Automatically Designing 3D Printers From E-Waste

July 20, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

No one wants to design consumer electronics that last longer than a few years. This trend is an ecological disaster, with millions of tons of computers, printers, fax machines and cell phones ending up in landfills. In these landfills, all the lead and chemicals used to extract minuscule amounts of gold plating leech into the environment. Turning it all around is monumental, but reusing some of this waste can help make a difference.

[Masterperson] and [Maaphoo] have been working on a way to turn those tons of e-waste into something useful. They’ve come up with a framework for turning e-waste into 3D printers. With a clever application of Python and FreeCAD Macros, this project can generate a model of a 3D printer using motors, shafts, and bearings taken from discarded 2D printers.

Right now a printer can be configured by adding the parts you have on hand to a configuration file, running a Python macro in FreeCAD, and waiting until the macro generates the parts to build a cartesian bot. This macro also spits out the files for the parts that need to be printed, and can interface with Plater to optimize the placement of these printed parts on an existing printer.

It’s a very cool project, but it’s not done yet: the team is looking for help to refine the printer designs and possibly growing more designs than a simple cartesian bot. Anything that is explicitly designed to pick the meat off of 2D printers is a great idea, and turning those into real 3D printers is the cherry on top.

Wood & Glue RepStrap Works Surprisingly Well

July 5, 2015 by Rich Bremer 7 Comments

Even with the cost of 3D Printers continually falling, entering the hobby still requires a significant investment. [Skeat] had some typical 3D Printer components available but didn’t have access to a printer for making the ever-so-common frame parts of typical RepRap designs.

[Skeat’s] plan was to cobble together a printer just good enough to print out parts for another, more robust one. The frame is made from wood, a very inexpensive and available material. The frame is not screwed together and doesn’t have any alignment tabs, it’s just hand cut pieces glued together. Each portion of the frame is laid out, aligned with a carpenter’s square and then glued together. This design and assembly method was intentional as [Skeat] didn’t have access to any precision tools. He stated that the only parts of the frame that had to be somewhat precise were the motor mount holes. The assembly process is well documented to aid anyone else looking to make something similar.

In addition to the wooden frame, all of the components are glued in place. That includes the bearings, rods, limit switches and even the Z axis motor! After seeing the photos of this printer, it would be easy to dismiss it as a poor performer. The below video shows that this printer’s print quality can keep up with any hobby level machine available. We wonder if [Skeat] is rethinking making another since this one works so well.

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Etching PCBs With A 3D Printer

June 29, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 59 Comments

There are dozens of circuit board printers out there that lay down traces of conductive ink and ask you to glue down components to a fragile circuit board. This is a far cry from the old way of making PCBs, but these printers are going gangbusters, cashing in on the recent popularity of hardware startups and rapid prototyping.

People who think deeply about a problem are few and far between, but lucky for us [Arvid] is one of them. He’s come up with a way of creating PCBs with any 3D printer and steel rod. The results are better than anything you could make with a circuit board printer, and the technique is very, very cheap.

[Arvid] is using the traditional method of etching away copper, just some ferric chloride and a bit of time. How he’s masking the copper that shouldn’t be etched away is a unique process we haven’t seen before. He’s simply covering a piece of copper clad board with permanent marker, and scribing the parts he wants to be etched with a sharp steel rod attached to a 3D printer.

The G code for the printer was generated by FlatCAM, a piece of software made specifically for cutting PCBs with a mill. [Arvid]’s technique works so well that spindles and mills aren’t needed; only a sufficiently sharp instrument to scrape away permanent marker.

Thanks [Hassi] for sending this one in.

MapleMaker 3D Printer Is As Printable As They Get

June 29, 2015 by Rich Bremer 27 Comments

The term RepRap is fairly common and gets thrown around too often when generally talking about DIY 3D Printers. We must remember that the intent of the RepRap project “…is about making self-replicating machines…” and of course “…making them freely available for the benefit of everyone…“.

[MiniMadRyan] has recently designed a printer that could be considered the embodiment of the RepRap philosophy. He’s calling it the MapleMaker Mini V2. An extremely high percentage of the parts required to build this printer are, in fact, printable themselves. The frame pieces are printed, all of which can be printed on the printer thanks to the 6x8x6 inches print volume. The overall design is aesthetically pleasing, resembling that of a Lulzbot Mini.

