Hackaday Prize Entry: Printing Bones

June 8, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

You would be forgiven to think that 3D printing is only about rolls of filament and tubs of resin. The fact is, there are many more 3D printing technologies out there. Everything from powders to paper can be used to manufacture a 3D model. [Jure]’s Hackaday Prize entry is meant to explore those weirder 3D manufacturing techniques. This is a printer that lays down binder over a reservoir of powder, slowly building up objects made out of minerals.

The key question with a powder printer is exactly what material this printer will use. For this project, [Jure] is planning on printing with hydroxyapatite, a mineral that makes up about 70% of bones by weight. Printing bones — yes, they do that — is quite expensive and has diverse applications.

The design of this printer is about what you would expect. It’s a Cartesian design with a roller to distribute powder, a piston to drop the part down into the frame, and an industrial inkjet printhead designed for wide format printers. It’s a fantastic piece of work and one of the better powder printers we’ve seen, and we can’t wait to see what [Jure] is able to produce with this.

Hackaday Prize Entry: DIY LCD Based SLA 3D Printer

June 7, 2017 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

Resin-based SLA 3D printers are seen more and more nowadays but remain relatively uncommon. This Low Cost, Open Source, LCD based SLA 3D Printer design by [Dylan Reynolds] is a concept that aims to make DIY SLA 3D printing more accessible. The idea is to use hardware and manufacturing methods that are more readily available to hobbyists to create a reliable and consistent DIY platform.

[Dylan]’s goal isn’t really to compete with any of the hobbyist or prosumer options on the market; it’s more a test bed for himself and others, to show that a low-cost design that takes full advantage of modern hardware like the Raspberry Pi can be made. The result would be a hackable platform to let people more easily develop, experiment, or simply tamper with whatever part or parts they wish.

Show Us Your Internet Of Useful Things By Monday

June 7, 2017 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

Don’t forget to get your connected device entered in the Hackaday Prize by Monday morning. The current challenge is IuT ! IoT, a clever tilt at the Internet of Things, which is so hot right now. We don’t just want things to connect, we want that connection to be useful, so save your Internet Toasters and Twittering Toilets for another round.

So what are we looking for here? Any device that communicates with something else and thereby performs a service that has meaningful value. The Hackaday Prize is about building something that matters.

We’ve been covering a lot of great entries. HeartyPatch is an open source heart rate monitor and ECG that communicates through a smart phone. We’ve seen an affordable water level measuring station to help track when water levels are rising dangerously fast in flood prone areas. And the heads-up display for multimeters seeks to make work safer for those dealing with high voltages. Get inspired by all of the IuT ! IoT entries.

There’s $20,000 at stake in this challenge alone, as twenty IuT projects will be named finalists, awarded $1000 each, and move on to compete for the top prizes in the finals.

If you don’t have your project up on Hackaday.io yet, now’s the time. Once your project is published, entering is as easy as using the dropdown box on the left sidebar of your project page. [Shulie] even put together a quick video showing how to submit your entry. Check to make sure “Internet of Useful Things” is listed on your project’s sidebar and if not, use that dropdown to add it.

Hackaday Prize Entry: The FPGA Commodore

June 6, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

The history of Commodore 8-bit computers ends with a fantastically powerful, revolutionary, and extraordinarily collectible device. The Commodore 65 was the chicken lip’ last-ditch effort to squeeze every last bit out of the legacy of the Commodore 64. Basically, it was a rework of a 10-year-old design, adding advanced features from the Amiga, but still retaining backwards compatibility. Only 200 prototypes were produced, and when these things hit the auction block, they can fetch as much as an original Apple I.

For their Hackaday Prize entry, resident hackaday.io FPGA wizard [Antti Lukats] and a team of retrocomputing enthusiasts are remaking the Commodore 65. Finally, the ultimate Commodore 8-bit will be available to all. Not only is this going to be a perfect replica of what is arguably the most desirable 8-bit computer of all time, it’s going to have new features like HDMI, Ethernet, and connections for a lot of FPGA I/O pins.

The PCB for this project is designed to fit inside the original case and includes an Artix A200T FPGA right in the middle of the board. HDMI and VGA connectors fill the edges of the board, there’s a connector for a floppy disk, and the serial port, cartridge slot, and DE9 joystick connectors are still present.

You can check out an interview from the Mega65 team below. It’s in German, but Google auto-generated and auto-translated captions actually work really, really well.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Sub Gigahertz RF

June 5, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

For all the press WiFi and Bluetooth-connected Internet of Things toasters get, there’s still a lot of fun to be had below one Gigahertz. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Adam] is working on an open source, extensible 915 and 433 MHz radio designed for robotics, drones, weather balloons, and all the other fun projects that sub-Gigaherts radio enables.

The design of this radio module is based around the ADF7023 RF transceiver, a very capable and very cheap chip that transmits in the usual ISM bands. The rest of the circuit is an STM32 ARM Cortex M0+, with USB, UART, and SPI connectivity, with support for a battery for those mobile projects.

Of course, you can just go out and buy an ISM radio, but that’s not really the point of this project. [Adam] has come up with an excellent board here, all designed in KiCad, all while flexing his RF muscle. There are RF shields here, too, so it’s far more than just a design challenge, this is an assembly and sourcing problem as well. It’s a great project, and an excellent example of what we’re looking for in The Hackaday Prize.

Designing Products With Injection Molding In Mind

June 5, 2017 by Bob Baddeley 18 Comments

3D printing is a technique we’ve all been using for ages at home, or via Shapeways, but if you are designing a product, 3D printing will only get you so far. It’s crude, slow, expensive, and has lots of limitations. While it’s great for the prototyping stage, ultimately products manufactured in volume will be manufactured using another method, and most likely it will be injection molding. Knowing how to design a part for injection molding means you can start prototyping with 3D printing, confident that you’ll be able to move to a mold without major changes to the design.

The 2017 Hackaday Prize includes a $30,000 prize for Best Product as we seek products that not only show a great idea, but are designed for manufacturing and have thought through what it takes to get them into the hands of the users. Some of the entries seem to be keenly aware of the challenges associated with moving from prototyping to production. Here are some examples of best practices when prototyping with future injection molding in mind.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Safety Glasses Are Also Hands-Free Multimeter

June 4, 2017 by Bryan Cockfield 23 Comments

It seems like the multimeter is never easy to see during a project. Whether it’s troubleshooting a vehicle’s electrical system and awkwardly balancing the meter on some vacuum lines and the intake manifold, or installing a new solar panel and hoping the meter doesn’t fall on the ground while the leads are in both hands, it seems like there’s never a good way to see the meter while actually using it. Some meters have a small magnet and strap that can be used to hang them temporarily, but this will only get you so far.

[Alain Mauer]’s entry into the Hackaday Prize looks to solve this glaring problem. Using a heads-up Bluetooth display mounted to a pair of safety glasses, a multimeter can be connected to the device in order to display its information directly to its user. Based on his original idea which used a normal pair of prescription glasses as its foundation, [Alain]’s goal is to reduce safety hazards that might arise when using a multimeter in an awkward or dangerous manner that might not otherwise be possible.

The device uses an Arduino Pro Micro to connect to the multimeter and drive the display. [Alain] notes that the real challenge is with the optical system, however. Either way though, this would be a welcome addition to any lab, workspace, or electrician’s toolbox. Be sure to check out the video of it in action after the break.

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