This is a lasercut extruder for a RepRap machine. I'll be posting instructions online soon.

This is an experimental extruder design for RepRap based on the awesome work by Lou Amadio at ooeygui.com/?p=187

It's still a bit of a work in progress, but the filament feed portion works great.

This is a new and improved version of my pinch wheel filament extruder design for the RepRap project. It works pretty darn well, and I'm quite happy with it. More details coming soon.

Parts List:
1 x Lasercut Parts
1 x M8 x 30mm socket cap screw
1 x M8 nut
4 x M8 washer
3 x M3 x 50mm socket cap screw
4 x M3 x 40mm socket cap screw
2 x M3 x 18mm socket cap screw
6 x M3 x 8mm socket cap screw
1 x Skate Bearing
1 x 2" washer
15 x M3 nut
9 x M3 washer
4 x 7/16" plastic spacer
1 x Heater barrel assembly
1 x Kysan 1156006 DC gearmotor
1 x Magnetic Rotary Encoder v1.x Board
1 x Extruder Controller v2.x Board
2 x 5mm LEDs
1 x 1K ohm resistor
various wires / etc.

An alternative design for the RepRap Darwin Z endstop. It allows the machine to home the z-axis away from the workpiece, so that homing is always a safe operation, regardless of what state the machine is in. More details in my blog: hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2008/08/alternative-z-endstop.html

This is the design we used for the first batch of MakerBots. These are the lasercut design files you will need to make your own if you have access to a laser cutter.

Development stage: Work in progress

It measures 30 cm or 12 inch diameter. The discs will be 6 cm apart.

This is a filament spool that can be be mounted on the side of the Darwin. The image is an artistic illustration. When I've refined it an laser cut it, I will also post the final SVG that I have used for it.

If you have suggestions, please let me know.

It was made in Inkscape.

An openly designed Creative Commons Licensed robot.

Note: New Version (Beta 2.1) posted 06/05/2009

New features: 12 legs instead of 8, "drop-in" center platform, 1:1.8 ratio gears, many small changes.

I only update this listing for major revisions of the walker, it's possible there's a minor revision posted at my site that is not here: 4volt.com/projects/jansen/

What you see here is the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 12 legs and scuttles similar to a crab walking sideways. The brain is a Arduino, and the legs are powered by 2 micro-servos modified for continuous rotation.

This project is heavily influenced by Theo Jansen's natural gearing mechanism, it’s a very efficient mechanical leg design for converting rotary motion into leg movements, and is very elegant in my opinion. The basis is the relative distance of the 12 joins, Jansen calls them "The 12 Holy Numbers". The numbers were developed with a genetic algorithm. In a couple of interviews that he wrote the evolver on a Atari STe computer and it took literally months of 1990’s processing power to find the solution.

For more info on Theo Jansen as well as some video and pictures see strandbeest.com.

I've marked this as non-commercial creative commons licensed, but it would be very easy for anyone get me to license a commercial version to almost anyone. For the most part I would just like to make sure I agree with the usage, and make sure I am aware of it.

See vimeo.com/4221721 for a video of the motion.
The home for this project is 4volt.com/Projects/Jansen/

Also, if you don't have a laser cutter, but would like a set of laser cut parts for this project see: 4volt.com/donate.aspx#jansen

My kit was missing the pulley assemblies, so with a kick in the pants from Thingiverse user and DorkBotPDX awesomeness provider Andrew Parnell, I took to the task of rolling my own with hardware store parts.

I've decided that they look so cool I'm going to keep them unless it's later proven that they somehow harm performance.

EDIT! Zach points out that original designs running on this had problems with the belt rubbing the washers and ultimately fraying. Only use this method if you, like me, are up z-stage creek without a pulley assembly and need something that'll work for a little while.

Andrew Parnell's awesome things are here:
thingiverse.com/asp55

Here are plans for a simple caliper, handy to have around the shop for measuring thickness and diameters. Anytime I can build something that helps me build something else I am always pleased.

The plans should be as accurate as your cutter or printer is, I actually used this project as a collaboration for my laser.

