Carving Terrain Maps Into Plywood With Software Help

November 28, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 20 Comments

CNC machines are incredibly versatile tools. At a machine shop, they can machine all kinds of metal and plastic parts. Beyond that, they can engrave various materials including glass, and even create PCBs. [Steve] has a CNC machine of his own creation in his shop, and while he might be employing it for those common uses, his artistic creations are on the showcase for today with these 3D topographic relief maps.

The key to creating a good topographic relief map is good material stock. [Steve] is working with plywood because the natural layering in the material mimics topographic lines very well, especially with the high-quality marine-grade birch plywood he is using. Making sure to select pieces without knots improves the final product substantially, as does taking the time to fill any voids. Selecting good stock is only part of the process though. [Steve] is using TouchTerrain, an open source project helmed by [Dr. Chris Harding] of Iowa State University, to create the model which gets fed to the CNC machine. Originally intended for 3D printing applications, the web-based tool lets you easily select an area on the globe and export its topographical data to a standard STL or OBJ file.

With good stock and the ability to easily create 3D topographic maps, anyone with a CNC machine like this could easily reproduce their terrain of choice. We imagine the process might be easily ported to other tools like 3D printers, provided the resolution is high enough. We have also seen similar builds using laser cutters, although the method used is a little different.

Drastic Plastic: Enclosure Rebuild Uses Donor Material

August 21, 2022 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

Although 3D printers are great, people tend to use them as a universal hammer wherein almost everything becomes a nail that’s just begging to be struck. So as hacker appetites become finicky with the same old fare, it’s refreshing to see an enclosure restoration done in such an old-school fashion. To wit: [Doidão Santos]’ classic repair of the crumbling side fairings on a vintage amplifier.

Yes, instead of designing replacement pieces, printing them, and hiding the layered evidence with paint or an acetone blur, [Doidão] called upon a broken sound system whose chassis bore a relief in the corners similar to that of the amplifier.

After cutting out two matched pieces of donated plastic, [Doidão] taped them together and welded ’em with a soldering iron outfitted with a curved-but-flattened spade tip that looks ideal for this purpose. Although the donor enclosure provided much-needed relief, one corner was lacking in this aesthetic, so [Doidão] cast a little bit of molten plastic using the relief as a mold.

Once the pieces were tacked together, [Doidão] filed them down, sanded them, polished them to a nice shine, and installed them on the amplifier. They look great, and no one will be the wiser. But if we were in [Doidão]’s shoes, we’d tell everyone what we’d done. Be sure to check it out after the break.

Ready for more fantastic plastic resto-hacks? Let us introduce you to [drygol].

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2020 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat With Majenta Strongheart

May 25, 2020 by Dan Maloney 3 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, May 27 at noon Pacific for the 2020 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat with Majenta Strongheart!

It hardly seems possible, but the Hackaday Prize, the world’s greatest hardware design contest, is once more at hand. But the world of 2020 is vastly different than it was last year, and the challenges we all suddenly face have become both more numerous and more acute as a result. We’ve seen hackers rise to the challenges presented by the events of the last few months in unexpected ways, coming up with imaginative solutions and pressing the limits of what’s possible. What this community can do when it is faced with a real challenge is inspiring.

Now it’s time to take that momentum and apply it to some of the other problems the world is facing. For the 2020 Hackaday Prize, we’re asking you to throw your creativity at challenges in conservation, disaster response, assistive technology, and renewable resources. We’ve teamed up with leading non-profits in those areas, each of which has specific challenges they need you to address.

With $200,000 in prize money at stake, we’re sure you’re going to want to step up to the challenge. To help get you started, Majenta Strongheart, Head of Design and Partnerships at Supplyframe, will drop by the Hack Chat with all the details on the 2020 Hackaday Prize. Come prepared to pick her brain on what needs doing and how best to tackle the problems that the Prize is trying to address. And find out about all the extras, like the “Dream Team” microgrants, the wild card prize, and the community picks.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, May 27 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Sharpening Drills Bits The Hard Way

June 17, 2017 by Dan Maloney 26 Comments

Drill bits are so cheap that when one is too chowdered up to keep working, we generally just toss it out. So you might expect a video on sharpening drill bits to be somewhat irrelevant, but [This Old Tony] makes it work.

The reason this video is worth watching is not just that you get to learn how to sharpen your bits, although that’s an essential metalworker’s skill. Where [This Old Tony]’s video shines is by explaining why a drill bit is shaped the way it is, which he does by fabricating a rudimentary twist drill bit from scratch. Seeing how the flutes and the web are formed and how all the different angles interact to cut material and transport the swarf away is fascinating. And as a bonus, knowing what the angles do allows you to customize a grind for a special job.

[This Old Tony] may be just a guy messing around in his shop, but he’s got a wealth of machine shop knowledge and we always look forward to seeing what he’s working on, whether it’s a homemade fly cutter or a full-blown CNC machine.

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Creating A 2D Film With 3D Printed Frames

October 18, 2014 by Sarah Petkus 11 Comments

In the early days of film, there was a time when French 3D Cinema was called “Relief Cinema”. The word, Relief, however brings the idea of something physical to mind when we hear it, which is why the name was later tweaked to include the more intangible term, 3D. Playing on this fact, French Artist [Julien Maire] has designed and built an over-sized projector for his installation titled “Relief“, that creates an animation by passing light through a series of individual 3D vignettes.

[Julien’s] intricately built projection reel in itself is an impressive mechanical feat, arguably out-staging the image it exists to produce on the wall of the gallery space. The eighty-five individual frames that create the short clip of a man digging a hole in the ground, consist of small figurines made with a stereo lithography printer. The semi-transparent nature of the resin used by the SLA printer gives the shadow cast by the projector a series of foggy-values that create a three dimensional appearance instead of merely casting a silhouette of the shape. This installation blends new and old technologies together to produce something we’re familiar with, but leaves us admiring an object that we’ve never seen before.

[Julien’s] “Relief” is currently being exhibited at iMAL (interactive Media Art Laboratory in Brussels) which will run throughout the month of October. If you happen to find yourself on a long stay in Europe before the Hardware Workshop in Munich, you could make a pitstop and check it out!