Parametric Hinges With Tinkercad

April 23, 2018 by Al Williams 7 Comments

Simple tools are great, but sometimes it is most convenient to just use something easy, and since it gets the work done, you don’t try out some of the other features. Tinkercad is a great example of that kind of program. It is actually quite powerful, but many people just use it in the simplest way possible. [Chuck] noticed a video about making a 3D-printed hinge using Tinkercad and in that video [Nerys] manually placed a bunch of hinges using cut and paste along with the arrow keys for positioning. While it worked, it wasn’t the most elegant way to do it, so [Chuck] made a video showing how to do it parametrically. You can see that video below, along with the original hinge video.

There are really two major techniques [Chuck] shows. First, he adds the necessary pieces to create the hinges to the Tinkercad toolbox. That makes it really simple to add them to any of your future designs. Second, he uses a combination of numeric parameters and duplication to quickly and precisely place the hinge components across another object — in this case a Batman logo.

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Customize All The Fan Covers You Never Knew You Needed

April 13, 2018 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

Do you need a fancy fan cover with precisely specified attributes, but have no desire to design one from scratch? If you answered yes (or no) then [mightynozzle] has the answer. The Customizable Fan Grill Cover is a parametric design in OpenSCAD that allows adjusting the frame style, size, and grill pattern for any fan cover one may possibly need. [mightynozzle] also went the extra mile to provide a large number of pre-made STL files for a variety of designs in a wide range of sizes, so those who don’t want to fuss with customizing can simply download and print.

Normally Thingiverse would allow customizing this model’s attributes with their built-in Customizer, but the functionality and availability of that feature is spotty. Luckily it’s always an option to download the source and do the customizing directly in OpenSCAD. For those who may be intrigued but are not sure where to start, here’s a reminder that we covered how to make a thing with OpenSCAD that demonstrates the whole process.

A True 3D Printed Weather Station

April 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 75 Comments

If the term “3D printed weather station” makes you think of a printed enclosure for off-the-shelf sensors, don’t feel bad. We thought the same thing when we first read the message [Rob Ward] sent in about his latest project. Surely he couldn’t mean that he actually printed all the principal parts of a serious weather station setup, such as the wind vane, anemometer, or rain gauge?

Except, on closer inspection, that’s exactly what he did. Every part of the weather station is designed in OpenSCAD, printed out, and infused with various vitamins to turn them into functional pieces of hardware. Interestingly enough, most of the magic is done with simple reed switches and magnets.

For example, the wind vane uses eight reed switches and an embedded magnet to communicate the current wind direction to the Arduino Uno which handles the user interface. Wind speed, on the other hand, it done with a single reed switch as it just needs to count rotations to calculate speed.

[Rob] did “cheat” by using an off-the-shelf barometric pressure sensor, but we’ll give him a pass for that one. Unless somebody wants to hit the tip line with a design for a printable barometer, we’ll consider this the high water mark in printable weather stations.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a DIY anemometer or rain gauge, of varying degrees of complexity. But the clean look of the final version, completely open nature of the OpenSCAD source, and the low part count make this an extremely compelling option for anyone looking to up their home forecasting game.

Look Upon Eyepot, And Weep For Mercy

March 21, 2018 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

Hope you weren’t looking forward to a night of sleep untroubled by nightmares. Doing his part to make sure Lovecraftian mechanized horrors have lease in your subconscious, [Paul-Louis Ageneau] has recently unleashed the horror that is Eyepot upon an unsuspecting world. This Cycloptic four legged robotic teapot takes inspiration from an enemy in the game Alice: Madness Returns, and seems to exist for no reason other than to creep people out.

Even if you aren’t physically manifesting nightmares, there’s plenty to learn from this project. [Paul-Louis Ageneau] has done a fantastic job of documenting the build, from the OpenSCAD-designed 3D printed components to the Raspberry Pi Zero and Arduino Pro Mini combo that control the eight servos in the legs. If you want to play along at home all the information and code is here, though feel free to skip the whole teapot with an eyeball thing.

