Parts

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3D Printed Bearings With Filament Rollers

October 9, 2024 by 24 Comments

Commodity bearings are a a boon for makers who to want something to rotate smoothly, but what if you don’t have one in a pinch? [Cliff] of might have the answer for you, in the form of 3D printed bearings with filament rollers.

With the exception of the raw filament rollers, the inner and outer race, roller cage and cap are all printed. It would also be possible to design some of the components right into a rotating assembly. [Cliff] makes it clear this experiment isn’t about replacing metal bearings — far from it. Instead, it’s an inquiry into how self-sufficient one can be with a FDM 3D printer. That didn’t stop him from torture testing the design to its limits as wheel bearings on an off-road go-cart. The first version wasn’t well supported against axial loads, and ripped apart during some more enthusiastic maneuvers.

[Cliff] improved it with a updated inner race and some 3D printed washers, which held up to 30 minutes of riding with only minimal signs of wear. He also made a slightly more practical 10 mm OD version that fits over an M3 bolt, and all the design files are downloadable for free. Cutting the many pieces of filament to length quickly turned into a chore, so a simple cutting jig is also included.

Let us know in the comments below where you think these would be practical. We’ve covered some other 3D printed bearing that use printed races, as well as a slew bearing that’s completely printed. Continue reading “3D Printed Bearings With Filament Rollers” →

Need High-Power Li-Ion Charging? How About 100 W

October 4, 2024 by 21 Comments

Ever want a seriously powerful PCB for charging a Li-Ion pack? Whatever you want it for, [Redherring32] has got it — it’s a board bearing the TPS25750D and BQ25713 chips, that lets you push up to 100 W into your 1S Li-Ion pack through the magic of USB Power Delivery (USB-PD).

Why do you need so much power? Well, when you put together a large amount of Li-Ion cells, this is how you charge it all at once – an average laptop might charge the internal battery at 30 W, and it’s not uncommon for laptop batteries to be dwarfed by hackers’-built packs.

A 4-layer creation peppered with vias, this board’s a hefty one — it’s not often that you see a Li-Ion charger designed to push as much current as possible into a cell, and the chips are smart enough for that. As far as the onboard chips’ capabilities go, the board could handle pack configurations from 1S to 4S, and even act as a USB-PD source — check the IC configuration before you expect to use it for any specific purpose.

Want a simpler charger, even if it’s less powerful? Remember, you can use PPS-capable PD chargers for topping up Li-Ion packs, with barely any extra hardware required.

Makerpipe Turns Conduit Into Structures

September 27, 2024 by 25 Comments

At the risk of stating the obvious, building big things can be difficult. Sure, parts that fit on the bed of a 3D printer are easy to make, if not particularly fast, and scaling up from there is possible. But if you need a long beam or structural element, printing makes little sense; better to buy than build in that case. The trouble then becomes, how do you attach such parts together?

Enter Makerpipe. This South Carolina company, recently out of a crowdfunding campaign, makes a range of structural connectors and fittings for electrical mechanical tubing, or EMT, the galvanized steel conduit used in the electrical trades. EMT is widely available in multiple sizes and is relatively cheap, although we have noticed that the price here has ticked up quite a bit over the last couple of years. It also has the advantage of being available off-the-shelf at any big-box home improvement store, meaning you have instant access to a fantastic building material.

Makerpipe’s bolt-together couplings let you turn pieces of EMT, easily cut with a hacksaw or pipe cutter, into structures without the need for welding. Yes, you can do the same with extruded aluminum, but even if you’re lucky enough to live near a supply house that carries extrusions and the necessary fittings and is open on Saturday afternoon, you’ll probably pay through the nose for it.

Makerpipe isn’t giving their stuff away, and while we normally don’t like to feature strictly commercial products, something that makes building large structures easier and faster seems worth sharing with our community. We’ve done our share of fabricobbling together EMT structures after all, and would have killed for fittings like these.

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Supercon 2024: Last Call For Display Tech Exhibit

September 13, 2024 by 2 Comments

During this year’s Hackaday Supercon, the Supplyframe DesignLab will be playing host to a unique exhibit that catalogs the evolution of display technology. That means showcasing the best and most interesting examples they can find, from the vintage to the ultra-modern. Where are all these wonderful toys coming from, you might ask? Why, the Hackaday community, of course.

