For this Valentine's Day: a DNA playset. This'll probably only go over well if your significant other is a biologist. But, hey, reproduction is sexy, right?

Thanks to Wikipedia and the hard work of many scientists to measure tiny molecules, this is an accurate 35,000,000:1 scale model of DNA. It's a playset because you print out copies of the four nucleotides (A, T, G, and C) and snap them together into whatever sequence you like.

A co-worker has a Traxxas JATO 3.3 radio controlled race car. He broke one of the struts and has ideas to make a custom setup. I worked with him for about an hour to sketch this up. It hasn't been printed yet but looks promising.

Notice the "JC" for his initials built into the structure. 3D Printing for the win!

There is a support peg included to hold the ball joint up. I suggested just using a bolt through a real ball joint, but the customer insisted we try it. Clip the support off and round off as needed.

This part was made with Tinkercad. Edit the part online at: tinkercad.com/things/bvFpjOw28tI

Ever felt the need to show off 84 very cheaply made marbles? Look no further. Simply fill up in a tetrahedron pattern, drop the thing by mistake, repeat a few times, then manage to do it correctly. Done :)

all 3 templates come without art, but add art and build your mod. It's pretty much that simple...

Thanks to sublime's settlers clone for giving me an excuse to make an almost perfect tile for all. Both intersection shapes are in the tar ball, slightly loose so that if you don't want to do any knife work after the print - well you don't have to.

Knowing I could never keep pace with one thing everyday, I set a personal goal of a thing every week. My theme is natural shapes using math in OpenSCAD.

I started out simple creating something using my 2D Graphing library: thingiverse.com/thing:11243

This is supposed to look like a droplet of water hitting water, and the waves coming out from it.

These models are intended for additive manufacture too calibrate and match X&Y input to output. More to come.

3D scan of a sea shell.

Can you hear the sound of the ocean?

This sea shell was scanned with an Artec MHT scanner in no more than 4 minutes!

Feel free to print it and let us know how it went!

I recently built the Ninja CNC kit from CNCSNAP.com. They include some pretty good harware but I wanted my machine to be able to cut heavier material. So i began making upgrades to the machine. I replaced the laser cut motor mounts with HEAVY DUTY 3D printed ones that are probably a little "over" built. But stronger is better right? I also designed a very robust tool holder that fits the motor they supply with the kit. I love this tool holder, it works great. Note: you will need to drill a hole in the end of the clamp to bolt it together. I recommend a small diameter machine screw. Next I stiffened up the guide rods with a set of support claps on each rod. I made them slightly under sized so you will need to run a 1/4" drill through them. My "Y" axis coupler broke so I replaced it with thing 7059. I can't find the corner bracket file I used to stiffen up the frame but I'll post it when I do. I also bolted together my "Z" carriage because it wanted to split with putting the tool holder one it.
If you have any questions or want me to make other upgrade/ design changes just let me know.
Thanks and I hope you put these files to good use.

youtube.com/watch?v=GYD6TE_If6U

zbrush sculpt

Besides looking cool, this simple Hollow Cube can be used to test ooze, retraction + bridging. It also ensures that your dimension are right and uses little material!

Johnson polyhedra have faces composed of regular polygons: triangles, squares, pentagons,hexagons, octagons and decagons. There are only 92 such polyhedra. Instructions for making paper models are available, but with stl files one could print more durable examples.

I recently came across the netlib library of polyhedra at

netlib.sandia.gov/polyhedra/

which includes the Johnson polyhedra. I was pleased to see that it would be easy to convert the files to openSCAD polyhedron comands. Polyhedron commands are
a compact way of describing a polyhedron and, when executed, output an stl file.

I wrote a fortran program to convert the files; however a few files had errors. I had corrected most errors with openSCAD's unusual, but marvelous, "thrown together" mode when I was informed that the errors had already been noticed and corrected by George Hart

georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/netlib-info.html

There is a link on the George Hart page to a set of VRML files which display the Johnson polyhedra with color coded faces. References are also given.

