Soviet-Era Tank Gets The 3D Printed Treatment

July 18, 2016 by James Hobson 10 Comments

3D printers are celebrated for their capacity to replace missing or broken parts. How about an entire T-62 tank?

Now hold on a second — this is only a model replica. It is, however another expression of the myriad uses for 3D printers. Designed in Maya and requiring almost three weeks to print all 62 parts from about 70 meters of PLA filament. The assembly is not terribly involved, made easier by printing a few large sections such as the crew section and hull while the parts don’t get much smaller than the turret hatches. Nonetheless, he final product is about as true to life as you can get when designing the parts from scratch.

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Pokédex Case Keeps Your Phone Powered Up So You Can Catch ‘Em All

July 16, 2016 by James Hobson 17 Comments

The launch of Pokemon Go has unleashed the franchise upon the world once again but this time it’s encouraging users to get active and socialize in the great outdoors. To show off their dedication to the cause, [Npoole] 3D printed a Pokédex external battery and case to combat the game’s already legendary drain on their Galaxy S4’s resources.

Mimicking the first-generation Kanto design, [Npoole] 3D printed it in red ABS and added a small circuit with a red, yellow and green LED to complete the effect. Inside, a 18650 lithium cell provides the much-needed backup power via a micro B plug and is boosted to 5V with a LiPo charger/booster board. Despite a switch on the circuit, the battery slowly drains so that’s something to be corrected in a future version.

As you can see, there is still some room left over in the external bat–I mean–Pokédex, and [Npoole] intends to add another battery and a cooling fan to further improve the design. The result is a little bulky, but for new and diehard fans alike, a working Pokédex definitely worth it.

While that’s printing, if you’re looking to hack your way to the perfect Poké-ball throw, try out this lo-tech addition to your Pokémon trainer kit.

[via Sparkfun]

A Very Modern Turing Machine Build

July 12, 2016 by Elliot Williams 17 Comments

Mathematicians. If you let them use the concept of infinity, there’s almost nothing they won’t be able to prove. Case in point: the Turing machine. The idea is that with an infinite length of tape, one could build a thought-experiment machine with only a few instructions that should be able to compute anything that’s computable.

[Igor]’s Turing machine is one of the nicest we’ve ever seen built. The “tape” is significantly shorter than infinity, which limits the computations he can achieve, the use of 3D printing, electric contacts, and WS2812 RGB LEDs for the tape are profoundly satisfying.

A bit on the tape is portrayed as unused if the LED is off, zero if it is red, and one if it is green. Each station on the tape is indexed by a set of blue LEDs observed by the gantry of the writing head which uses a 3D printed finger and motor to change the state of each bit. Programs are stored on a home-built punch card, which gets extra geek points from us.

Watch it run through “busy beaver” (embedded below) and tell us that it’s not awesome, even if it is a couple of LEDs short of infinity.

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A Fountain Of Superhydrophobic Art

June 24, 2016 by James Hobson 29 Comments

Superhydrophobic coating finds a new application in art through [Arthur Carabott] in the form of a bizarre fountain.

A Master’s student in the Global Innovation Design course at the London Royal College of Art, [Carabott] achieved the effect by leaving parts of the laser-cut acrylic untouched by Rust-oleum’s NeverWet Multisurface coating. A 3d printed spigot mounted high above the surface imparts greater velocity to the impacting water so as it hits the acrylic the liquid forms into channels giving the impression of something surreal. Indeed — his design is inspired by the optical illusions of Japanese mathematician Kokichi Sugihara which attempt to realize the impossible artwork of M.C. Escher. The effect is worthy of a double take.

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A Robot In A Day

June 23, 2016 by James Hobson 5 Comments

While building a robot (nearly) from scratch isn’t easy, it needn’t be a lengthy process. Is it possible to build a bot in a single day? With some musical motivation (a 10 hour loop of the A-Team theme song), [Tyler Bletsch] answers with a resounding ‘yes’ in the shape of his little yellow robot that he built for a local robotics competition.

Designing and fabricating on the fly, [Bletsch] used Sketchup to design the chassis, and OpenSCAD to model the wheels while the former was being 3D printed. Anticipating some structural weakness, he designed another version that could bolt to wood if the original failed, but the addition of some metal support rods provided enough stability. Mouse pad material gave the wheels ample traction. An Arduino with the L298 control module receives input via an HC-06 Bluetooth board. Eight AA batteries provide 12V of power to two Nextrox mini 12V motors with an integrated voltmeter to measure battery life.

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Skateboard Hackers Trick On 3D Printed Wheels

June 22, 2016 by Adam Fabio 18 Comments

The team over at [Braille Skateboarding] is willing to ride just about anything. This week they’re testing out 3D printed skateboard wheels. We’re not just talking rolling around here, the [Braille] team takes their experiments out to the skate park and gives them to the locals to test out. Tail whips, jumps, ollies, and grinds were on the agenda. The skaters were a bit apprehensive, as this is the third time they’ve tested 3D printed wheels.

The first set shattered upon landing a jump. That set appears to have been made from PLA with about 10% infill. The second set were made from NinjaFlex, which had no shattering problems, but was so squishy that the wheels simply flattened under the weight of the riders. The third set, printed by [Nick Lindenmuth] work great. They have a bit of give, but don’t shatter. We’re guessing this set is either ABS or one of the more exotic filaments. It’s pretty amazing that 3D printers are capable of spitting out wheels that not only handle the load of rider, but the shock load of coming down from jumps and tricks.

Check out the video after the break. If you want to see more skateboard projects, check out this skateboarding themed Hacklet!

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Smartphone-based Robotic Rover Project Goes Open Source

May 17, 2016 by Donald Papp 4 Comments

[Aldric Négrier] wrote in to let us know that his DriveMyPhone project has been open sourced. The project is a part telepresence, part remote-controlled vehicle, part robotic rover concept on which he says “I spent more time […] than I should have.” He has shared not just the CAD files, but every detail including tips on assembly. He admits that maybe a robotic chassis for a smartphone might not seem like a particularly new idea today, but it was “an idea with more potential” back in 2010 when he first started.

The chassis is made to cradle a smartphone. Fire up your favorite videoconferencing software and you have a way to see where you’re going as well as hear (and speak to) your surroundings. Bluetooth communications between the phone and the chassis provides wireless control. That being said, this unit is clearly designed to be able to deal with far more challenging terrain than the average office environment, and has been designed to not only be attractive, but to be as accessible and open to repurposing and modification as possible.

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