Building A 3D Printed Scanning Tunneling Microscope

September 30, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 12 Comments

YouTuber [MechnicalRedPanda] has recreated a DIY STM hack we covered about ten years ago, updating it to be primarily 3D-printed, using modern electronics, making it much more accessible to many folks. This simple STM setup utilises a piezoelectric actuator constructed by deliberately cutting a piezo speaker into four quadrants. With individual drive wires attached to the four quadrants. [MechPanda] (re)discovered that piezoelectric ceramic materials are not big fans of soldering heat. Still, in the absence of ultrasonic welding equipment, he did manage to get some wires to take to the surface using low-temperature solder paste.

As you can tell, you can only image conductive samples

A makeshift probe holder was glued on the rear side of the speaker actuator, which was intended to take a super sharp needle-like piece of tungsten wire. Putting the wire in tension and cutting at a sharp angle makes it possible with many attempts to get some usable points. Usable, in this instance, means sharp down the atomic level. The sample platform, actuator mount and all the connecting parts are 3D-printed with PA-CF. This is necessary to achieve enough mechanical stability with normal room temperature fluctuations. Three precision screws are used to level the two platforms in a typical kinematic mount structure, which looks like the only hard-to-source component. A geared stepper motor attached to the probe platform is set up to allow the probe to be carefully advanced towards the sample surface. Continue reading “Building A 3D Printed Scanning Tunneling Microscope” →

3D Printer Swaps Build Plates To Automate Print Jobs

September 30, 2024 by Donald Papp 17 Comments

[Andre Me] has long-standing interest in automating 3D print jobs, and his latest project is automating build plate changes on the Bambu A1 Mini.

Here’s how it works: each build plate gets a sort of “shoe” affixed to it, with which attachments on the printer itself physically interact when loading new plates and removing filled ones.

When a print job is finished, custom G-code causes an attachment on the printer to wedge itself under the build plate and peel it off until it is freed from the magnetic bed, after which the finished plate can be pushed towards the front. A stack of fresh build plates is behind the printer, and the printer slips a new one from the bottom when needed. Again, since the printer’s bed is magnetic, all one has to do is get the new plate to reliably line up and the magnetic attraction does the rest.

Some methods of automating print jobs rely on ejecting the finished parts and others swap the print beds. [Andre]’s is the latter type and we do really like how few moving parts are involved, although the resulting system has the drawback of requiring considerably more table space than just the printer itself. Still, it’s not at all a bad trade-off.

Watch it in action in the two videos embedded below. The first shows a time-lapse of loading and ejecting over 100 build plates in a row, and the second shows the whole system in action printing bowls in different colors. Continue reading “3D Printer Swaps Build Plates To Automate Print Jobs” →

VR Headset With Custom Face Fitting Gets Even More Custom

September 28, 2024 by Donald Papp 7 Comments

The Bigscreen Beyond is a small and lightweight VR headset that in part achieves its small size and weight by requiring custom fitting based on a facial scan. [Val’s Virtuals] managed to improve fitment even more by redesigning a facial interface and using a 3D scan of one’s own head to fine-tune the result even further. The new designs distribute weight more evenly while also providing an optional flip-up connection.

It may be true that only a minority of people own a Bigscreen Beyond headset, and even fewer of them are willing to DIY their own custom facial interface. But [Val]’s workflow and directions for using Blender to combine a 3D scan of one’s face with his redesigned parts to create a custom-fitted, foam-lined facial interface is good reading, and worth keeping in mind for anyone who designs wearables that could benefit from custom fitting. It’s all spelled out in the project’s documentation — look for the .txt file among the 3D models.

We’ve seen a variety of DIY approaches to VR hardware, from nearly scratch-built headsets to lens experiments, and one thing that’s clear is that better comfort is always an improvement. With newer iPhones able to do 3D scanning and 1:1 scale scanning in general becoming more accessible, we have a feeling we’re going to see more of this DIY approach to ultra-customization.