For updates on my other projects and things check out: 4volt.com/blog/

This is a work-in-progress (not fabricated/prototyped yet), exploring how to design a CNC/laser cuttable extruder head assembly for Makerbot/CandyFab applications.

- Target material is 0.9mm thick steel/aluminum as provided by ponoko.com/
- Routed channels are 1mm or 2mm wide
- Bolt-holes are 2mm in diameter.

- The pieces are to bolt together, then heater wire wrapped around the indented sides.
- Material is fed from the top; air from the side ports.
- If a magnetic material like steel is chosen for the Upper Plate, air feeds could be magnetically attached.

- Total design height is 70mm to allow for three stages of heater-wire wrap for graduated heating temperatures.
- Removing one or two of the stages would shorten the height by 16mm or 32mm respectively.

- License set to Attribution - Share Alike - Creative Commons. Feel free to adapt and make money off it as long as you share your mods!

After having some difficulties with the Plastruder MK3 which comes with the MakerBot, I decided to try to print a better (i.e. more reliable) extruder with and for my MakerBot.

The design was inspired by the "Thermoplast Extruder Version 2.0" from the RepRap project and by photos I saw of Nophead's "Fast extruder" .

(Update: There's now a 4th part to print: InsulatorRetainer.stl)

This is a derivative of the filament spindle made by Erik on Thingiverse.

This is designed to operate along side the Makerbot rather then the RepRap. Because the Makerbot Cupcake CNC does not have the same structure that the RepRap does, the original design does not work. By attaching the stand we now have a standard spindle which works with any system.

Problems that still need to be addressed:
- Spindle spins so freely that the filament itself would probably unwind itself slowly. In the future i would like to add a screw that can be tightened which adds friction to the sides. Keeping the spindle from spinning 'too' freely.
- The Spindle is slightly underweight and with enough lateral force could topple. To address this issue simply attach something heavy to the base. Or add an additional acrylic piece perpendicular to the current stand to increase the base size.

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

This thing is a part of Contraptor - a DIY open source construction set for building Cartesian robots: contraptor.org

Linear bearings ride on linear rail thingiverse.com/thing:1071, driven by belts or leadscrews. A pair of rails and at least a pair of linear bearings are needed to make a complete linear stage. There are three sizes of the linear bearing: 3.5", 2.5" and 1". The part list is for 3.5" size.

Sketchup source:
sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=contraptor+linear-bearing

This is a conceptual descendant of the CupcakeCNC from Makerbot.

When I originally wanted to make a CupcakeCNC, I ran into the problem that a lot of parts from Makerbot were out of stock. Since I was impatient, I ordered what parts I could (The electronics and the extruder parts) and designed up my own frame to put them in. Then I spent a year improving on it.

The major features are:

* A larger build area (about 165x175x170mm)
* A heated build platform to allow warp-free large builds
* Support for computer-less control via an LCD and keypad
* The ACME threaded rod and guide rails makes the Z axis wobble less
* Endstops on one side of each axis makes for quick and easy automatic homing/centering
* The frame and sled are built mostly from parts you can find easily on mcmaster.com

Yes, I know, I'm a heathen American for using non-metric parts, but it turns out it's a lot harder to find all the right metric parts in American hardware stores. Feh. Luckily most all the non-metric parts can be replaced by metric parts of close size without too much problem. Except the 12" slider rods. 300mm sliders rods will be 4.8mm too short.

Here's a video introduction to the Fabber Mk1:
youtube.com/watch?v=XKoIKgk9Grc

I got sick of trying to use my drill press as a lathe in my attempts to build my extruder, so I threw this together in SolidWorks. I used 1/4" and 3/8" acrylic for most of it. There are three pieces of 3/4" HDPE for slides. It has 12 X 1/4-20 hex nuts, 36" of 1/4-20 threaded rod, two plastic knobs, and the drive assembly from a cordless drill. I left off the tailstock, live center, and cutting tool plate, but those can be easily fabricated. Use it at your own risk. I uploaded some pictures of the finished lathe and my first completely successful part. The lathe isn't the perfect solution, but it get's the job done.

Make sure to properly feed your MakerBot else it might get angry. This laser-cuttable feed spool will make the job easier.

Updated:
- Widened the base to make it more tolerant of skew
- Reduced the inner splines diameter to make it easier to load filament.

