[James] and his Lemontron portable 3D printer

If Life Gives You Lemons, Build This Lemontron

November 20, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 12 Comments

What if your 3D printer could fit in a box of filament but still rival the build plate size of heavyweights? Enter the Lemontron, a free and open source portable printer making waves in the maker community for its compact form factor and budget-friendly price. Watch [James]’ video on his build story here. Built around the Positron drive—a unique mechanism introduced by [Kralyn] in 2022—the Lemontron is the latest evolution of this innovative design. Although Kralyn mysteriously disappeared, their work inspired other projects like the Positron JourneyMaker and this Lemontron.

The Lemontron started as a unibody chassis mod for the JourneyMaker but grew into a complete redesign, cutting costs in half without sacrificing performance. By eliminating expensive CNC parts, it’s entirely made from off-the-shelf components, bringing the build cost to just $413. Compare that to $800 for the JourneyMaker and $699 for the Positron v3.2 kit.

Recent video updates show the Lemontron in action, printing impressively large and complex models. It tackled a marble run with 80-degree unsupported overhangs and a ‘comically large’ Benchy, proving its capability. Its compact design, paired with robust performance, is an exciting alternative for tinkerers seeking quality on a budget.

The Lemontron is in its final development stages, with frequent updates dropping on its YouTube channel. If you’re in the market for a more “traditional” mini-printer, check out this cool suitcase model from 2014.

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Power Supply With Benchtop Features Fits In Your Pocket

November 19, 2024 by Donald Papp 42 Comments

[CentyLab]’s PocketPD isn’t just adorably tiny — it also boasts some pretty useful features. It offers a lightweight way to get a precisely adjustable output of 0 to 20 V at up to 5 A with banana jack output, integrating a rotary encoder and OLED display for ease of use.

PocketPD leverages USB-C Power Delivery (PD), a technology with capabilities our own [Arya Voronova] has summarized nicely. In particular, PocketPD makes use of the Programmable Power Supply (PPS) functionality to precisely set and control voltage and current. Doing this does require a compatible USB-C charger or power bank, but that’s not too big of an ask these days.

Even if an attached charger doesn’t support PPS, PocketPD can still be useful. The device interrogates the attached charger on every bootup, and displays available options. By default PocketPD selects the first available 5 V output mode with chargers that don’t support PPS.

The latest hardware version is still in development and the GitHub repository has all the firmware, which is aimed at making it easy to modify or customize. Interested in some hardware? There’s a pre-launch crowdfunding campaign you can watch.

It’s A Soldering Iron! It’s A Multimeter! Relax! It’s Both!

November 15, 2024 by Al Williams 23 Comments

Imagine this. A young person comes to you wanting to get started in the electronic hobby. They ask what five things should they buy to get started. Make your list. We’ll wait. We bet we can guess at least two of your items: a multimeter, and a soldering iron. [LearnElectroncsRepair] recently showed us a review of the Zotek Zoyi ZT-N2 which is a soldering iron and a multimeter in one unit. You can watch the video review below.

Honestly, when we heard about this, we didn’t think much of the combination. It doesn’t seem like having your probe get red hot is a feature. However, the probe tip replaces the soldering iron tip, so you are either soldering or measuring, but not both at the same time.

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A Vintage Radiator Core, From Scratch

November 13, 2024 by Jenny List 25 Comments

There are sadly few 1914 Dennis fire engines still on the road, so when the one owned by Imperial College in London needs a spare part, it can not be ordered from the motor factors and must be made from scratch. Happily, [Andy Pugh] is an alumnus with the required metalworking skills, so in the video below we see him tackling the manufacture of flattened brass tubes for its radiator core.

Forming a round tube to a particular shape is done by pulling it through a die whose profile gradually changes from round to the desired shape. We see him make a couple of tries at this, finally succeeding with one carefully designed to have a constant circumference. The use of CNC machining is something that wouldn’t have been available in the Dennis works in the early 20th century, so we can marvel at the skills of the machinists back then who made the original. Here in 2024 he makes a drawing rig with a geared chain drive suitable for larger scale production.

The video is both a fascinating look at tube drawing and a mind-cleansing piece of workshop observation, and we have to say we enjoyed watching it. If [Andy]’s name sounds familiar to you, this might be because this isn’t the first go he’s had at manufacturing vehicle parts.

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Component Tester Teardown

November 10, 2024 by Al Williams 10 Comments

In the modern age, when you hear “component tester” you probably think of one of those cheap microcontroller-based devices that can identify components and provide basic measurements on an LCD screen. However, in the past, these were usually simple circuits that generated an XY scope plot. The trace would allow an experienced operator to identify components and read a few key parameters. [Thomas] tears down an old Hameg device that uses this principle in the video below.

The unit is in a nice enclosure and has a feature that controls the amount of current the unit uses in the excitation signal. It plugs into the wall, and you can connect the component under test with either test leads or a socket. The output, of course, is a pair of BNCs for the scope’s X and Y inputs.

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A light grey background with white and black line drawings of three different bicycles on one page and three different tire levers and three different valve covers for bikes on the other.

A Beautifully Illustrated Guide To Making

November 10, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 13 Comments

If you’ve ever been wondering what you should make next, it can be a daunting task to decide with the firehose of inspiration coming straight from the series of tubes that makeup the World Wide Web. Perhaps a more curated digital catalog of projects would help?

Featuring “1000 Useful Things to Make,” [NODE]’s Make it Yourself is a beautifully-illustrated catalog of open source and DIY projects spanning a number of domains including camping gear, furniture, music, and maker tools. Each image is a link to the original project and there’s a handy icon by each denoting what skills are needed, such as sewing or 3D printing.

If you haven’t seen [NODE]’s work before, he uses line art to illustrate his projects and has given all of these projects the same treatment on the (virtual) page with credits to the original creators in the footnotes. We hope a future edition will include tractors and houses to truly rival the Sears catalog of yore, but it’s hard to complain when we already have so many projects we could choose to build.

Many of the projects may seem familiar, if slightly fancier when illustrated in line art, like the Ploopy headphones, this retro audio player, or the Keybon adaptive macro pad.

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A set of brass safety glasses sit on a marred black workbench. The top and earpiece sections of the frames are in squarish brass plate and have ruler marks on them.

Combination Safety Glasses And Measurement Tool

November 8, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 20 Comments

While rulers and tape measures are ubiquitous, they always seem to disappear when you need them. We know you’d never forget your safety glasses (safety first!), so what if they were also a measuring tool?

Starting by snapping pieces from a folding yardstick, [Simone Giertz] and [Laura Kampf] worked out a rough prototype before letting [Giertz] complete the project in brass. Some initial issues with the weight of the frames were alleviated by switching to a lighter weight plate material and using thinner frames and weight-saving holes near the ear pieces.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we’ll let somebody else decide whether or not these will be the newest fashion craze. But it’s hard to argue with the timelessness of brass unless you have a copper allergy. We could definitely see a less expensive plastic version catching on in makerspaces for the PPE bin.

Want some other cool wearable gear? How about [Giertz]’s grocery bag hat, an evening gown with servo-driven flowers, or a shirt that reflects heat out the atmospheric window?

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