3d printing

829 Articles

3D Printering: Printing Sticks For A PLA Hot Glue Gun

February 5, 2018 by 84 Comments

When is a hot glue stick not a hot glue stick? When it’s PLA, of course! A glue gun that dispenses molten PLA instead of hot glue turned out to be a handy tool for joining 3D-printed objects together, once I had figured out how to print my own “glue” sticks out of PLA. The result is a bit like a plus-sized 3D-printing pen, but much simpler and capable of much heavier extrusion. But it wasn’t quite as simple as shoving scrap PLA into a hot glue gun and mashing the trigger; a few glitches needed to be ironed out.

Why Use a Glue Gun for PLA?

Some solutions come from no more than looking at two dissimilar things while in the right mindset, and realizing they can be mashed together. In this case I had recently segmented a large, hollow, 3D model into smaller 3D-printer-sized pieces and printed them all out, but found myself with a problem. I now had a large number of curved, thin-walled pieces that needed to be connected flush with one another. These were essentially butt joints on all sides — the weakest kind of joint — offering very little surface for gluing. On top of it all, the curved surfaces meant clamping was impractical, and any movement of the pieces while gluing would result in other pieces not lining up.

An advantage was that only the outside of my hollow model was a presentation surface; the inside could be ugly. A hot glue gun is worth considering for a job like this. The idea would be to hold two pieces with the presentation sides lined up properly with each other, then anchor the seams together by applying melted glue on the inside (non-presentation) side of the joint. Let the hot glue cool and harden, and repeat. It’s a workable process, but I felt that hot glue just wasn’t the right thing to use in this case. Hot glue can be slow to cool completely, and will always have a bit of flexibility to it. I wanted to work fast, and I wanted the joints to be hard and stiff. What I really wanted was melted PLA instead of glue, but I had no way to do it. Friction welding the 3D-printed pieces was a possibility but I doubted how maneuverable my rotary tool would be in awkward orientations. I was considering ordering a 3D-printing pen to use as a small PLA spot welder when I laid eyes on my cheap desktop glue gun.

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Repairs You Can Print: Nintendo 3DS XL Lives Again!

February 4, 2018 by 18 Comments

Handheld game consoles have a hard life, and even the most well-built models can sometimes fail. The Nintendo 3DS XL, for example, can fail at its hinge, which is what happened to the one owned by [Mark]. Would he fix the hinge? No, he had a far simpler if a little less flexible solution, a 3D-printed bracket that clips over the whole device.

Sometimes the best pieces of work are also the simplest ones, and this one certainly fits that bill on both counts. When your console dies, you want it fixed, and though this doesn’t extend as far as providing a working hinge action it should allow you to play without further damaging anything. It’s not impossible to imagine that it could be made to incorporate a flexible zig-zag section to produce a closeable hinge, but if your Nintendo is broken you’ll care little for such niceties. The project can be downloaded from its Thingiverse page.

A common failure that we’d expect to accompany a broken hinge would be a faulty flexible ribbon cable. Fortunately, those are fixable on the 3DS, too.

Towards Sensible Packaging For 3D Printer Filament

February 3, 2018 by 66 Comments

Filament-based 3D printers are remarkably wasteful. If you buy a kilogram of filament from your favorite supplier, the odds are that it will come wrapped around a plastic spool weighing about 250 grams. Use the filament, and that spool will be thrown in the trash. Very, very few products have such wasteful packaging as 3D printer filament, with the possible exception of inkjet cartridges or getting a receipt with your purchase at CVS.

For the last few years, [Richard Horne], better known as RichRap, has been working towards a solution to the problem of the wasteful spools for 3D printer filament. Now, it looks like he has a solution with the MakerSpool. It’s the perfect solution for a 3D printing ecosystem that doesn’t waste 20% of the total plastic on packaging.

The design of the MakerSpool is fairly straightforward and also 3D printable. It’s a plastic filament spool, just a shade over 200mm in diameter, consisting of two halves that screw together. Add in some RepRap ‘teardrop’ logos, and you have a spool that should fit nearly any machine, and will accept any type of filament.

The trick with this system is, of course, getting the filament onto the spool in the first place. Obviously, filament manufacturers would have to ship unspooled filament that’s somehow constrained and hopefully vacuum packed. Das Filament, a filament manufacturer out of Germany, has already tested this and it looks like they have their process down. It is possible to ship a kilogram of 1.75 filament without a spool, and held together with zip ties. Other filament manufacturers also have packaging processes that are amenable to this style of packaging.

Whether this sort of packing will catch on is anyone’s guess, but there are obvious advantages. There is less waste for the environmentalists in the crowd, but with that you also get reduced shipping costs. It’s a win-win for any filament manufacturer that could also result in reduced costs passed onto the consumer.

Win Big Prizes With Repairs You Can Print

January 16, 2018 by 58 Comments

Another month, another contest, and this time we’re looking for the best 3D printed repairs you’ve built.

The Repairs You Can Print Contest on Hackaday.io is a challenge to show off the real reason you bought a 3D printer. We want to see replacement parts, improved functionality, or a tool or jig that made a tough repair a snap. Think of this as the opposite of printing low poly Pokemon or Fallout armor. This is a contest to demonstrate the most utilitarian uses of a 3D printer. Whether you fixed your refrigerator, luggage, jet engine, vacuum cleaner, bike headlight, or anything else, we want to see how you did it!

