If you constantly tweak the z stop on your printrbot, this dial will keep you from needing a screwdriver and help you keep track of your changes.

This hand pump is located at the Wilson Montessori school Wonderground SPARK park in Houston wilsonspark.org/ It gives the kids a safe way to get water to play with, and demonstrates James Watt's straight line linkage.

This is a shelving option that clamps onto your desk and can store many things and keep notes to keep you organzied

DIY bookscanner with printable parts

Started out as an Aluminum Mendel and morphed into a bit of this and a bit of that. Mostly a learning exercise. An engineer printed the extruder for me in his commercial 3d printer. Made the Budaschnozzle with some modifications. I had a box of semi-circular half inch Thomson rod bearings given to me that necessitated using half inch rod. The bearings are very sensitive to clamping pressure and I would not use them again if I were starting anew. I used 80/20 stuff for most of the structure since I had a lot of scrap to choose from. No idea if any of this will work yet. I have Ramps 1.4 electronics to hook up to experiment with. That will be another learning exercise since this is my first build!

This is my version for a clothing door hook to hang your clothing on. After the one I got at Wal-Mart broke on me, instead of buying a new one, i decided to design one myself :)

Thingiverse has enough toy boats now, so I designed these segments for a 3D-printable ama/outrigger that could actually be used for hull(s) as part of a wee catamaraft or an outrigger canoe. (Starting with a beautiful excited ms-paint concept sketch that preceded a couple days of thought and a night of CAD :)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama_%28sailing%29
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrigger_canoe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catamaran

STL and STEP files are provided of original blanks and my 3x2/4x2 model, so that hopefully you can adjust this design to whatever size you want and fittings you have available. A SolidWorks eDrawings file is also available to get a quick look at my suggested assembly. Actual rope lashings are not shown, but I hope you can figure out something as simple as cris-crossing a rope to lash 2 beams together, since representing it in a CAD drawing is tedious. Not all the nails are in this diagram either due to defining mates for either end of the assembly being a pain (I've learned to use octagonal holes outside the X-Y plane instead of circular, for ease of printing).

My current pre-holed versions of these models are adjusted so they should fit nicely with 6ft-long beams of 2x3" or 2x4" wood cut to standard North American softwood lumber dimensions:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber
The design shows 6ft 2x3's in the sides holding the outriggers straight, but this could be achieved with shorter scrap lengths by staggering them along either side. A few 1ft-long 2x4's are shown cut to a roughly appropriate shape, but longer beams would be better, and the lateral beams (aka) are 5ft lengths of 2x4" with a notch on one flat side near either end to aid holding position to lashing points.
The nails shown are some 3mm by 45mm aluminium roofing nails that I've just got hold of (if you're going to use metal fasteners at sea, high-grade stainless steel, admiralty brass or aluminium is a must), and there are holes between each designed section that could be used for 6x25mm dowels.

Not shown in pictures yet is a hole that I added across each bow, which could have rope tied through it for rigging or carrying. The two holes shown at the back could be used for a pivot-and-pin adjustable rudder, so that it can be pulled up when launching/beaching and dropped&pinned into place during strong winds.

I might add some more part designs later to enable a very small sail to be rigged easily; when I have time of course, there are so many other fun and useful projects that I could try working on.

Bonus points if you can build one with a sail, solar panel, battery, Arduino GPS Shield, sensors and actuators, and have it circumnavigate the globe autononmously. Zero-fuel automated freight is one goal that I hope we can aim to develop towards (and past :)

OWL is a prototyping platform for ducted/cowled Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines, which can deliver increased efficiency-per-area, blade safety and reduced noise.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_lens
Starting documentation at: opensourceecology.org/wiki/Shrouded_wind_turbine

These types of turbines tend to show an increase in power output of 2-5x for a given blade-swept-area, depending how well the shroud is designed. (See open paper: mdpi.com/1996-1073/3/4/634 and 2.5m 5kW-rated-each results of this study en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windlens1.jpg) A shroud also tends to cut down blade-tip vortices, which are typically the single largest cause of noise and downwind turbulence in wind turbines, since it induces a wind-tunnel-like environment where an almost '2D' flow pattern can form around the blades without spilling around the end as much. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingtip_vortices)
A couple of safety considerations with wind turbines can be improved by a shroud/cowling; firstly in the highly unlikely event of a blade failing, any fragments would hit the cowling before anything else, so there would be significantly less danger to any passers-by, and the popularly overstated danger of birds hitting turbine blades is further lessened by having a stator in front. I have kept the current design to a roughly 1m diameter, since this should give a good safety margin of strength to wooden blades and make construction easily manageable for a very small team.

