The Hackaday Prize: Thinking Really, Really Big

May 7, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 68 Comments

Dome

In case you’ve been living under a rock for a few weeks, we’re giving away a trip to space for the best, most grandiose connected hardware project. [coxrandy], a.k.a. [Phillip Cox] realized the best way to build something awesome was to think big, and his plan for building a 1km dome (yes, 1000 meters) is the most ambitious project we’ve ever seen.

The BuckyBot, as [Phil] is calling his build, relies on the ideas of the great [Buckmister Fuller] and his idea to build a huge geodesic dome covering all midtown Manhattan. [Fuller] didn’t have the resources to build a structure this large in the 1950s, and to be honest, we don’t have the resources to build it now. It would be a ludicrous effort to build something like this one beam at a time, and [Phil] concludes that to build something this big, we need to think small.

Instead of thousand ton cranes and several thousand vehicles trucking in building supplies, [Phil]’s idea uses small “BuckyBots” – a combination 3D printer and robot – that builds one structural cell of a giant dome at a time. These BuckyBots climb around the structure, build the internal and support structure, slowly climbing to the skies on their fractal-inspired creation.

The Hackaday Prize contest will end far before [Phil]’s BuckyBots will have the ability to build a kilometer-wide dome, so the current plans are to modify his RepRap Mendel to crawl. Once that’s done, he’ll have his newly built BuckyBot build a 2 meter hemisphere in his garage. From there, construction moves to the back yard where a 10 meter dome will be built.

Even if this project never makes it past the planning stages, it’s an awesome example of thinking big, something you’re going to need if you’re trying to win a trip to space.

The Hacklet #2

April 30, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 1 Comment

A new edition of The Hacklet is now available It covers some of our favorite stuff going on in the Hackaday Projects community.

In this edition, we round up a few hacks involving cars. There’s Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, vehicle telematics, and tools to hack into your car’s CAN bus. If you’ve ever wanted to clear that pesky check engine light without paying the dealer, or unlock your car with a smart watch, these are worth a look.

Next up are a bunch of LED hacks. This starts with a DIY theater light, then looks at a portable DJ booth, finishing off with our Evil Overlords’ own LED visualization platform.

Finally, we check out a new 3D printer design. This one uses polar coordinates instead of the Cartesian coordinate system that most printers use. This gives it the unique ability to print with multiple extruders at the same time.

Once again, let us know what you think of this edition in the comments. Our goal is to keep you entertained with some of the coolest hacks on the site.

Awww Shoot! My Spool Doesn’t Fit My Holder

April 17, 2014 by Rich Bremer 38 Comments

spoolholder-main

The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Filament spools certainly do not deviate far from this sarcastic saying. So what are we 3D Printer folks to do? Here are a couple completely different DIY options:

[Mark] made a spool holder that can accept 2 different width spools. This design uses skate bearings to support the spool on two points at each end. There are 3 sets of bearing blocks to accommodate the 2 different width spools. When either size spool is installed, one of the bearing block sets goes unused.

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A 3D Printed Cryptex

April 15, 2014 by Marsh 9 Comments

Once you’ve dialed in your 3D printer calibration settings, you enter the phase of printer ownership where you’re eager to show off what you can make, and you’re sure to impress with [pjensen’s] 3d printed cryptex spinning around in your hands.

If you’re a regular reader of our 3D Printering column, then the behind-the-scenes screengrabs should look familiar: [pjensen] used Autodesk Inventor to sculpt the shapes, staring with the cryptex’s individual rings. After embossing the alphabet across each ring, [pjensen] adds slots into the inner loops for pins to slide through. An outer chamber holds the rings in place and prohibits access to the interior chamber, which is held in place on both sides by an end cap.

Lining up the rings to spell the correct word allows the inner chamber to slide free of the whole assembly, revealing whatever goodies may lie inside. You can follow [pjensen’s] step-by-step guide to build your own cryptex, or just download his model and start printing.

Resetting DRM On 3D Printer Filament

April 10, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 94 Comments

The Da Vinci 3D printer is, without a doubt, the future of printing plastic objects at home. It’s small, looks good on a desk, is fairly cheap, and most importantly for printer manufacturers, uses chipped filament cartridges that can’t be refilled.

[Oliver] over at Voltivo was trying to test their new printer filament with a Da Vinci and ran head-on into this problem of chipped filament. Digging around inside the filament cartridge, he found a measly 300 grams of filament and a small PCB with a Microchip 11LC010 EEPROM. This one kilobyte EEPROM contains all the data about what’s in the filament cartridge, including the length of filament remaining.

After dumping the EEPROM with an Arduino and looking at the hex file, [Oliver] discovered the amount of filament remaining was held in a single two-byte value. Resetting this value to 0xFFFF restores the filament counter to its virgin state, allowing him to refill the filament. A good thing, too; the cartridge filament is about twice as expensive as what we would normally buy.

Building A Quadcopter With A CNC Mill And A 3D Printer

April 9, 2014 by Nick Conn 17 Comments

Quadcopter

Quadcopters are a ton of fun to play with, and even more fun to build. [Vegard] wrote in to tell us about his amazing custom DIY quadcopter frame that uses a commercial flight control system.

Building a quadcopter is the perfect project to embark upon if you want to test out your new CNC mill and 3D printer. The mechanical systems are fairly simple, yet result in something unbelievably rewarding. With a total build time of 30 hours (including Sketchup modeling), the project is very manageable for weekend hackers. [Vegard’s] post includes his build log as well as some hard learned lessons. There are also tons of pictures of the build. Be sure to read to read the end of the post, [Vegard] discusses why to “never trust a quadcopter” and other very useful information. See it in action after the break.

While the project was a great success, it sadly only had about 25 hours of flight-time before a fatal bird-strike resulted in quite a bit of damage. Have any of your quadcopters had a tragic run-in with another flying object? Let us know in the comments.

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Dispensing Solder Paste With A 3D Printer

April 2, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

There’s a strange middle ground in PCB production when it comes to making a few boards. Dispensing solder paste onto one board is easy enough with a syringe or toothpick, but when pasting up even a handful of boards, this method gets tiresome. Solder paste stencils speed up the process when you’re doing dozens or hundreds of boards, but making a stencil for just a few boards is a waste. The solution for this strange middle ground is, of course, to retrofit a 3D printer to dispense solder paste.

This project was a collaboration between [Jake] and [hzeller] to transform KiCAD files to G Code for dispensing solder paste directly onto a board. The machine they used was a Type A Machines printer with a solder paste dispenser in place of an extruder. The dispenser is hooked up to the fan output of the controller board, and from the looks of the video, they’re getting pretty good results for something that’s still very experimental.

All the code to turn KiCAD files into G Code are up on [hzeller]’s github. If you’re wondering, the board they’re pasting up is a stepper driver board for the BeagleBone named Bumps.

Videos below.

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