The MapleMaker Mini V2 is self-replicating. The other part of the RepRap goal is to be free to the community. The design files are available on YouMagine and the assembly manual is better than those provided by most commercial companies. So if you’re looking to build a printer, be sure to add this one to your short list!

Color Light Painting With A 3D Printer

June 26, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

Light painting, or taking a few RGB LEDs, a camera with a long exposure, and turning the world into Tron, has been around for a while. We haven’t seen many people using their household CNC machines for the same effect. [ekaggrat] is the exception. He’s already used a 3D printer to do some light painting, and now he’s doing it in color.

This build is an extension of an earlier project we saw that used a white LED to draw pictures within the build volume of a delta printer. Just like the last time, [ekaggrat] wired LEDs up to a RAMPS board and toggled pins with the M42 command. This build merely triples the complexity of the wiring; the RGB LED is wired to pins 4,5, and 6 of the controller board, and the shutter release button of his camera is wired up to pin 11 with an optoisolator.

The ability to blink out Gcode is one thing, getting his two-year-old daughter to stand still for 3D scanning is another thing entirely. With the data in hand, [ekaggrat] was able to run this model through a script that would generate a light painting of his daughter. You can grab the script for that on GitHub, or check out the video below.

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Delta 3D Printer Made From Unorthodox Parts

June 19, 2015 by Rich Bremer 5 Comments

Over here at Hackaday, we love stuff made from other (unrelated) stuff. Maybe it’s the ingenuity behind the build or the recycling of parts… or it could be both. Either way, it’s cool and a side benefit of re-using parts from the junk drawer is that it keeps the project cost down, maybe enough that the project wouldn’t even be feasible without the re-use of parts.

That brings us to the topic of this post, a Delta-style 3D Printer made from recycled parts not typically seen in such a machine. It was built by DIYer [hesamh] and is almost unrecognizable visually. The usual extruded aluminum or precision shaft frame has been replaced with 5 pieces of MDF, finger-jointed together at the seams. Attached to the 3 vertical MDF frame pieces are rail and carriage assemblies scavenged from Epson dot matrix prints saved from the scrap yard. The best part is that these rail/carriage assemblies already had stepper motors and belts installed!

The end effector is also unique among delta-style printers. This one is made from aluminum plate and provides a mount for the extruder. There is no need for a bowden tube setup when the extruder is mounted on the end effector, although the increase in mass may reduce the printer’s top speed. That’s fine by us as we’d rather have a good-looking slow print than a fast ball of spaghetti. Another scavenged stepper motor is used for the extruder. The accompanying belt pulley acts as a direct drive feed gear.

The print bed is a re-purposed flatbed scanner. The guts were removed and a heating element was placed under the glass. The bed heater is controlled separately by way of a household thermostat. An Arduino Leonardo and 4 stepper drivers replace the normally used Mega/RAMPS/Pololu combo. Overall, this is a cool build that shows what is possible with a little thought and resourcefulness. The only part used in this build that was actually made for use in a 3D Printer is the hotend!

Prevent Failed Prints With A Filament Speed Sensor

June 16, 2015 by Ethan Zonca 41 Comments

If you have used a 3D printer for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced a failed print caused by a clogged nozzle. If you’re not around to stop the print and the nozzle stays hot and full of filament for hours, the clog gets even worse. [Florian] set out to solve this issue with an encoder that measures filament speed, which acts as an early warning system for nozzle clogs.

[Florian] designed a small assembly with a wheel and encoder that measures filament movement. The filament passes under the encoder wheel before it’s fed into the 3D printer. The encoder is hooked up to an Arduino which measures the Gray code pulses as the encoder rotates, and the encoder count is streamed over the serial port to a computer.

When the filament slows down or stops due to a nozzle clog, the Python script plays a notification sound to let you know that you should check your nozzle and that your print might fail. Once [Florian] works out some of the kinks in his setup, it would be awesome if the script could stop the print when the nozzle fails. Have any other ideas on how to detect print failures? Let us know in the comments.