Camera Slider Uses Repositionable Rail To Do Rotational Moves

December 23, 2024 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

You can buy motorized camera sliders off-the-shelf, but they’re pretty costly. Alternatively, you can make one yourself, and it’s not even that hard if you’re kitted out with a 3D printer. [Creative 3D Printing] did just that with a nifty design that adds rotation into the mix. Check it out in the video below.

Why should a camera get all the fun? Try your phone.

The basic slider is built out of 3D-printed components and some good old aluminum extrusion. A small 12-volt motor trucks the camera cart back and forth using a leadscrew. It’s torquey enough and slow enough that there isn’t much need for more advanced control—the motor just does the job. There’s also a limit switch set up to trigger a neat auto-reverse function.

The neat part, though, is the rotational mechanism. A smooth steel rod is attached to the slider’s housing, which can be set up in a straight line or aligned diagonally if desired. In the latter case, it rotates the mounting on the camera cart via a crank, panning the camera as it moves along the slider’s trajectory.

It’s a mechanically sophisticated design and quite unlike most of the camera sliders we feature around these parts.

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Old 3D Printer Parts Repurposed Into DIY Camera Slider

December 22, 2024 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

What do you do with an old 3D printer? They’re full of interesting components, after all, from switches and motors to lovely smooth rails. [Mukesh Sankhla] had a great idea—why not repurpose the components into a motorized camera slider?

The heart of the slider is the 4020 V-slot aluminum profile. It’s upon this that the camera carriage rides, running on rubber rollers to keep things smooth. A stepper motor and belt are then used to move the slider at a constant speed up or down the rail while the camera gets the necessary shot. The build relies almost entirely on salvaged components, save for an ESP32, OLED screen, and a few buttons to act as the control interface. There are also the TMC2208 stepper motor drivers, of course, but they came from the salvaged Ender 3 unit as well.

This is a classic project. Many old 3D printers have pretty much the perfect set of parts to build a camera slider, making this build a no-brainer. Indeed, others have tread the same path. There are plenty of other potential uses around the lab or for soldering.

Meanwhile, the proof is in the pudding. Scope the slider’s performance in the video below.

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3D-Printed Boat Feeds The Fishes

December 16, 2024 by Lewin Day No comments

In most natural environments, fish are able to feed themselves. However, if you wanted to help them out with some extra food, you could always build a 3D-printed boat to do the job for you, as [gokux] did.

The concept is simple enough—it’s a small radio-controlled boat that gets around the water with the aid of two paddle wheels. Driven together, the paddle wheels provide thrust, and driven in opposite directions, they provide steering. A SeeedStudio XIAO ESP32 is the brains of the operation. It listens into commands from the controller and runs the paddle drive motors with the aid of a DRV8833 motor driver module. The custom radio controller is it itself running on another ESP32, and [gokux] built it with a nice industrial style joystick which looks very satisfying to use. The two ESP32s use their onboard wireless hardware to communicate, which keeps things nicely integrated. The boat is able to putter around on the water’s surface, while using a servo-driven to deliver small doses of food when desired.

It’s a neat build, and shows just what you can whip up when you put your 3D printer to good use. If you’d like to build a bigger plastic watercraft, though, you can do that too. Video after the break.

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3D Printer Eliminates The Printer Bed

December 10, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 28 Comments

Anyone who has operated a 3D printer before, especially those new to using these specialized tools, has likely had problems with the print bed. The bed might not always be the correct temperature leading to problems with adhesion of the print, it could be uncalibrated or dirty or cause any number of other issues that ultimately lead to a failed print. Most of us work these problems out through trial and error and eventually get settled in, but this novel 3D printer instead removes the bed itself and prints on whatever surface happens to be nearby.

The printer is the product of [Daniel Campos Zamora] at the University of Washington and is called MobiPrint. It uses a fairly standard, commercially available 3D printer head but attaches it to the base of a modified robotic vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is modified with open-source software that allows it to map its environment without the need for the manufacturer’s cloud services, which in turn lets the 3D printer print on whichever surface the robot finds in its travels. The goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate printer bed problems; a robot with this capability could have many more applications in the realm of accessibility or even, in the future, printing while on the move.

There were a few surprising discoveries along the way which were mentioned in an IEEE Spectrum article, as [Campos Zamora] found while testing various household surfaces that carpet is surprisingly good at adhering to these prints and almost can’t be unstuck from the prints made on it. There are a few other 3D printers out there that we’ve seen that are incredibly mobile, but none that allow interacting with their environment in quite this way.

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Do 3D Printers Dream Of LEGO Sheep?

