3d printed

598 Articles

Xbox Controller Gets Snap On Joystick From Clever 3D-Printed Design

September 25, 2020 by 7 Comments
Ball and socket linkages make for smooth operation.

People making DIY controls to enhance flight simulators is a vibrant niche of engineering and hackery, and it sure looks like Microsoft Flight Simulator is doing its part to keep the scene lively. [Akaki Kuumeri]’s latest project turns an Xbox One gamepad into a throttle-and-stick combo that consists entirely of 3D printed parts that snap together without a screw in sight. Bummed out by sold-out joysticks, or just curious? The slick-looking HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) assembly is only a 3D printer and an afternoon away. There’s even a provision to add elastic to increase spring tension if desired.

The design looks great, and the linkages in particular look very well thought-out. Ball and socket joints smoothly transfer motion from one joystick to the other, and [Akaki] says the linkages accurately transmit motion with very little slop.

There is a video to go with the design (YouTube link, embedded below) and it may seem like it’s wrapping up near the 9 minute mark, but do not stop watching because that’s when [Akaki] begins to go into hacker-salient details about of how he designed the device and what kinds of issues he ran into while doing so. For example, he says Fusion 360 doesn’t simulate ball and socket joints well, so he had to resort to printing a bunch of prototypes to iterate until he found the right ones. Also, the cradle that holds the Xbox controller was far more difficult to design than expected, because while Valve might provide accurate CAD models of their controllers, there was no such resource for the Xbox ones. You can watch the whole video, embedded below.

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3D-Printed Flight Controls Use Magnets For Enhanced Flight Simulator 2020 Experience

September 3, 2020 by 23 Comments

We have seen quite a few DIY joystick designs that use Hall effect sensors, but [Akaki Kuumeri]’s controller designs (YouTube video, embedded below) really make the most of 3D printing to avoid the need for any other type of fabrication. He’s been busy using them to enhance his Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 experience, and shares not just his joystick design, but makes it a three-pack with designs for throttle and pedals as well.

Hall effect sensors output a voltage that varies in proportion to the presence of a magnetic field, which is typically provided by a nearby magnet. By mounting sensors and magnets in a way that varies the distance between them depending on how a control is moved, position can be sensed and communicated to a host computer.

In [Akaki]’s case, that communication is done with an Arduino Pro Micro (with ATmega32U4) whose built-in USB support allows it to be configured and recognized as a USB input device. The rest is just tweaking the physical layouts and getting spring or elastic tension right. You can see it all work in the video below.

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A 3D Printed Paint Mixer

August 31, 2020 by 9 Comments

To get the perfect mix for your paint, you need a good shake that is as random as possible. [Mark Rhodes] wanted to automate the process of mixing paint, so he built a 3D printed shaker to thoroughly shake small paint bottles. Using only a single motor, it shakes the bottle along three axes of rotation and one axis of translation.

A cylindrical container is attached to a U-shaped bracket on each end, which in turn is attached to a rotating shaft. Only one of these shafts are powered, the other is effectively an idler. When turned on, it rotates the cylinder partially around the pitch and yaw axis, 360 degrees around the roll axis, and reciprocates it back and forth. The design appears to be based on an industrial mixer known as a “Turbula“. Another interesting feature is how it holds the paint bottle in the cylinder. Several bands are stretched along the inside of the cylinder, and by rotating one of the rings at the end, it creates an hourglass-shaped web that can tightly hold the paint bottle.

The mechanism is mounted on a 3d printed frame that can be quickly clamped to a table. The Twitter post embedded below is a preview for a video [Mark] is working for his Youtube channel, along with which he will also release the 3D files.

Mixing machines come in all shapes and sizes, and we’ve seen a number of 3D printed versions, including a static mixer and a magnetic stirrer.

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100% Printed Flashlight: Conductive Filament And Melted-in Leads

August 31, 2020 by 28 Comments

Conductive filament isn’t an ideal electrical conductor, but it’s a 3D-printable one and that’s what makes [Hercemer]’s 3D-printed flashlight using conductive filament work. Every part of the flashlight is printed except for the 9 volt battery and LEDs. Electrically speaking, the flashlight is a small number of LEDs connected in parallel to the terminals of the battery, and turning it on or off is done by twisting or loosening a cap to make or break the connection.

