3D Printing Sensor Mounts For The Oculus Rift

April 17, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

While browsing an oculus rift thread on reddit, I saw someone mention how nice it would be to have some actual mounts for external sensors on their Rift. The idea is that adding additional sensors or cameras will allow us to expand the capabilities of the rift. With something like the Razor Hydra, you can add quick positional tracking (the rift only tracks rotation, not position). With some webcams, you could theoretically do some stereoscopic augmented reality. Unfortunately, attaching all these things to the rift is a bit of a pain at the moment.

I had all the things right here in front of me to make this happen, so I did! I’ve quickly tossed together two accessories for the Rift.

1. a small bracket that feeds onto the velcro on the back. People will likely use this for “heavy” position sensors. They may be fairly light, but any additional weight on the front of the rift is unwanted.

2. A snap-on face plate that has a modular design. This wold be for mounting cameras on the front of the rift.

All of these files can be downloaded here.

LulzBot Is Giving Away More Printers

March 22, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

LulzBot, the awesomely named 3D printer manufacturer and parts supplier, is giving away eight of their AO-100 printers to eight lucky hackerspaces.

It’s not so much a contest, but instead a giveaway aimed at eight community-operated hackerspaces who come up with a great idea on how to use a 3D printer. If you’re part of a well-established hackerspace that doesn’t have a 3D printer yet, this is a great opportunity to get your hands on a very nice printer.

A while back, we acquired one of these LulzBot printers to print off some custom gaming controllers for gamers with physical disabilities (and to make some other cool stuff as well). Our boss man [Caleb] says the AO-100 is a great printer, and in my dealings and purchases with LulzBot, they seem like a great company with great support. We’re sure the hackerspaces that win these printers LulzBot is giving away will be able to put them to use quickly by making some really cool stuff.

Adventures In 3d Printing: Our First Week With The LulzBot AO-100

February 9, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 57 Comments

Recently, we acquired a LulzBot AO-100. It was given to us, free of charge. After having it for about a week, I’ve figured out enough that I feel I can finally share my thoughts, impressions, and experiences. I will be completely honest about the machine. It was given to us, which is insanely awesome, but hey, I have to share the real information with the readers.

When we first started looking for a printer, we decided we didn’t want to build one from scratch. While that might seem initially to be the opposite of Hack a Day, there is a reason. I simply can’t build every tool I use from scratch. I have projects in mind that could benefit from a 3d printer, and I want to work on those. This meant that I was looking for a pre-assembled unit. Many people asked for an article on getting a reprap going, so we started to consider reprap based kits as well.

When LulzBot contacted us, I was initially skeptical. I mean, the name is lulzBot. Is this an internet troll? Is this somehow connected to Lulzsec, the hacking group? Did they seriously name their printer LulzBot? Well, as it turns out, they are legitimate. Not only that, we’ve seen them before, they are also AlephObjects, who sent in the video of the wall o’ printers working. Why did they name it LulzBot? The answer was basically, for the lulz. It is worth noting that [Jeff] has been a strong proponent for free software for a long time and that Lulzbot is built from the ground up to be completely open and shareable. You can go to the website right now and download the list of parts as well as all source code and configurations.

As you read further, please remember that the model they sent me was not their newest. They don’t even sell this model any more. Technically speaking, it is roughly 2 generations behind.

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Automated Doors For Theatre Effect

January 30, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 15 Comments

For a theatre production, [Jason] needed a way to automatically open and close doors as a special effect. His solution, hosted on Github, lets him remotely control the doors, and put them into a ‘freak out’ mode for one scene in the play.

Two Victor 884 motor controllers are attached to an Arduino that controls the system. A custom controller lets [Jason] actuate the doors remotely, and LEDs are used to display the state of the system.

On the mechanical side, two wind shield wiper motors are used. These are connected to custom arms that were printed using a Lulzbot AO-100. The arms allow for the door to be automatically actuated, but also allow for actors to open the door manually.

The result is a neat special effect, and the 3D models that are included in the repository could be useful for other people looking to build automated doors. In the video after the break, [Jason] walks us through the system’s design and demonstrates it in action.

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