3d printing

844 Articles

3D Printed Turtle Shell Racers Bring Mario Kart To Life

August 8, 2011 by 13 Comments

skimbals_3d_printed_turtle_shell_racers

Every once in awhile a project comes along that makes us say, “this is why we want a 3D printer!”

[Skimbal] is pretty well known in 3D printing circles for the incredibly detailed designs he has put out in the past. This time around, his focus is on motoring, Mario Kart style.

His Turtle Shell Racers are ripped right out of the Mario Kart series of games, and are built in the form of the multi-colored turtle shells with which most of us have a love/hate relationship. Constructed atop cheap RC trucks, the Shell Racers require 20-some odd printed parts apiece, but looking at the final results we think the time and money spent would be well worth it.

After watching the videos below, we think you’ll agree that these things look like a blast to play with. The Shell Racers were actually so impressive that they managed to land [Skimbal] a permanent gig with MakerBot Industries.

If you want to try making a set of your own, there are extensively detailed build instructions and all the STL files you can shake a stick at over at Thingiverse.

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Incredibly Fast 3D Printing With The Ultimaker

August 2, 2011 by 92 Comments

ultimaker_3d_printer

There’s a new 3d printer on the block, and hot damn is it fast!

Hailing from the Netherlands, the Ultimaker 3D Printer has finally hit US shores, and aims to give the MakerBot a run for its money. The Ultimaker was designed by Utrecht Fab Lab manager [Siert Wijnia] along with two frequent lab patrons, [Erik DeBruijn and Martijn Elserman]. The trio were big fans of the MakerBot, but they wanted to make a better 3D printer.

And make a better printer, they did.

The Ultimaker can print using Either ABS or PLA plastic just like the MakerBot, but it is several magnitudes faster than its predecessor. While the MakerBot utilizes a moving build platform, the Ultimaker has a print head that can move along three axes. The moving print head, along with offset motors which are mounted on the printer’s frame allow the Ultimaker to build taller object than the MakerBot, at higher speeds.

That’s not to say that the MakerBot is bad in any way – rather, the presence of a new kid on the block shows how the evolution and progression of open source design benefits us all.

Keep reading to see a video of the Ultimaker in action, you won’t regret it!

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USB Reddit Upvote/Downvote Button

July 30, 2011 by 10 Comments

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[Chris] has recently become a self-declared Reddit addict and wanted to build something that would streamline the process of voting on posts. Inspired by the Awesome Button hack featured on Make a little while back, he thought that a physical upvote/downvote button would be the ideal peripheral for all of his Reddit needs.

He was a big fan of using the Reddit Enhancement Suite, which allows you to submit votes with a single keystroke. He combined this browser extension with a Teensy development board, and had his voting button prototyped in no time. Once he fine-tuned the Arduino sketch that he used to emulate the required keypresses, he got busy building a case for his creation.

He busted out his 3D printer and had a custom working project box in about 30 minutes. He printed arrows for the upvote and downvote buttons, snapped everything together, and then gave his quick vote box a spin. Everything worked perfectly, and he’s quite happy with his creation.

We imagine that our resident Reddit addict in chief is pretty jealous right about now…

Stick around if you’d like to see a time lapse video of the button’s creation.

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Selective Solar Sintering With Sand

June 25, 2011 by 54 Comments

[Markus Kayser] built an amazing solar powered SLS printer, but instead of using lasers and powdered plastics his machine uses the power of the sun to heat sand into complex shapes.

[Markus]’ printer uses the same concept as his earlier solar cutter – burning things with a magnifying glass. Interestingly, the printer isn’t controlled with stepper motors and reprap electronics – it’s completely cam driven. The solar panels only power the motor attached to the frame moving on bearings made from skateboard wheels.

We’d guess that [Markus] is using a little more than 2 square meters of Fresnel lenses in his project. Since solar irradiance is about 120 W/m² (PDF warning), [Markus] is concentrating a lot of energy onto a point the size of a quarter, which would be necessary to heat up sand to its 1500° C melting point. The resolution isn’t what you could get with a laser, but [Markus] was able to print an amazing bowl along with other complex 3d shapes.

Check out [Markus]’ video of the solar sinter printer after the break. There’s also a video of his previous experiment with the solar cutter.

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OnshouldersTV Knows How To Use OpenSCAD

June 3, 2011 by 7 Comments

Recently there’s been a increase in the popularity of OpenSCAD as the tool of choice in the 3d printing community. [Gavilan Steinman] is putting out a series of webTV shorts on the use of OpenSCAD. While it lacks a lot of the features of big CAD suits (such as the ability to generate drawings of your parts), the community has proven it’s effectiveness as a design tool. There are only two episodes out so far but they cover  OpenSCAD, mathcast, 3d printing, and a really neat robot design.  Watch them below.

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A Keygen For The Real World

May 31, 2011 by 39 Comments

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[Nirav] found that he rarely printed anything useful with his RepRap, so to shake things up, he decided he needed to work on a project that didn’t involve printing yet more RepRap parts.

The goal of his project was to create working replicas of house keys by simply using the code imprinted at the factory. He purchased a handful of used lock sets from eBay, then carefully measured the keys with a ruler and calipers to get the blank dimensions just right. After that was done, he looked around online and was eventually able to create an OpenSCAD model using a chart of pin depth specifications he located. By changing the last line in the model’s code he can print any coded key. For keys lacking a code, he can manually measure the height of each bit and print replicas that way as well. Once printed, he says that they keys are strong enough to turn most locks he has come across, including deadbolts.

This is undoubtedly a neat project in its own right, though we would be interested to see if someone could get it paired with a program like SNEAKEY to generate bit measurements by sight alone.

3D Printed Strandbeests Made To Order

May 2, 2011 by 27 Comments

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If you love Strandbeests but don’t have the patience to build your own, Dutch artist [Theo Jansen] has you covered. You might remember him from a story we ran last year, detailing his awesome beach-going strandbeest creations.

His beach walkers are typically built out of PVC conduit and plastic tubing, towering over their creator. For the time being however, he is focusing his work on a much smaller scale. [Theo] has recently teamed up with a 3D printing shop in order to offer miniature working replicas of his creations to the public. The current models can be had for $105, which seems like a pretty steep price to us. Then again, these models come fully assembled and are composed of 76 individual pieces, which is nothing to sneeze at.

That said, considering how easily a Strandbeest can be created with a stack of thick paper and some free time, we imagine that an enterprising individual could build one using readily available plastics at a fraction of the cost. Anyone out there up for giving it a shot?

Continue reading to see a video of the Strandbeest creation process.

[via Gizmodo]

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