My Second design of a small geometric sculpture that explores the battle between cake and pie

My Second design of a small geometric sculpture that explores the battle between cake and pie

This is and end mill laser cut holder for the 10 piece grizzly end mill set seen here: grizzly.com/products/g9757

I use 3/4" x 3/4" x 1/16" aluminum for the supports or columns. This is a method that I invented. I call this self threading square tube insert method. The 4 holes on the masonite (hard board) are exactly positioned so that when they are all screwed in they "self thread" into the aluminum corners. The use of longer bolts will give a stronger hold. However for this project I used 2x 1" bolts and 2x 1/4" socket head screws.

The masonite used is 1/8". The top layer consists of 2 sheets identically cut (minus the engraving on the 2nd one). The first bottom layer is exactly the same as the top (minus the engraving). This allows for the end mills to "slide" into place and not move around. The last layer is the file that has the work "bottom" in it. It basically is only the outline and no end mill holes.

Its a cribbage board layout, for engraving into a piece of wood.

In the last week in Dundee I managed to get round to doing something that has been plaguing me for about two years: a cribbage board from my friend Suzy. I had already drilled the holes and it took me a while to think up something to laser engrave. I eventually decided on a kind of 'field of shapes' thing given that the board was already punctuated by hundreds of circular holes.

It would have been much easier to engrave first, then drill but hey, sometimes things don't happen in the right order! I have put up the .svg for the layout however so that others can do it in the right order.

There is significance in the name of this cribbage board, but it might take you a while to realise..

The typeface I used is Cooper Black.

The human powered internet cafe looks at the issues of renewable power generation and aims to educate users to the energy requirements of surfing the internet.

Users are asked to peddle the exercise bikes in order to turn a dynamo which would in turn power the computers. If users fail to peddle hard enough the computer monitors will begin to flicker encouraging them to peddle harder.

The thing would ideally be placed in public areas where all forms of society could view it and try it out for them selves, thus educating as many people as possible.

The human powered internet cafe looks at the issues of renewable power generation and aims to educate users to the energy requirements of surfing the internet.

Users are asked to peddle the exercise bikes in order to turn a dynamo which would in turn power the computers. If users fail to peddle hard enough the computer monitors will begin to flicker encouraging them to peddle harder.

The thing would ideally be placed in public areas where all forms of society could view it and try it out for them selves, thus educating as many people as possible.

This is a cool robot wheel I designed during my lunch period. :) It is scalable, But if You scale it, remember to adjust the axle hole size. I usually make mine at 50% size.

This might actually make a decent flywheel if made of metal.
It was supposed to be a pulley, but made a better wheel.

UPDATE:
I added a wheel with five spokes instead of three. It is also smaller.

This is my XY plotter that I created to test out our ARC code for our multi axis (up to 254 networked) stepper motor controller called TinyG. You can read more about TinyG here.
synthetos.com/wiki/index.php?title=Projects:TinyG

I do realize that it would not take much more to create a z axis and make this a CNC machine. This is the plan. However if anyone else wants to mess with it. Please go for it. Also, if anyone is in the Washington DC metro area and wants to mess with the machine let me know.

The metal parts are all made from the contraptor frame work. (http://www.contraptor.org) However, that being said you do not have to drill the holes in every part. Just drill them where you are going to need them.

All metal is aluminum with the exception of the Y axis "angle rails" these are made from home depot steel angle. Both steel and alum angle is 1" x 1" x 1/8". Possibly the coolest thing about this design is the fact that all the stuff that needs to be accurate is cut with the laser. Another cool feature is your size limitation of this is really only limited by the length of lead screws / angle rail length you can get. This design should be easy to support 6 - 8 ft tables with no real "changes" needed. (I think..)

The bearings used are 805 regular skate bearings. (5mm centers.. or 5/16") All hardware (with the exception of the 5/16" bolts used on the "trucks" for the bearings) are 10-24 and 1/4"

Threaded 1/4" rods are what are used to "sandwich" the parts together.

The wood is all 1/2 inch plywood. Pick your poison. This should work just fine with 1/4 stuff doubled up. I am able to cut this on my 40W epilog laser in 1 pass ever since I picked up the 4" lens.

These are my new thick sheet parts for RepRap Mendel. I was inspired by the mounting plate for the TechZone boards (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2174). I used a modified version of this for my mother board and extruder. And then made a board for my steppers. I have also included my modified froglet that is simpler for cutting out with saws.

Be sure to check out pictures and more information about my Mendel @ reprapbreeding.blogspot.com/

This is notionally based on the Printruder II extruder body. I like the basic design, but I had problems with filament getting kinked in the empty air below the drive gear. I was having too many issues getting the extruder to work reliably to be able to print a new modified one with less open space.

Since I also have a CNC mill and a tap&die kit, I just designed up and carved a new extruder head out of Aluminum. It allowed me to have tighter tolerances, and it seems to work pretty well with my home-built Mk5-alike worm gear.

This is designed to work with an 11mm outer diam worm gear drive wheel.