Using the corrected files I was able to finish the conversion. You will find the 92 scad files in Johnson_Scad_Files.zip and the 92 stl files in Johnson_Stl_Files.zip.

To get a large version of the polyhedra it is best to print a hollow structure. Five examples of hollow polyhedra stl files are included here together with a sample openSCAD file, hollow_j03.scad.

The Penrose tiles by pleppik got me thinking and I decided they would be cooler if they held together on their own. The snap shapes enforce the matching rules (as long as all the pieces are right-side up), which means any pattern you make out of them will be aperiodic.

A hand-friendly object formed by the intersection of three mutually perpendicular cylinders.

This is an openSCAD model of the iPhone/iPod/iPad connector. Useful when mocking up holders and the like.

Made for our trip to Disneyland for New Years Eve.

We go every year and I think I will make one for every year now too!

All rights reserved by Disney, although I free-handed this design on Google Sketch Up from scratch with out physical reference to their "Mouse Head"

(Disney please contact me directly if you want this removed)

This is a Pencil holder made of methacrylate. It have 3 pieces but you do not need glue.

Se trata de un portalapices hecho de metacrilato. Esta formado por 3 piezas que encajan unas en otras, se puede montar y usar sin necesidad de pegamento.

UPDATE 12/29/2011 2:42PM- Deleted old .stl, it was bad, added correct file.


These two test pieces are printed with one on the X and one on the Y axis. The idea is that they should both fit each other. Use when your circles come out oval.

If the X and Y are not calibrated well this test will show you which is off.

Penrose tilings cover a surface in a pattern with some remarkable properties: they are aperiodic, have 5-fold symmetry, and are self-similar. There are several variations of Penrose tilings--this Thing contains the two tiles needed for the rhombus (P3) tiling.

The edge of each tile has either a notch or a protrusion, which is either round or triangular. These notches and protrusions keep you from creating a repeating pattern when tiling. Round notches need to be lined up with round protrusions, and triangular notches with triangular protrusions. It is fairly easy to wind up with a "defect" where there's a spot no tile can fit.

For more information, see the Wikipedia article, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling (also the source for the pattern I used), and these two more technical discussions: ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-penrose and ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-ribbons

Note that a proper Penrose tiling will require about 16 large tiles for every 10 small tiles, so if you just print a bunch of this file you will have an excess of small tiles.

Snowflake for Christmas Tree

This snowflake can be used to hang on your Christmas tree, door, window, on your desk lamp or wherever a snowflake is needed.

Print with a 0.35mm nozzle gives good results - didn't test it with a 0.5mm nozzle.

This may not be a new invention, but I've never seen it before. It's a cube trapped inside a sphere (ball), and prints well. Just for your information, the opposite corners of the cube are the same dimension as the outside radius of the sphere.

I printed this in the same scale as presented here, and did so with full support enabled. I also printed it without the base structure you see here in these files. I also printed it with no rafting, since I was doing full interior & exterior support. It turned out OK, but took awhile to clean up even with a new Xacto knife blade (and I'm pretty crafty when it comes to using my hands).

This "thing" is a filament guide for the Thing-O-Matic, requiring no modifications to the machine body. It simply snaps in place of any of your ToMs' top guide-rod openings (uncovered, of course), depending on the location of your spool holder.

My ToM's Z-axis motor wires run into the back/right opening at the top of my ToM, so I designed this guide with a channel for those wires. Your adaptation of this model may require repositioning that channel, or simply adding that channel to all sides of the model (it's up to you... hey, it's a free world here).

This "upgrade" or "modification" piece was designed to snap into any of your ToMs' top guide-rod openings. My print did not "snap" in, but fit well. The base of the model works very well, but the guide arms need to be fully reworked. After using this in conjunction with my own filament spool holder, I now know the geometry needed to make this part work. The guide arms need to be removed & completely redesigned (they are backwards, and their size needs to be increased).