This is a rare chance to show off your prized gadgetry to a captive audience of hackers and makers. Whether it’s a custom display you’ve created or some gonzo piece of hardware you’ve been holding onto for years, now’s the time to haul it out. However, there are only a few days left to submit your display for potential inclusion, so if you’ve got something you want the Hackaday community to see, make sure you fill out the form before the September 16th deadline. That’s Monday, if you were wondering.

Continue reading “Supercon 2024: Last Call For Display Tech Exhibit” →

Why Have Seven Segments When You Can Have 21?

September 10, 2024 by 35 Comments

IO user [monte] was pointed towards an 1898 display patent issued to a [George Mason] and liked the look of the ‘creepy’ font it defined. The layout used no less than 21 discrete segments to display the complete roman alphabet and numerals, which is definitely not possible with the mere seven segments we are all familiar with. [monte] then did the decent thing and created a demonstration digit using modern parts.

For the implementation, [monte] created a simple PCB by hand (with an obvious mistake) and 3D-printed an enclosure and diffuser to match. After a little debugging, a better PCB was ordered from one of the usual overseas factories. There isn’t a schematic yet, but they mention using a CH32V003 Risc-V micro, which can be seen sitting on the rear of the PCB.

Maximum flexibility is ensured by storing every glyph as a 32-bit integer, with each LED corresponding to a single bit. It’s interesting to note the display incorporates serifs, which are definitely optional, although you could display sans-serif style glyphs if you wanted to. There is now a bit of a job to work out how to map character codes to glyph codes, but you can have a go at that yourself here. It’s still early doors on this project, but it has some real potential for a unique-looking display.

We love displays—every kind. Here’s a layout reminiscent of a VFD digit but done purely mechanically. And if you must limit yourself to seven digits, what about this unique thing?

Continue reading “Why Have Seven Segments When You Can Have 21?” →

This Tiny Steam Engine Takes A Watchmaker’s Skill To Build

September 9, 2024 by 30 Comments

When your steam engine build requires multiple microscopes, including those of the scanning electron variety, you know you’re building something really, really tiny.

All of the usual tiny superlatives and comparisons apply to [Chronova Engineering]’s latest effort — fits on a pencil eraser, don’t sneeze while you’re working on it or you’ll never find it. If we were to put the footprint of this engine into SMD context, we’d say it’s around a 2010 or so. As one would expect, the design is minimalistic, with no room for traditional bearings or valves. The piston and connecting rod are one piece, meaning the cylinder must pivot, which provides a clever way of switching between intake and exhaust. Tiny crankshaft, tiny flywheel. Everything you’d associate with a steam engine is there, but just barely.

The tooling needed to accomplish this feat is pretty impressive too. [Chronova] are no strangers to precision work, but this is a step beyond. Almost everything was done on a watchmaker’s lathe with a milling attachment and a microscope assist. For the main body of the engine, a pantograph engraving machine was enlisted to scale a 3D printed template down tenfold. Drill bits in the 0.3 mm range didn’t fare too well against annealed tool steel, which is where the scanning electron microscope came into play. It revealed brittle fractures in the carbide tool, which prompted a dive down the rabbit hole of micro-machining and a switch to high-speed steel tooling.

It all worked in the end, enough so that the engine managed 42,000 RPM on a test with compressed air. We eagerly await the equally tiny boiler for a live steam test.

Continue reading “This Tiny Steam Engine Takes A Watchmaker’s Skill To Build” →

The Science Of Coating Steel

September 9, 2024 by 6 Comments

[Breaking Taps] has a look at “parkerization” — a process to coat steel to prevent rust. While you commonly see this finish in firearms, it is usable anywhere you need some protection for steel parts. The process is relatively easy. It does require heat and a special manganese solution made for the purpose. You scuff up the surface of the steel and degrease and wash it.

Once the part is ready, you insert the part in hot solution which is manganese and phosphoric acid. Rinse and displace the water and you are ready to oil the part.

But what we really liked was the electron micrographs of the steel before and after the process. The phosphates formed in the solution cover the iron and hold oil to prevent oxidization. However, the first attempt wasn’t uniform so it wouldn’t work as well. [Breaking Taps] thinks it was a failure to rough up the piece sufficiently before starting. He also raised the temperature of the bath and got a better, but not perfect, result.

We miss having an electron microscope at work and we really want one at home! The last fun coating project we remember used copper in a strange and wonderful way.

Continue reading “The Science Of Coating Steel” →