An IPhone Case Study

December 15, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 14 Comments

Way back in 2008, Apple unveiled the first unibody Macbook with a chassis milled out of a single block of aluminum. Before that, essentially all laptops, including those from Apple, were flimsy plastic screwed together haphazardly on various frames. The unibody construction, on the other hand, finally showed that it was possible to make laptops that were both lightweight and sturdy. Apple eventually began producing iPhones with this same design style, and with the right tools and a very accurate set of calipers it’s possible to not only piece together the required hardware to build an iPhone from the ground up but also build a custom chassis for it entirely out of metal as well.

The first part of the project that [Scotty] from [Strange Parts] needed to tackle was actually getting measurements of the internals. Calipers were not getting the entire job done so he used a flatbed scanner to take an image of the case, then milled off a layer and repeated the scan. From there he could start testing out his design. After an uncountable number of prototypes, going back to the CAD model and then back to the mill, he eventually settles into a design but not before breaking an iPhone’s worth of bits along the way. Particularly difficult are the recessed areas inside the phone, but eventually he’s able to get those hollowed out, all the screw holes tapped, and then all the parts needed to get a working iPhone set up inside this case.

[Scotty] has garnered some fame not just for his incredible skills at the precision mill, but by demonstrating in incredible detail how smartphones can be user-serviceable or even built from scratch. They certainly require more finesse than assembling an ATX desktop and can require some more specialized tools, but in the end they’re computers like any other. For the most part.

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Microwave Forge Casts The Sinking-est Benchy Ever

September 15, 2024 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

As a test artifact, 3DBenchy does a pretty good job of making sure your 3D printer is up to scratch. As an exemplar of naval architecture, though — well, let’s just say that if it weren’t for the trapped air in the infilled areas, most Benchy prints wouldn’t float at all. About the only way to make Benchy less seaworthy would be to make it out of cast iron. Challenge accepted.

We’ve grown accustomed to seeing [Denny] over at “Shake the Future” on YouTube using his microwave-powered kilns to cast all sorts of metal, but this time he puts his skill and experience to melting iron. For those not in the know, he uses standard consumer-grade microwave ovens to heat kilns made from ceramic fiber and lots of Kapton tape, which hold silicon carbide crucibles that get really, really hot under the RF onslaught. It works surprisingly well, especially considering he does it all on an apartment balcony.

For this casting job, he printed a Benchy model from PLA and made a casting mold from finely ground silicon carbide blasting medium mixed with a little sodium silicate, or water glass. His raw material was a busted-up barbell weight, which melted remarkably well in the kiln. The first pour appeared to go well, but the metal didn’t quite make it all the way to the tip of Benchy’s funnel. Round two was a little more exciting, with a cracked crucible and spilled molten metal. The third time was a charm, though, with a nice pour and complete mold filling thanks to the vibrations of a reciprocating saw.

After a little fettling and a saltwater bath to achieve the appropriate patina, [Denny] built a neat little Benchy tableau using microwave-melted blue glass as a stand-in for water. It highlights the versatility of his method, which really seems like a game-changer for anyone who wants to get into home forging without the overhead of a proper propane or oil-fired furnace. Continue reading “Microwave Forge Casts The Sinking-est Benchy Ever” →

CeraMetal Lets You Print Metal, Cheaply And Easily

July 21, 2024 by Elliot Williams 27 Comments

3D printing metal has been somewhat of a holy grail for the last decade in the hobby 3DP scene. We’ve seen a number of solutions, including using expensive filaments that incorporate metal into the usual plastic. In parallel, we’ve seen ceramic printers, and paste printers in general, coming into their own. What if you combined the two?

You’d get [Leah Buechly] et al’s CeraMetal process, which is the cheapest and most straightforward metal printing method we’ve seen to date. It all starts off with a custom bronze metal clay, made up of 100 g bronze powder, 0.17 g methyl cellulose, 0.33 g xanthan gum, and 9 g water. The water is fine-tuned to get the right consistency, and then it’s extruded and sintered.

The printer in question is an off-the-shelf ceramic printer that appears to use a pressurized clay feed into an auger, and prints on a linen bed. [Leah] had to write a custom slicer firmware that essentially runs in vase mode but incorporates infill as well, because the stop-start of normal slicers wreaked havoc with clay printing.

The part is then buried in activated carbon for support, and fired in a kiln. The result is a 3D printed bronze part on the cheap; the material cost is essentially just the cost of the metal powder and your effort.

We had never heard of metal clay before, but apparently jewelers have been using it for metals other than just bronze. The Metal Clay Academy, from the references section of the paper, is an amazing resource if you want to recreate this at home.

Paste printers are sounding more and more interesting. Obvious applications include printing chocolate and printing pancakes, but now that we’re talking metal parts with reasonably consistent shrinkage, they’ve got our attention.

Print Wave Metal Casting

July 13, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 4 Comments

Direct 3D printing of metal remains out of reach for the hobbyist at the moment, so casting is often the next best thing, particularly given the limitations of 3D printed metals. [Denny] from Shake the Future shows us how to simplify the process with “print wave metal casting.”