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!!! PRINT THIS PART AT YOUR OWN RISK & WASTE OF PLASTIC! I have printed this object with success, but it does not meet my requirements yet(and probably not yours).

This "thing" works, but the arched guide arms do nothing & tend to put a lot of uneccessary stress on the "A" axis (filament drive stepper motor) of my Gen-4 ToM. (My filament spool holder needs a bearing, and my filament guide needs the proper geometry.) Yes, this filament holder works (at least the center part works), but the guide arms need to be reversed (per Z axis) so that they hold the filament UP instead of DOWN... (and repositioned somewhat) and they could be a bit thicker, for sure! (If you don't trust me, go ahead and print this object. You'll see.) Everything but the guide arms work great!

Version 2 is located here: thingiverse.com/thing:15066

Cool looking shape generated using mathsurf2 (http://www.torabiarchitect.com/news/mathsurf2.html)

Designed to test X and Y calibration, this test will show you which axis needs work and by how much. NO CALIPERS REQUIRED!

"NOTICE: This test presumes that your calibration is close on x and y and that your extruder is dead on. Filament size can effect internal holes and exterior diameter if not correctly calibrated.

This is to reconcile the axis against each other and ensure printed parts will fit into each other as expected.

The procedures mentioned here are my own and may have flaws I did not foresee."

The parts are labeled with the axis they are printed on length wise.

So, each axis and should show true. (Meaning the X Bar should fit the X slot even if the machine is off, same for Y bar and Y slot.)

The bars start with 20mm long and work down to 19.7mm. All bars are 5mm wide.

The slots are both 20mm long and 5.2mm wide (To allow you only test length).

I will post a full write up soon on the exact procedure to use this test.

Modeled in 3ds max as part of an illustration that includes all the essential chess pieces. You can see the illustration on my web site: andylackow.com.

One of my other things, the nickel calibration, only measured internal holes. This one plays off the idea that two separate known distances are better for measuring and calibration.

The small parts are 20mm and the longer ones are 40mm. The corners are all 90 degrees and will show you if you axes are square. (Use a real construction square)

The height is 3mm but I don't think it's high enough to calibrate the z.

Again the formula for calibrating is

mm wanted to move/ mm actually moved= Percentage your steps are off.

Find your current steps per mm in your firmware and multiply that by your percentage those steps are off.

Your new number will be the new steps/mm.

Ordered 50mm/ moved 54mm = 0.9259259259259259

Current steps 40*0.9259259259259259= new steps 37.03703703703704

This is an artistic model of two hands catching a ball...

Making these to hand out at our Makerspace San Diego meetings. Simple, small, fast.

facebook.com/MakerspaceSD
twitter.com/makerspacesd
groups.google.com/group/makerspace-san-diego

This project I was inspired by thingiverse.com/thing:8433.
But I wanted to make an object more dynamic and closer to my needs. With some advanced Bearing 624ZZ me, so I designed this Pencil-holder swivel.
To increase the weight, I created a base with a tank to be filled with sand. In addition under the base I designed two grooves for o_ring seal (section about 1.7 - 2 mm) for more friction.
In reality , the sand and o_ring are optional, but all this makes the pencil-holder very stable, so you can make it run faster :)

For this project you need:
- 2 bearing 624ZZ
- 1 4x60 screw and nut
- 2-6 washers 4mm
optional:
- A bit of sand
- O_ring (section about 1.7 - 2 mm)

An ornament for your christmas tree! I was inspired by the tear-drop shaped ornaments and a whisk (May be the perfect gift for the chef in the family!) and experimented with the negative space created inside.

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This thing is part of a final project for CPSC 183 Technology and the Law with Prof. Brad Rosen at Yale University. The idea of this project is to ask friends for ideas for physical objects that they would like to have that could be printed on the Makerbot TOM. I have designed them, printed them out and given them to the people who requested them. I also have uploaded them here to Thingiverse to add to the library of physical objects that people find cool, useful, or just plain fun!
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