Gimmick Sunglasses Become Easy Custom Helmet Visor

February 5, 2026 by Donald Papp 5 Comments

[GizmoThrill] shows off a design for an absolutely gorgeous, high-fidelity replica of the main character’s helmet from the video game Satisfactory. But the best part is the technique used to create the visor: just design around a cheap set of full-face “sunglasses” to completely avoid having to mold your own custom faceplate.

One of the most challenging parts of any custom helmet build is how to make a high-quality visor or faceplate. Most folks heat up a sheet of plastic and form it carefully around a mold, but [GizmoThrill] approached the problem from the other direction. After spotting a full-face sun visor online, they decided to design the helmet around the readily-accessible visor instead of the other way around.

The first thing to do with the visor is cover it with painter’s tape and 3D scan it. Once that’s done, the 3D model of the visor allows the rest of the helmet to be designed around it. In the case of the Satisfactory helmet, the design of the visor is a perfect match for the game’s helmet, but one could easily be designing their own custom headgear with this technique.

With the helmet 3D printed, [GizmoThrill] heads to the bandsaw to cut away any excess from the visor, and secure it in place. That’s all there is to it! Sure, you don’t have full control over the visor’s actual shape, but it sure beats the tons and tons of sanding involved otherwise.

There’s a video tour of the whole process that shows off a number of other design features we really like. For example, metal mesh in the cheek areas and in front of the mouth means a fan can circulate air easily, so the one doesn’t fog up the inside of the visor with one’s very first breath. The mesh itself is concealed with some greebles mounted on top. You can see all those details up close in the video, embedded just below.

The helmet design is thanks to [Punished Props] and we’ve seen their work before. This trick for turning affordable and somewhat gimmicky sunglasses into something truly time-saving is definitely worth keeping in mind.

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Print-in-Place Gripper Does It With A Single Motor

February 2, 2026 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

[XYZAiden]’s concept for a flexible robotic gripper might be a few years old, but if anything it’s even more accessible now than when he first prototyped it. It uses only a single motor and requires no complex mechanical assembly, and nowadays 3D printing with flexible filament has only gotten easier and more reliable.

The four-armed gripper you see here prints as a single piece, and is cable-driven with a single metal-geared servo powering the assembly. Each arm has a nylon string threaded through it so when the servo turns, it pulls each string which in turn makes each arm curl inward, closing the grip. Because of the way the gripper is made, releasing only requires relaxing the cables; an arm’s natural state is to fall open.

The main downside is that the servo and cables are working at a mechanical disadvantage, so the grip won’t be particularly strong. But for lightweight, irregular objects, this could be a feature rather than a bug.

The biggest advantage is that it’s extremely low-cost, and simple to both build and use. If one has access to a 3D printer and can make a servo rotate, raiding a junk bin could probably yield everything else.

DIY robotic gripper designs come in all sorts of variations. For example, this “jamming” bean-bag style gripper does an amazing, high-strength job of latching onto irregular objects without squashing them in the process. And here’s one built around grippy measuring tape, capable of surprising dexterity.

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Need A Curved Plastic Mesh? Print Flat, Curve Later

January 30, 2026 by Donald Papp 10 Comments

Need a plastic mesh in a custom pattern? 3D print it, no problem. But what if one needs a curved plastic mesh? That’s considerably harder to 3D print, but [Uncle Jessy]’s figured out a simple approach: 3D print the mesh flat, then break out a mold and a heat gun.

Of course, there are a few gotchas, but [Uncle Jessy] shares his tips for getting the most reliable results. The important part is to design and 3D print a mold that represents the final desired shape. Then print the mesh, and fit it into a frame. Heat things up with a heat gun, and press into the mold to deform the mesh while it’s still soft. It’s much easier seen than explained, so take a few moments to check out the video, embedded below the page break.

Because the plastic in a mesh is so thin, [Uncle Jessy] says to keep the heat low and slow. The goal is to have the mesh stretch and deform, not melt.

Speaking of heat, when thermoforming, one usually needs to make the mold out of heat-resistant material. But the thermal mass of a mesh is so small that it really doesn’t matter much — there just isn’t enough heat trapped in the mesh to really damage a mold. As long as the mold is reasonably dense, there’s no need to go overboard with making it heat resistant.

The whole process takes a little practice, but since the meshes are so fast to print and use so little plastic it’s easy to experiment a little.

As for the meshes themselves, a simple way to print a mesh is just to print a disc with no top or bottom layers, only infill. Set the infill pattern to honeycomb, for example, for an easy hexagon mesh. We’ve seen a variant of this “exposed infill” idea used to create a desiccant container, and using it to print a mesh pattern easily is a neat trick, too.

Why might one need to reshape a mesh into a curve? Perhaps to custom-fit a costume piece, or make custom eye inserts for masks, as shown here. In any case, it’s a good technique to keep in the back of one’s mind, and if you put it to good use, drop us a tip!

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Do Expensive Filaments Make 3D Printed Wrenches Better?

January 30, 2026 by Donald Papp 45 Comments

What filament is strongest? The real answer is “it depends”, but sometimes you have a simple question and you just want a simple answer. Like, which material makes the best 3D printed wrench? [My Tech Fun] printed a bunch of options to find out — including some expensive filaments — and got some interesting insights in the process.