A second post explains how the code is written for both the Arduino and Pi, making for some very illuminating reading. A Python script on the Pi breaks down the kinematics and passes on the appropriate servo angles to the Arduino over a serial link. Combined with a web interface for control and a stream from the teapot’s Raspberry Pi Camera module, and you’ve got the makings of the world’s creepiest telepresence robot. We’d love to see this one stomping up and down a boardroom table.

Seems we are on a roll recently with creepy robot pals. Seeing a collaboration between Eyepot and JARVIS might be too much for us to handle. Though we have a pretty good idea how we’d want to control them.

3D Printed Stethoscope Makes The Grade

March 17, 2018 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

On the off chance that initiatives like the Hackaday Prize didn’t make it abundantly clear, we believe strongly that open designs can change the world. Putting technology into the hands of the people is a very powerful thing, and depending on where you are or your station in life, can quite literally mean the difference between life and death. So when we saw that not only had a team of researchers developed a 3D printable stethoscope, but released everything as open source on GitHub, it’s fair to say we were pretty interested.

The stethoscope has been in development for several years now, but has just recently completed a round of testing that clinically validated its performance against premium brand models. Not only does this 3D printed stethoscope work, it works well: tests showed its acoustic performance to be on par with the gold standard in medical stethoscopes, the Littmann Cardiology III. Not bad for something the researchers estimate can be manufactured for as little as $3 each.

All of the 3D printed parts were designed in OpenSCAD (in addition to a Ruby framework called CrystalSCAD), which means the design can be evaluated, modified, and compiled into STLs with completely free and open source tools. A huge advantage for underfunded institutions, and in many ways the benchmark by which other open source 3D-printable projects should be measured. As for the non-printed parts, there’s a complete Bill of Materials which even includes links to where you can purchase each item.

The documentation for the project is also exceptional. It not only breaks down exactly how to print and assemble the stethoscope, it even includes multi-lingual instructions which can be printed out and distributed with kits so they can be assembled in the field by those who need them most.

From low-cost ultrasounds to truly personalized prosthetics, the future of open source medical devices is looking exceptionally bright.

[Thanks to Qes for the tip]

Printed It: Custom Enclosure Generator

March 2, 2018 by Tom Nardi 39 Comments

You’ve written your firmware code, etched your own PCB, and now it’s time to put that awesome new project of yours into an enclosure. Unfortunately, all you have is a generic Radio Shack project box that you picked up when they were clearing out their inventory. If you put your project in that, it’ll have all the style and grace of a kid wearing hand-me-down clothes. Your project deserves a tailor-made enclosure, but the prices and lead time on custom plastic enclosures are prohibitive for one-off projects.

In Ye Olde Olden Days, the next step might have been to start bending some sheet metal. But it’s the 21st century, and we’ve got mechanization on our side. The “Ultimate Box Maker” by [Heartman] is a fully parametric OpenSCAD design which allows you to generate professional looking enclosures by simply providing your desired dimensions and selecting from a few optional features. In a couple of hours, you’ll have a custom one-of-a-kind enclosure for your project for a few cents worth of filament.

That’s the idea, at least. For this edition of “Printed It”, I’ll be taking a look at the “Ultimate Box Maker” by generating and printing a basic enclosure. As somebody whose Radio Shack was out of enclosures by the time I got there and who doesn’t want to slice his hand open folding sheet metal, I’m very interested in seeing how well this design works.

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OpenSCAD: Tieing It Together With Hull()

February 13, 2018 by Elliot Williams 40 Comments

What’s your favorite OpenSCAD command? Perhaps it’s intersection() or difference()? Or are you a polygon() and extrude() modeler? For me, the most useful, and maybe most often overlooked, function is hull(). Hull() does just what it says on the can — creates a convex hull around the objects that are passed to it as children — but that turns out to be invaluable.

Hull() solves a number of newbie problems: making things round and connecting things together. And with a little ingenuity, hull() can provide a nearly complete modelling strategy all on its own. If you use OpenSCAD and your creations end up with hard edges, or you spend too much time figuring out angles, or if you just want to experience another way to get the job done, read on!

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