The main part of the build is a 3D-printed conductive cylinder surrounded by a printed conductive ring with an insulator between them. This disk- or pad-shaped assembly forms not only the electrical connection between the LEDs and battery terminals, but also physically holds the LEDs. To attach them, [Hercemer] simply melts them right in. He uses a soldering iron to heat up the leads, and presses them into the 3D-printed conductive block while hot. The 9 V battery’s terminals contact the bottom when the end cap is twisted, and when they touch the conductive assembly the flashlight turns on.

Anticipating everyone’s curiosity, [Hercemer] measured the resistance of his conductive block and measured roughly 350 ohms when printed at 90% infill; lower infills result in more resistance. You can see a video of the assembly and watch the flashlight in action in the video, embedded below.

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Monitor Not VESA-Compliant? It Is Now!

August 23, 2020 by 37 Comments

Some monitors lack the holes on the back that make them VESA-compliant, so mounting them on a monitor arm can be a non-starter. To handle this, [Patrick Hallek] designed and 3D printed these adapter arms to make flat monitors mount to VESA hardware whether they want to or not.

How does it work? When a monitor can’t attach directly to a VESA mount, this assembly attaches to the mount instead. The three arms extend around the edge of the monitor to grip it from the bottom and top. Some hex-head M5 bolts and nuts are all that are required to assemble the parts, and the top arm is adjustable to accommodate different sizes of monitor. As long as the screen size is between 17 and 27 inches diagonal, and the monitor thickness falls between 30 mm and 75 mm, it should fit.

It’s a smart design that leverages one of the strengths of 3D printing: that of creating specialized adapters or fixtures that would be troublesome to make by hand. That is not to say that there’s no other way to make exactly what one wants when it comes to mounting monitors: check out this triple-monitor setup using some common metal struts, no welding required.

[via reddit]

Automating Mini Blinds The Rental-Friendly Way

August 19, 2020 by 7 Comments

[Chris Mullins] wanted to automate opening and closing the slats of mini blinds in his apartment, and came up with a system to do it as a fun project. Manually opening and closing the slats means twisting a rod. Seems straightforward to automate that, but as usual when having to work around something that already exists, making no permanent alterations, complications arose.

The blinds are only 1 inch wide, leaving little room for mounting any sort of hardware. While there is a lot of prior art when it comes to automating blinds, nothing he found actually fit the situation [Chris] had, so he rolled his own.

The rod that is normally twisted to control the blinds is removed, and the shaft of a stepper motor takes its place. [Chris]’ mounting solution is made to fit blinds with narrow 1 inch tracks (existing projects he found relied on 2 inch tracks) and the 3D printed mount is fully adjustable, so the 28BYJ stepper motor can be moved into exactly the right position. Speaking of the stepper motor, the 28BYJ motor is unipolar but the A4988 driver he wanted to use is for bipolar steppers only. Luckily, cutting a trace on the motor’s PCB is all it takes to turn a unipolar motor into bipolar.

To drive the motor and provide wireless functionality, the whole thing works with a Wemos D1 ESP8266, an A4988 stepper driver, and a buck converter. While it worked fine as a one-off on a perfboard, [Chris] used the project as an opportunity to learn how to make a PCB using KiCad; the PCB project is here on GitHub and the ESP8266 runs the ESPHome firmware. Be sure to check out the project page on his blog for all the details; [Chris] links to all the resources there, and covers everything from a bill of materials to walking through configuration of ESPHome with integration into the open-source Home Assistant project.

Looking to control natural light but blinds aren’t your thing? Maybe consider automated curtains.

Robotic Arm Sports Industrial Design, 3D-Printed Cycloidal Gears

August 14, 2020 by 6 Comments

[Petar Crnjak]’s Faze4 is a open source robotic arm with 3D printable parts, inspired in part by the design of industrial robot arms. In particular, [Petar] aimed to hide wiring and cables inside the arm as much as possible, and the results look great! Just watch it move in the video below.

Cycloidal gearboxes have been showing up in robotic arm projects more and more, and Faze4 makes good use of them. Why cycloidal gears? They are readily 3D printed and offer low backlash, which makes them attractive for robotic applications. There’s no need to design cycloidal gears from scratch, either. [Petar] found this cycloidal gear generator in OnShape extremely useful when designing Faze4.

The project’s GitHub repository has all the design files, as well as some video demonstrations and a link to assembly documentation for anyone who would like to make their own. Watch Faze4 go through some test movements in the video embedded below.

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