but also how to get it all on a single PCB and see how far one can push different solder mask colors with an appropriately boombox-like design. At its core is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W that runs Mopidy, to provide music server functionality. Also added are some RGB lighting and touch controls.

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Software For Satellites Hack Chat

July 10, 2023 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, July 12 at noon Pacific for the Software for Space Hack Chat with Jacob Killelea!

In space, everything is harder. Hardware has to be built to withstand not only the harshest possible regimes of temperature and radiation but the rigors of launch. Power is at a premium, things that are supposed to stay cool get too hot, and things you want to keep warm freeze solid. It seems like everything you “send upstairs” has to be over-engineered compared with the stuff that stays down the gravity well.

But what about software? Yep, that needs special engineering too — after all, one little mistake, one uncaught exception, and millions or even billions of exquisitely crafted space hardware could become as useful as a brick. Jacob Killelea is an aerospace engineer who has done the rounds of a number of space concerns, and he’s worked on a number of space software projects, including a pulsed laser system with the potential for lunar orbital communications. He knows what it takes to write software that keeps space hardware ticking, and we’re excited to have him log into the Chat to talk about it.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, July 12 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

[Banner image: NASA’s GPM satellite.]

Hackaday Links: July 9, 2023

July 9, 2023 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Good news this week from Mars, where Ingenuity finally managed to check in with its controllers after a long silence. The plucky helicopter went silent just after nailing the landing on its 52nd flight back on April 26, and hasn’t been heard from since. Mission planners speculated that Ingenuity, which needs to link to the Perseverance rover to transmit its data, landed in a place where terrain features were blocking line-of-sight between the two. So they weren’t overly concerned about the blackout, but still, one likes to keep in touch with such an irreplaceable asset. The silence was broken last week when Perseverance finally made it to higher ground, allowing the helicopter to link up and dump the data from the last flight. The goal going forward is to keep Ingenuity moving ahead of the rover, acting as a scout for interesting places to explore, which makes it possible that we’ll see more comms blackouts. Ingenuity may be more than ten-fold over the number of flights that were planned, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for retirement quite yet.

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99% Partspiration

July 8, 2023 by Elliot Williams 37 Comments

Thomas Edison once said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. That doesn’t leave much room for partspiration.

I’m working on a top-secret project, and had to place a parts order on AliExpress with a minimum order quantity of five in order to get decent shipping times. No big deal, financially, and it’s always great to have spares as backup for the ones you fry.

But as I started lighting up the little round smartwatch displays to put them through their paces, I started thinking of all sorts of ways that I could use something like this. I had no idea how easy to drive they were, or frankly, how good they looked in person. When you get a round display in your hands, you find that you need dial indicators everywhere.

And then my son came by and said “Oh neat. I want one!” and started thinking up all sorts of gizmos that I could put them in. Two of them would make awesome eyes, and he’s been on a chameleon kick – the animal, you know. So we’re looking for chameleon eye animations online.

And all of a sudden, I have more projects lined up than I have remaining screens. I’m calling this phenomenon “partspiration”. You know, when you figure out how to use something and then you see uses for it everywhere? Time to place another Ali order.

Gearing Up for the Hackaday Prize

And don’t forget, we just started the next round of the Hackaday Prize: Gearing Up. In this challenge round we want to see your best DIY tools, jigs, and workflow accelerators. Custom reflow plates, home-built power supplies, or even software tools – as long as it helps you get the job done, it has a place here. You’ve got until Aug. 8 to get your entry finished, but head on over to Hackaday.io and get started now.

Retrotechtacular: The Nuclear Cruise Ship Of The Future Earns Glowing Reviews

July 7, 2023 by Al Williams 33 Comments

The average modern cruise ship takes about 250 tons or 80,000 gallons of fuel daily. But can you imagine a cruise ship capable of circling the globe fourteen times before it needed to top off? That was the claim for the NS Savannah, a nuclear-powered cruise ship born out of President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.

The ship was a joint project of several government agencies, including the US Maritime Administration. With a maiden cruise in 1962, the vessel cost a little more than $18 million to build, but the 74-megawatt nuclear reactor added nearly $30 million to the price tag. The ship could carry 60 passengers, 124 crew, and over 14,000 tons of cargo around 300,000 nautical miles using one set of 32 fuel elements. What was it like onboard? The video below gives a glimpse of nuclear cruising in the 1960s.

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