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.

[UPDATE 1: Sorry, I just realized, that I accidentally used 80034 ball bearings, not 624 ball bearings for this design. I'm already working on a updated, new, better, nicer and prettier design, using "real 624" ball bearings. I'll publish this new design on thingiverse shortly. For more information on this, see
pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/2010/04/22/the-power-of-reading/.]

[UPDATE 2: The new design is now available: thingiverse.com/thing:2473 ]

Ok, RustySpoon1121 beat me on this one ( thingiverse.com/thing:2318 ), but since my design is different (only 8 rollers, centrally mounted) and already finished anyway, I publish it as an alternative approach.

I use 624 80034 ball bearings to mount the 8 rollers on the center wheel.

For more information on the project (and more detailed build instructions), please see my blog post at
pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/2010/04/18/the-power-of-vacuum/

This is an XY table for accurate drilling of circuit boards and other items.

It consists of 4 printed parts, 8 skate bearings, 4 lengths of M8 studding, 20 M8 nuts, a piece of 120x120x5mm perspex or wood and 2 sets of timing belts & pulleys (use something like thingiverse.com/thing:1362 or thingiverse.com/thing:867)

This is an interesting set of gears inspired by an illustration in a "Manual of Mechanical Movements." It has a big wheel with slots that a smaller gear wheel slides in.

The .prt files are Unigraphics files.

I originally made this during a class at the Solheim Rapid Prototyping Lab @ the University of Washington (Open3DP)

This is an entry in the Makerbot contest (http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/04/makerbot_giveaway.html)

This is an experimental set of printable machine parts, the idea being that you can configure these into whatever 3-or-fewer-axis machine you want. The basic parts are:

1) Linear rail and ball carriage.
2) Rack and pinion
3) Structural blocks with 2 (angle), 3, 4, and 5 mating faces.

Hole patterns for all parts are NEMA 17 - 31mm square, and holes are sized for M4 fasteners.

With the right tool holders it should be possible to make a small milling machine, drilling machine, maybe a pick-and-place machine, who knows? I invite people to please post suggestions or modifications.

Notes:

1) I haven't printed any of these yet, but I have skeinforged them, so I think they'll print ok.
2) I haven't arranged multiple parts into one file so they can be printed together, but it would be smart to do this. I'll post assembled files when I get a chance.
3) I don't know how accurate the resulting machine will be, so please keep in mind that this is still something of a work in progress. I hope to add and anti-backlash split gear as a start, but I'd love to hear other suggestions.

This is an experimental concept for a drop-in replacement of the cupcake CNC x-y stage. The idea here is that the y-stage is replaced by a stepper-driven conveyor belt that will move back and forth during build, and then be driven forward to eject the part after the build is complete. So far I don\'t have a 3-d printer or lasercutter, so it\'s a concept only - but I figured that this was the place for it even during development. I would very much like to hear suggestions for improvements. Conveyor and timing belt routing should work, but could be better. At the moment you need 7ct .25\" rods to route the conveyor belt, and it would be nice to cut that down.

The conveyor is baking parchment taped together with kapton tape. Baking parchment can withstand temperatures of 400+ degrees F and is relatively cheap and readily available everywhere. I think this will work, but perhaps someone with a printer can try lining their print bed with a square and see how it stands up. The conveyor is driven around a set of printed rollers, each with o-rings (they go in the grooves or rollers A and B) to help grip the parchment. As modeled the conveyor has no tensioner, but I think it may need one. At the front of the build area the conveyor is routed between two .25\" rods, which is supposed to peel the parchment off the bottom of the ABS part - hopefully that will work.

Most of the parts for this can be printed on a cupcake CNC, the exceptions being the sides and build stage, which are too large - they might fit on a Mendel. In any case I have included .STLs and .DXFs where appropriate. The basic construction is the T-slotted panel construction common to the rest of the cupcake.

I have an assembly drawing, but I just noticed some errors so I'll upload once I've corrected them.

This is v2 of my Tesla turbine, major improvements/changes are the use of HDD platters as disks and the addition of ball bearings. Hopefully the Improvements make it viable. I have access to a printer now, so I'll test it soon.