I'm embarrased to say I forgot to measure it before I installed it. Tired of breaking my acrylic idlers, I had my father help me rig this up in his machine shop. Yes, it's been done before, but it's SUCH a better solution. I'll upload the measurements at a later point, like the next time I have to rebuild the head. Which is hopefully never.

I needed a bit bigger wine rack so I designed this little 10 or 11 bottle wine rack which does the job nicely. I made it out of 3mm MDF, but it would look better in a nicer material.

I'll put up some better pics once I make a new one under the laser cutter group on sharemake.com .

If you make one please post a pic and a comment. I would love to see one in Perspex!

This is part of a study being done by Dr. Salim Azzouz of the McCoy School of Engineering at Midwestern State University. Senior Engineering students were challenged to find and/or design a gearbox that would transform a variable rotational input to an output at a constant angular velocity. This is the resulting study prototype, which uses a printed planetary gear train to accomplish the desired results.

If the single shaft is used as the input, it will drive the output (sun gear) at the same speed, however, if a different output speed is desired, the lower shaft on the other side (hub gear) can be driven faster, slower or even counter-rotated to produce the different desired output velocity.

This was a close collaboration between the students and myself in design and manufacture. Extensive work was done in SolidWorks, resulting in a functional digital assembly. The gears and carrier plate were printed on our Makerbot, the axles turned from aluminum stock on a CNC lathe and the support structure cut from Makrolon, an impact resistant, clear plastic. Delrin bearings were purchased from mcmaster.com.

Further study is planned, connecting the input and differential to motors, monitoring the velocities of each of the shafts with tachometers, recording the results at varying speeds and comparing the observed results with the theoretical calculations.

For my wedding in October 2011 I asked my fiance if I could build something, she only asked that it not be tacky. This is what I came up with. It's a modular folding photo booth. I designed the model in Sketchup, programmed it in Autoit, and gave it a nice Glados voice. I needed an input device and I decided to make a serial comm button. I took a 555 timer and made it generate a 4.8kHz square wave. At 9600 baud this translates to UUUUUUUU plus one garbage character when the button is released. for now it only uses a Webcam to take photos but hopefully I will be find a deal on a canon power shot sometime in the next months to upgrade it. Since the printouts are resized, the small webcam resolution isn't noticable, however it won't be suitable if i wanted to incorporate the singles frames into a album. I'm working on some upgrades using the twitter api so I can have the booth update me whenever it is taking photos. This way I can tell it's status and share photos easier.


Here is a video of it's assembly and the software.

youtube.com/watch?v=jNGg821bC7c

This is a simple 3-legged stand I made for my brother. Made from 15mm plywood it's quite large (see pdf) but you can scale the design down to any size required. The height is adjustable and overall the stand is quite sturdy. I gave it a single coat of varnish to protect it from moisture (it's used as a stand for a small telescope)

Provided are all solidworks source files and cutting diagram as metric dxf.

This .stl creates 5 plastic walls that you can make boxes out of.

A slimmed down PCB holder for the Sells / Prusa Mendel. Just enough space for the PCB, plus a little extra on either side.
I have yet to build it, but it should work on paper.

Solid Works Drawings of a Mendel that is all metal, uses linear bearings on all axis and dual belts on X and Y to cope with extra weights involved.

This printer was started as a result of my friends astonishment of what i was able to make using a cordless drill and a hacksaw. my repstrap didn't sit flat or square it wobbled, i used lead screws to drive all the axis' as a result it was slow best speed i could get was 1000rpm ~650mm/min, but at that speed the frame wobbled and the resulting prints had waves in 6 different directions :P

This is a fork
You can Eat with it
You can stab things with it
You can launch it with a device made to launch such objects


This thing has changed the world, can you?

This is a fork
You can Eat with it
You can stab things with it
You can launch it with a device made to launch such objects


This thing has changed the world, can you?

At long last, here is my first attempt at a Sketchup designed, Thing-o-matic printed computer case.

This is a lotus or rose or what ever is most Awesome. I made this as a gift for someone so I went the extra mile and made some brass leafs colored green and Copper wire stems so oxidize them in a brown green tone. I went to TIG the copper to the stainless stalk but It was too small so I just brazed it. I ended up Threading the stem to use a 4/40 nylon acorn nut below the flower and a 4/40 acorn nut at the top to look real.

Files to create legs for a Bunraku style puppet. These will soon be part of a complete bunraku type puppet that I will post.

UPDATE:11/21/11 Changed the knee joint to use less plastic and have better range of motion.

I have been working on a makerbot that is controlled by the adafruit motor shield. I made all the parts and wooden pieces by hand using a saw. Once i had all the wooden pieces I put it together and added 2 nema 17 stepper motors for the x and y axis. I used a parallax continous rotation servo for the z axis. The code isbased on some code by Max Livesey and I edited it so it will 3d print instead of ploting. I built the whole thing for around 250 us dollars.
(it is using an arduino mega so analog pins can be used with an extruder board i built)

A marble maze made from wood (1.1" x 0.20" Pine).