His setup is simple: he printed a bunch of 13 mm open-end wrenches, and tested each one to failure by cranking on a clamped digital torque meter until the wrench failed by breaking, or skipping.

[My Tech Fun] tested a total of eighteen filaments, from regular basic PLA, PETG, ABS and ASA, and a variety of carbon fiber-infused filaments including PPA-CF. TPU is included for fun, and there’s also a wrench printed with continuous carbon fiber, which requires a special printer. More on that in a moment. First, let’s get to the results!

Unsurprisingly, TPU fared the worst at 0.8 nM which is roughly “unscrewing the cap of a water bottle” territory. Top performers included the wrench printed with continuous carbon fiber reinforcement (failing at 3.7 nM) and a couple printed in expensive PPA-CF (high-temperature nylon filament with carbon fiber) topped the list at 4.3 nM. Everything else landed somewhere in between, with plain PLA surprisingly outperforming some CF blends.

The continuous carbon fiber wrench was printed on a FibreSeeker printer, which reinforces a print with solid fibers embedded into the plastic instead of chopped particles, and such prints are noticeably more resistant to bending. Check out our earlier coverage for a closer look at what the FibreSeeker does.

This is a good time to mention that the wrench 3D model used is not at all optimized for best results with 3D printing. But that’s okay; this is really about the filaments, not the wrench.

The wrench model is just a way to test things in a familiar and highly visual, relatable way. You can see each one in action in the video below, and seeing [My Tech Fun] turn the wrenches gives a very good idea of just how much force is involved, with a relatable display of just how strong the different filaments are.

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Lead Acid Battery Upgraded To Lithium Iron Phosphate

January 23, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 14 Comments

Lithium batteries have taken over as the primary battery chemistry from applications ranging from consumer electronics to electric vehicles and all kinds of other things in between. But the standard lithium ion battery has a few downsides, namely issues operating at temperature extremes. Lead acid solves some of these problems but has much lower energy density, and if you want to split the difference with your own battery you’ll need to build your own lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) pack.

[Well Done Tips] is building this specific type of battery because the lead acid battery in his electric ATV is on the decline. He’s using cylindrical cells that resemble an 18650 battery but are much larger. Beyond the size, though, many of the design principles from building 18650 battery packs are similar, with the exception that these have screw terminals so that bus bars can be easily attached and don’t require spot welding.

With the pack assembled using 3D printed parts, a battery management system is installed with the balance wires cleverly routed through the prints and attached to the bus bars. The only problem [Well Done Tips] had was not realizing that LiFePO4 batteries’ voltages settle a bit after being fully charged, which meant that he didn’t properly calculate the final voltage of his pack and had to add a cell, bringing his original 15S1P battery up to 16S1P and the correct 54V at full charge.

LiFePO4 has a few other upsides compared to lithium ion as well, including that it delivers almost full power until it’s at about 20% charge. It’s not quite as energy dense but compared to the lead-acid battery he was using is a huge improvement, and is one of the reasons we’ve seen them taking over various other EV conversions as well.

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Flux And Solder Paste Dispenser Looks Good While Doing It

January 19, 2026 by Donald Papp 10 Comments

Syringes are pretty ergonomic, but when manually dispensing flux and solder paste it doesn’t take long before one wants a better way. [Elektroarzt]’s flux and solder paste dispenser design uses 3D-printed parts and minimal hardware (mostly M3x20 screws, and an optional spring) to improve handling and control.

The operating principle is very similar to how a hot glue gun feeds a stick of glue.

How does it work? The ratcheting lever mechanism is similar to that of a hot glue gun, where an arm slips into notches in a rod when pressed down, driving it forward and never backward. In the process, a larger lever movement is translated into a shorter plunger travel, enhancing control.

The types of syringes this tool is meant to be used with have a plunger tip or piston (the rubber stopper-looking part, in contact with the liquid) inside the loaded syringe, but no plunger shaft attached to it. This is common with syringes meant to be loaded into tools or machines, and [Elektroarzt]’s tool can be used with any such syringe in a 10 cc size.

It’s an attractive design, and we like the way syringes top-load as well as the way the tool is made to lay flat on a tabletop, with the lever pointed up.

Want truly fine-grained control over your extrusions? Then check out this dispenser which really lets one dial in small amounts. You can also go motorized, and let a small PCB and stepper motor do the work.

EnderSpark: Convert Your Broken Creality FDM Printer Into An EDM Machine!

January 11, 2026 by Dave Rowntree 10 Comments

EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) is one of those specialised manufacturing processes that are traditionally expensive and therefore somewhat underrepresented in the DIY and hacker scenes. It’s with great delight that we present EnderSpark, a solution to not one but two problems. The first problem is how to perform CNC operations on hard-to-machine materials such as hardened metals (without breaking the bank). The second problem is what to do with all those broken and forgotten previous-generation Creality Ender 3D printers we know you have stashed away.

To be honest, there isn’t much to a cheap 3D printer, and once you ditch the bed and extruder assembly, you aren’t left with a lot. Anyway, the first job was to add a 51:1 reduction gearbox between the NEMA 17 motors and the drive pullies, giving the much-needed boost to positional accuracy. Next, the X and Y axes were beefed up with a pair of inexpensive MGN12H linear rails to help them cope with the weight of the water bath.

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