December 9, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 21 Comments

Imagine the power to clone your favorite LEGO piece—not just any piece, but let’s say, one that costs €50 second-hand. [Balazs] from RacingBrick posed this exact question: can a 3D scanner recreate LEGO pieces at home? Armed with Creality’s CR-Scan Otter, he set out to duplicate a humble DUPLO sheep and, of course, tackle the holy grail of LEGO collectibles: the rare LEGO goat.

The CR-Scan Otter is a neat gadget for hobbyists, capable of capturing objects as small as a LEGO piece. While the scanner proved adept with larger, blocky pieces, reflective LEGO plastic posed challenges, requiring multiple scans for detailed accuracy. With clever use of 3D printed tracking points, even the elusive goat came to life—albeit with imperfections. The process highlighted both the potential and the limitations of replicating tiny, complex shapes. From multi-colored DUPLO sheep to metallic green dinosaur jaws, [Balazs]’s experiments show how scanners can fuel customization for non-commercial purposes.

For those itching to enhance or replace their builds, this project is inspiring but practical advice remains: cloning LEGO pieces with a scanner is fun but far from plug-and-play. Check out [Balazs]’s exploration below for the full geeky details and inspiration.

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Open Source, Forced Innovation, And Making Good Products

November 23, 2024 by Elliot Williams 46 Comments

The open-source hardware business landscape is no doubt a tough one, but is it actually tougher than for closed-source hardware? That question has been on our minds since the announcement that the latest 3D printer design from former open-source hardware stalwarts Prusa Research seems like it’s not going to come with design files.

Ironically, the new Core One is exactly the printer that enthusiasts have been begging Prusa to make for the last five years or more. Since seeing hacker printers like the Voron and even crazy machines like The 100 whip out prints at incredible speed, the decade-old fundamental design of Prusa’s i3 series looks like a slow and dated, if reliable, workhorse. “Bed slinger” has become a bit of a pejorative for this printer architecture in some parts of the 3DP community. So it’s sweet to see Prusa come out with the printer that everyone wants them to make, only it comes with the bitter pill of their first truly closed-source design.

Is the act of not sharing the design files going to save them? Is it even going to matter? We would argue that it’s entirely irrelevant. We don’t have a Core One in our hands, but we can’t imagine that there is anything super secret going on inside that couldn’t be reverse engineered by any other 3DP company within a week or so. If anything, they’re playing catch up with other similar designs. So why not play to one of their greatest strengths – the engaged crowd of hackers who would most benefit from having the design files?

Of course, Prusa’s decision to not release the design files doesn’t mean that they’re turning their backs on the community. They are also going to offer an upgrade package to turn your current i3 MK4 printer into the new Core One, which is about as hacker-friendly a move as is possible. They still offer kit versions of the printers at a discount, and they continue to support their open-source slicer software.

But this one aspect, the move away from radical openness, still strikes us as bittersweet. We don’t have access to their books, of course, but we can’t imagine that not providing the design files gains them much, and it will certainly damage them a little in the eyes of their most devoted fans. We hope the Core One does well, but we also hope that people don’t draw the wrong lesson from this – that it does well because it went closed source. If we could run the experiment both ways, we’d put our money on it doing even better if they released the design files.

[James] and his Lemontron portable 3D printer

If Life Gives You Lemons, Build This Lemontron

November 20, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 11 Comments

What if your 3D printer could fit in a box of filament but still rival the build plate size of heavyweights? Enter the Lemontron, a free and open source portable printer making waves in the maker community for its compact form factor and budget-friendly price. Watch [James]’ video on his build story here. Built around the Positron drive—a unique mechanism introduced by [Kralyn] in 2022—the Lemontron is the latest evolution of this innovative design. Although Kralyn mysteriously disappeared, their work inspired other projects like the Positron JourneyMaker and this Lemontron.

The Lemontron started as a unibody chassis mod for the JourneyMaker but grew into a complete redesign, cutting costs in half without sacrificing performance. By eliminating expensive CNC parts, it’s entirely made from off-the-shelf components, bringing the build cost to just $413. Compare that to $800 for the JourneyMaker and $699 for the Positron v3.2 kit.

Recent video updates show the Lemontron in action, printing impressively large and complex models. It tackled a marble run with 80-degree unsupported overhangs and a ‘comically large’ Benchy, proving its capability. Its compact design, paired with robust performance, is an exciting alternative for tinkerers seeking quality on a budget.

The Lemontron is in its final development stages, with frequent updates dropping on its YouTube channel. If you’re in the market for a more “traditional” mini-printer, check out this cool suitcase model from 2014.

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