The first step of printing a PLA object will seem familiar to any 3D print to metal process, but the main differentiator here is pouring the investment casting on the printer build plate itself. We like how he used some G-code to shake the build plate to help remove bubbles. Once the plaster solidifies, the plastic and mold are placed in the microwave to soften the plastic for removal.

The plaster is dried in an oven (or air fryer) and then [Denny] bolts the mold together for the casting process. Adding a vacuum helps with the surface finish, but you can always polish the metal with a generous helping of elbow grease.

If [Denny] seems familiar, you might remember his very detailed breakdown of microwave casting. We’ve seen plenty of different approaches to metal casting over the years here. Need a part in another material? How about casting concrete or resin?

Thanks to [marble] on the Hackaday Discord for the tip!

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A red hot crucible is held with metal tongs above a white plaster mold. The mold is held in a bright pink silicone sleve atop a metal pan on a wooden workbench. Red cheese wax holds the sleeve to a metal funnel connected to a vacuum cleaner.

Lost Print Vacuum Casting In A Microwave

March 2, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 16 Comments

Hacks are rough around the edges by their nature, so we love it when we get updates from makers about how they’ve improved their process. [Denny] from Shake the Future has just provided an update on his microwave casting process.

Sticking metal in a microwave certainly seems like it would be a bad idea at first, but with the right equipment it can work quite nicely to develop a compact foundry. [Denny] walks us through the process start to finish in this video, including how to build the kilns, what materials to use, and how he made several different investment castings using the process. The video might be worth watching just for all the 3D printed tools he’s built to aid in the process — it’s a great example of useful 3D prints to accompany your fleet of little plastic boats.

A lot of the magic happens with a one minute on and six minutes off cycle set by a simple plug timer. This allows a more gradual ramp to burn out the PLA or resin than running the microwave at full blast which can cause some issues with the kiln, although nothing catastrophic as demonstrated. Vacuum is applied to the mold with a silicone sleeve cut from a swimming cap while pouring the molten metal into the mold to draw the metal into the cavities and reduce imperfections.

We appreciate the shout out to respirators while casting or cutting the ceramic fiber mat. Given boric acid’s effects, [PDF] you might want to use safety equipment when handling it as well or just use water as that seems like a valid option.

If you want to see where he started check out this earlier version of the microwave kiln and how he used it to make an aluminum pencil.

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A Guide For Heat-Treating Steel At Home

December 28, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 37 Comments

A lot of colloquial words that we might use when describing something’s durability take on extremely specific meanings when a materials scientist or blacksmith uses them. Things like “strength”, “toughness”, “hardness”, and “resilience” all have different meanings when working in a laboratory or industrial setting than most people might otherwise think.

For the beginner metalworker, this can be a little bit confusing at first but some hands-on practice will help. To that end, this beginner lesson in heat-treating steel from [Blondihacks] demonstrates why it can be beneficial to trade some of the metal’s toughness for improved hardness and just how to accomplish it on your own.

The first part of the lesson is to make sure the steel is high-carbon steel, since most other steels aren’t able to be heat treated. It will also have a specific method for its quenching, either in oil, water, or some other medium. But beyond that the only other thing required for this process is a torch of some sort. [Blondihacks] is using a MAP-Pro torch to get the steel up to temperature, which is recognizable when it turns a specific orange color. From there all that’s needed is to quench the hot metal in whatever fluid is called for. At this point the metal can also be tempered, which restores some of its toughness while maintaining a certain amount of hardness.

While the process doesn’t require specialized tools, [Blondihacks] does have a hardness tester, a fairly expensive piece of instrumentation that measures how deeply the metal can be indented by a force. By measuring the size of the indentation made by the tool, the hardness can be determined. As it’s many thousands of dollars this is mostly for demonstration and not necessary for most of us, but does go a long way to demonstrate the effectiveness of heat treating and tempering in an otherwise simple environment. If you’re looking for excuses to start heat treating and tempering metal, here’s a great project which creates a knife nearly from scratch.

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Rocket Stove Efficiently Heats Water

August 4, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 19 Comments

Rocket stoves are an interesting, if often overlooked, method for cooking or for generating heat. Designed to use biomass that might otherwise be wasted, such as wood, twigs, or other agricultural byproducts, they are remarkably efficient and perform relatively complete combustion due to their design, meaning that there are fewer air quality issues caused when using these stoves than other methods. When integrated with a little bit of plumbing, they can also be used to provide a large amount of hot water to something like an off-grid home as well.

[Little Aussie Rockets] starts off the build by fabricating the feed point for the fuel out of steel, and attaching it to a chimney section. This is the fundamental part of a rocket stove, which sucks air in past the fuel, burns it, and exhausts it up the chimney. A few sections of pipe are welded into the chimney section to heat the water as it passes through, and then an enclosure is made for the stove to provide insulation and improve its efficiency. The rocket stove was able to effortlessly heat 80 liters of water to 70°C in a little over an hour using a few scraps of wood.

The metalworking skills of [Little Aussie Rockets] are also on full display here, which makes the video well worth watching on its own. Rocket stoves themselves can be remarkably simple for how well they work, and can even be built in miniature to take on camping trips as a lightweight alternative to needing to carry gas canisters, since they can use small twigs for fuel very easily. We’ve also seen much larger, more complex versions designed for cooking huge amounts of food.

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