This is a RepRapable feed spool for Mendel or with slight modification any printer. The design sits on top of the Mendel using y-bar clamps to hold it on. It could easily be made with normal vertexes on the bottom and be stand alone. The frame vertex is a adaptation of Vik's Footed Parametric Frame Vertex thingiverse.com/thing:2003. You could use standard vertexes and just add washers.

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

This has now been tested with a 5lb roll of PLA on it and it works very well. I added some more pictures showing this. I also have a video on YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=BFcND7u_Sqk showing it in action (while printing in PLA that glows under black light)

These are the printable parts for a filament spindle box.

The housing is build from wooden parts without need for a laser cutter (only rectangular parts, easily available in most hardware stores/home improvement stores).

I wrote down the whole project in detail in my blog post at
pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/2010/07/29/chipboard-screws-are-the-new-nuts-and-bolts/

[UPDATE] I slightly changed the design to have a window in the front. I also added detailed drawings for the box itself to this thing (see below).

More details on the new box design at
pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/2010/08/14/boxing-round-2/

This is a spin-off of the Wobble Arrester by twotimes:
thingiverse.com/thing:2151
I love his idea, but I had a hard time getting the offset linear guides to work properly - my prints always had a sort of blobby section right at the top, which took my bushings out of alignment and caused binding. No doubt I still need to work on my skeinforge skills.

Anyway, I figured that ideally the Z-rods should be somewhere in the middle of the Z-stage - in other words, between the drive screws. This should reduce binding and in the event of a crash won't load the Z-rods and bushing clamps as badly. It also turns out that there's space enough to add the standard makerbot rod mounting scheme: through holes with external covers, although the covers are a little different due to space constraints. I have uploaded DXFs that can be used as templates for modifying your top, middle, and Z-stage; if you have access to a lasercutter you could use them to cut drop-in replacements to the standard makerbot parts.

I certainly don't want to step on any toes, but I'd like to see Z-rods as a standard option, so I tried to make this mounting arrangement easy to implement on the production side. Unfortunately I couldn't find a stock part for the bearing mount, but it should be easy to machine in quantity if it comes to that.

The bearing retainer comes in 3 flavors: 3/8" through hole for use with bearing inserts, 1/4" through hole for use without bearings, and 3/8" without counterbore for printing. (Note that if you intend on printing you'll have to use a non-headed bushing or relieve the underside of the Z-stage to accommodate the bushing head.) Just choose your poison.

EDITED TO ADD:
I noticed an error in the modified Z-stage DXF, so I have removed the old file and uploaded a corrected one. The first version would still work fine as a template to modify an existing stage, but not for cutting a new one. Please download the updated version.

This is an extension of Twotimes\' wobble arrester ( thingiverse.com/thing:2151 ), and Bophoto\'s floating-nut arrester ( thingiverse.com/thing:3052 ).

Basically, this takes Bophoto\'s floating-nut idea and pushes it to the production side for a fully integrated floating Z-axis. When used with the integrated Z-rod ( thingiverse.com/thing:3755 ), you have a complete Z-axis stabilizer that could be implemented pretty much as a stock feature of the cupcake. For example, if you plan on cutting your own panels (or having them cut), you can substitute these for virtually the same cost and have an out-of-the-box improved Z-stage. The only thing you'd need to make specially are the Z-bearing guides, and those are easy to make even if you have no machining skills (like me), or can be printed.

Additionally, if these parts are fully fastened (like the Z-guides are on the stock makerbot) they function exactly as the existing guides do, so you can always roll back by putting in a few extra fasteners.

SIDE NOTE: This is derivative of the cupcake (GNU GPL), Bophoto's work (PD), and Twotimes' work (GNU LGPL), so I'm not sure what license is the correct one for me to use here. For now I've put it as GNU GPL, but I welcome comments.

EDITED TO ADD:
Per Bophoto's suggestion, I have uploaded a version of the floating z-guide with slots for two of the fasteners. When used as a z-stage isolator, this should be used with only one fastener, however - whichever one seems to be the best for decoupling the threaded rod in question (I think it should be the one in which the slot long axis lines up with the threaded rod, but YMMV).