Open3DP Looks At 3D Printing In Common Materials

May 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Buddy Smith] sent us a link to Open3DP which he calls “REAL 3d printing hacks”. Open3DP showcases the projects of the Solheim Rapid Prototyping Laboratory at the University of Washington. They’re working on 3D printing in materials that can be commonly acquired and to that end they publish recipes for powder printing in materials such as sugar, ceramic, and glass. Take a look through their archives. We found the post on microwave kilns interesting, as well as the writeup about Shapeways glass printing which is seen above. We’ve also embedded a short video on Open3DP’s work after the break.

Update: [Mark Ganter] dropped us a line to clarify that Open3DP was the first to develop printable glass about a year ago, called Vitraglyphic. They’ll also be presenting papers at Rapid2010 and announcing a new printable material.

Continue reading “Open3DP Looks At 3D Printing In Common Materials” →

Hack Your Crystal’s Frequency

May 10, 2010 by Devlin Thyne 53 Comments

[Drone] tipped us off about [Joachim]’s efforts to alter a crystal’s frequency. Through a process called penning, a crystal’s resonant frequency is lowered by painting the crystal with an indelible ink marker. Our curiosity piqued, we went off and found more information about penning crystals. It turns out this technique has been around for nearly as long as there have been amateur radio operators. Outside of your local oscillator, and radio jammer, how might you best use a hacked crystal?

Cornell Final Project List

May 8, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 6 Comments

Looking for an interesting project to do using an Atmel Mega644? Students at Cornell University have got you covered. They were required to choose, design, and build a project using the microcontroller; and this year is quite promising with video object tracking, the always popular theremins, helicopters, Potentiostats, even Pavlovian conditioned mosquitoes, and more.

Of course all the previous years are included as well, making over 350 projects total.

[Thanks Bruce Land]

Toner Transfer Explained Step-by-step

May 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

[Tanjent] send us a link to his tutorial on the toner transfer process for fabricating circuit boards. We’ve seen a lot of these in the past, but we liked how his is straight to the point while also sharing several tips and options along the way. Notably, he ”tints” the copper clad before trying to adhere the toner to it by swabbing on a bit of etchant. His reasoning for this is that the toner has more trouble sticking to the shiny copper. Just a bit of etchant will pit the surface and let the toner stick better.

He’s still using paper as a medium and not printing toner powder directly to the copper clad. His paper of choice is HP Brochure Paper while we use glossy pages from the union newspaper. But like us, he does use copper chloride as an etchant, which you can learn to make yourself. We’re still looking for a definitive solution for disposing of this chemical. We’ve been using the same batch for years and recently it’s turned cloudy with impurities. If you’ve got disposal tips let’s hear them in the comments section.

Mad Machinist Masterpieces

May 5, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 39 Comments

If a picture is worth 1000 words, by our count, [Ryan Commbes] has said 1.68×10^6 different things about his custom robot, airsoft, and monster truck builds. While we’re not ones to pick favorites, we agreed his Alpine TPG-1 (picture at the top) build is a step above the rest. Sadly, the forums with his build log doesn’t seem to be loading, but he says the basic process if you wanted to make your own is to gather pictures, measure, and create.

[Thanks Andrew]

Perfect Spiral, Every Time

April 30, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 20 Comments

[Carmine] let us know about his team’s Automated Football Launcher. Their goal was to combine a football launcher with motion tracking, to allow a player to practice running and catching with the perfect throw. Unfortunately, and we’re not quite sure when, they ended up changing out the Jugs machine for an air cannon, which resulted in the use of foam footballs and the loss of throwing factors such as spiral. Somewhat defeating the purpose but we’ll let it slide; only because we know its going to be shooting potatoes eventually.

The project comes together by using two cameras giving distance and color tracking, combined with a rotating platform (and the best use of garden hose ever), an accurate set-top for their launcher. As seen in the video after the jump, it works out quite nicely. Continue reading “Perfect Spiral, Every Time” →

Multiple Buttons And A Pot On one pin

April 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Kevin Fodor] shares his method of reading multiple inputs on one pin of a microcontroller. The analog to digital convert function of the microcontroller is used to read a potentiometer but with some careful calculations a resistor network can be built into the circuit that provides a unique voltage value for each button pushed. The only real drawback is that the system cannot read multiple button presses at the same time. Theoretically up to ten momentary push buttons can be used but [Kevin] estimates that only four plus the potentiometer will work reliably.

[Thanks Charper]