The Statial-b Open Source Adjustable Mouse

September 25, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 20 Comments

Many of us are very heavy computer users, and two items that can affect our comfort and, by extension, our health are the keyboard and the mouse. We’ve covered many ergonomic and customisable keyboards over the years, but we are not sure we’ve covered a fully adjustable mouse until now. Here’s [Charlie Pyott] with their second take on an adjustable mouse, the open source, statial-b.

[Charlie] goes into an extensive discussion of the design process in the video after the break, which is a fascinating glimpse into the methods used by a professional industrial designer. The statial concept breaks the contact surfaces of the mouse into fixed and moveable sections. The moveable sections are attached to the mouse core via a pair of ball joints connected with extendible arms, allowing the surfaces to be adjusted for both position and orientation. The design process starts with 3D scanning their ‘workhorse mouse,’ a Razer Deathadder Elite. This creates a reference volume within which the statial body should fit in its minimal configuration.

The design has a fixed central core, with each button (including the central scroller) separately adjustable. The side panel with a pair of thumb buttons is also moveable. Creating a model in Rhino 3D working with the grasshopper visual programming environment [Charlies] explored the surface constraints for the base, claw, finger and vertical grip styles common among mouse users. This model was then fed into Fusion 360 for the detailed design. After completing the design, it was passed back into Rhino 3D to add lattice effects to the panel. This helps reduce weight and lets the internal LEDs shine through. The design is intended for resin printing, so you could go wild with the visuals by missing custom resins if you were so inclined.

Continue reading “The Statial-b Open Source Adjustable Mouse” →

Create Custom Gridfinity Boxes Using Images Of Tools

September 14, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 3 Comments

We love it when a community grabs hold of an idea and runs wild with it despite obvious practicality issues. Gridfinity by YouTuber [Zach Freedman] is one of those concepts. For the unaware, this is a simple storage system standard, defining boxes to hold your things. These boxes can be stacked and held in place in anything from a desk drawer to hanging off the side of a 3D printer. [Georgs Lazdāns] is one such Gridfinity user who wanted to create tool-specific holders without leaving the sofa. To do so, they made a web application using node.js and OpenCV to extract outlines for tools (or anything else) when photographed on a blank sheet of paper.

The OpenCV stack assumes that the object to be profiled will be placed on a uniformly colored paper with all parts of its outline visible. The first part of the stack uses a bilateral filter to denoise the image whilst keeping edge details.

Next, the image is converted to greyscale, blurred, and run through an adaptive threshold. This converts the image to monochrome, again preserving edge details. Finally, the Canny algorithm pulls out the paper contour. The object outline can be given an accurate scale with the paper contour and paper size specified. The second part of the process works similarly to extract the object outline. The second contour should follow the object pretty accurately. If it doesn’t, it can be manually tweaked in the editor. Once a contour is captured, it can be used to modify a blank Gridfinity base in the model editor.

Continue reading “Create Custom Gridfinity Boxes Using Images Of Tools” →

Why Have Seven Segments When You Can Have 21?

September 10, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 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?” →

3D Print Yourself These Mini Workshop Tools

September 6, 2024 by Lewin Day 27 Comments

Kitting out a full workshop can be expensive, but if you’re only working on small things, it can also be overkill. Indeed, if your machining tends towards the miniature, consider building yourself a series of tiny machines like [KendinYap] did. In the video below, you can see the miniature electric sander, table saw, drill press, and cut-off saw put through their paces.

Just because the machines are small, doesn’t mean they’re not useful. In fact, they’re kind of great for doing smaller jobs without destroying what you’re working on. The tiny belt sander in particular appeals in this case, but the same applies to the drill press as well. [KendinYap] also shows off a tiny table and circular saw. The machines are straightforward in their design, relying largely on 3D printed components. They’re all powered by basic DC brushed motors which are enough to get the job done on the small scale.

They look particularly good if tiny scale model-making is your passion.

Continue reading “3D Print Yourself These Mini Workshop Tools” →