The top twenty projects in the Repairs You Can Print contest will be rewarded with $100 in Tindie credit. That’s a Benjamin to spend on parts, upgrades, and components to take your next project to the next level!

Students and Organizations Can Win Big

The Best Student and Best Organization will win a Prusa i3 MK3!

This contest is open to everyone, but we’re also looking for the best projects to come from students and hackerspaces. We’ll be giving away two amazing 3D printers to the best Student entry and best Organization entry. These two top projects will be awarded an Original Prusa i3 MK3 with the Quad Material upgrade kit. This is one of the finest 3D printers you can buy right now, and we’re giving these away to the best student, hackerspaces, robotics club, or tool lending library.

If you have a project in mind, head on over to Hackaday.io and create a project demonstrating your 3D printed repair!

What is This Contest All About?

This contest is all about Repairs You Can Print, but what does that actually mean? Instead of printing Pokemon or plastic baubles on your desktop CNC machine, we’re looking for replacement parts. We’re looking for commercial, off the shelf items that were broken, but repaired with the help of a 3D printer. Is your repair good enough to show off as part of the contest? Yes! That’s the point, we want to see the clever repair jobs that people often don’t spend much time talking about because they just work.

Need some examples? Sure thing.

The underside of a vacuum cleaner
A 3D printed wheel for a broken vacuum cleaner

A while back, [Elliot Williams], one of the fantastic Hackaday Editors, had a broken vacuum cleaner. The wheels were crap, but luckily they were designed as a single part that snaps into a swivel socket. Over six or so years, the original wheels in this vacuum gave out, but a replacement part was quickly printed and stuffed into the socket. The new wheels have been going strong for a year now. That’s an entire year of use for a vacuum for five cents worth of plastic and an hour’s worth of printing time.

Need another example? My suitcase was apparently dragged behind a luggage cart for miles at either ORD or PHL. When it arrived on the baggage carousel, one wheel was shredded, and the wheel mount was ground down to almost the axle. The rest of the bag was still good, and I just removed the old wheel, salvaged the bearings, and printed a new wheel out of PLA. This suitcase has now traveled 60,000 miles with a 3D printed wheel, and it’s only now looking worse for wear.

How To Get In On The Action

We’re looking for the best repairs, jigs, and tools you’ve ever printed. To get started, head on over to Hackaday.io, create a new project, and document your repair. The Repairs You Can Print contest will run from Tuesday, January 16th, 2018 through 12 PM PST Tuesday, February 20th, 2018. Here’s a handy count down timer for ‘ya.

Iro3d 3D Prints In Powdered Metal

January 15, 2018 by 25 Comments

Printing with plastic and even resin is getting fairly common. Metal printing, though, is still in the realm of the exotic. A company called Iro3D is aiming to change that with a steel printer that you can buy in beta for about $5000. That seems steep when you can get plastic printers for under $200, but it is sheer bargain basement for something that can print in real metal.

Of course, there’s a catch. The printer doesn’t create a solid metal object right away. What it does is prepares a crucible using sand and metal powder. You then place the crucible in a kiln and what comes out is the final product. You can see a video review of their prototype machine, below from [3D Printing Nerd]. The company’s promotional video that shows a part coming out of the kiln is also below.

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3D Print A Home Automation Switch

January 13, 2018 by 15 Comments

If you are the kind of person who won’t use cheap Sonoff modules to control AC powered devices, we don’t blame you and you should probably stop reading now. However, if you don’t mind a little exposed AC wiring and you have a 3D printer, you might be interested in the second generation of [530 Project’s] in-wall light switch.

The 3D printed switch fits a standard box and uses the guts of a Sonoff controller. These work with all the popular ecosystems such as Alexa and Google Home. And they are cheap. Like, really cheap. If you already have a 3D printer, even counting the cost of the filament these are going to be a small fraction of the cost of a commercial switch. You can see a video about the device, below.

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You Got A 3D Printer, Now What?

January 10, 2018 by 89 Comments

Given the incredibly low prices on some of the models currently on the market, it’s more than likely a number of Hackaday readers have come out of the holiday season with a shiny new desktop 3D printer. It’s even possible some of you have already made the realization that 3D printing is a bit harder than you imagined. Sure the newer generation of 3D printers make it easier than ever, but it’s still not the same “click and forget” experience of printing on paper, for instance.

In light of this, I thought it might be nice to start off the new year with some advice for those who’ve suddenly found themselves lost in a forest of PLA. Some of this information may seem obvious to those of us who’ve spent years huddled over a print bed, but as with many technical pursuits, we tend to take for granted the knowledge gained from experience. For my own part, the challenges I faced years ago with my first wooden 3D printer were wholly different than what I imagined. I assumed that the real challenge would be getting the machine assembled and running, but the time it took to build the machine was nothing in comparison to the hours and hours of trial and error it took before I gained the confidence to really utilize the technology.

Of course, everyone’s experience is bound to be different, and we’d love to hear about yours in the comments. Grand successes, crushing defeats, and everything in between. It’s all part of the learning process, and all valuable information for those who are just starting out.

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