An idea that I've been sitting on and trying to figure out the details of for too long (a couple of years now), but still needs a fair bit of design work.
I would like the turbine to run in as wide an operational envelope of wind-speeds as possible, in order to take advantage of intermittent storm winds that frequent a site that I will be testing it on. As such the present design does not furl out of the wind with increasing speed, and has a heat-sink applied to the stator coils in order to prevent overheating in strong winds. This has yet to be tested though and should be regarded as stupid/reckless/unsafe until it can be verified by testing. I may also design an alternative off-centre mounting that should allow the system to furl out of very high winds.

The mounting pole is just there to give an idea of how to compatibly mount this to a tower. Having such a long pole directly from the horizontal axis would not be recommended in practice, and the turbine should be mounted by a relatively short stub at the top including some kind of yaw bearing. The structure is presently designed to accept up to a 35mm diameter pole, and I am considering the use of 25mm bicycle headset bearings in conjunction with thick-plate threaded steel tubes, or possibly sand-casting a mounting stub out of aluminium.

My design work has been inspired by:
Hugh Piggott's "Wind Turbine Recipe Book" 2009 metric edition; scoraigwind.com/
FloDesign's concept designs youtube.com/watch?v=WB5CawKfE2M (might as well mute this video as it is full of marketing BS)
...and of course the many designs of gas turbine engines that presently power most of the world's large passenger aircraft and military aircraft, which also inspired FloDesign's engineers to do their work.

The aerofoil profiles were achieved using Divahar Jayaraman's MATLAB script: mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/19915-naca-4-digit-airfoil-generator under BSD License.
I tried editing it to output scaled data, but it seems that simply copy-pasting output vectors into OpenOffice Calc and then saving as fixed-column-width .CSV gives cleaner data that is easier to import to SolidWorks.
I used NACA designation 0020 for the stator blades and 9415 for the wind-lens. The stator is fitted with symmetric blades in such a way that its angle of attack can be altered to 0, 4, 8 or 12 degrees in either direction (shown at 4 in picture) depending on which way you want to cut your rotor blades to spin, and I have designed the wind lens foils to extrude at 12 degrees angle of attack.
If I was any good at CFD then I could optimise this more, but I'm hoping someone can help me with that.

Expandable Spool Rack

I created this rack specifically for those 5lb/2.3kg filament spools that our filament usually comes in.

This stand is modular in that you can extend the width of your rack by using longer rod and printing more of the arms.

The arms are also ready for mounting upside down, i.e. under your worktable using M4 bolts. Good for those of us with limited workspace.

OpenSCAD files have been provided so feel free to modify it anyway you like.

Planet Earth is Blue
And there's nothing I can do

### Soon to be redesigned for PEEK application ####

This setup is currently printing at 20 micron layers ;p

This is a re-designed nozzle assembly for Ultimaker. No additional materials were required to fill gaps like PTFE tape or extruding ABS to fill gaps- as is the way for Ultimaker setup. Simply turn-up the white PTFE part tap some threads and screw together/ assemble.

youtu.be/BVuYapH128k
youtu.be/CPiMJzieI6A
youtu.be/R-JmgTR4oQ4

This is similar to Marcus Wolschon's toolhead adapter
thingiverse.com/thing:9491 except that this is designed to hold a Foredom flex-shaft rather than a Dremel. The Foredom has better bearings and exhibits less tool wobble than a Dremel.

There is also a 1/2 inch hole for a piece of vinyl tubing to be connected to a vacuum.

I will be using this setup to mill PC boards, but there are many other possibilities.

I suggest that you use Marcus Wolschon's removable build platform and PCB vise rather than accidentally drilling a hole through your automated build platform. :)

This is a 10x10cm print, so make sure your nozzle is perfectly centered when you calibrate your Thing-O-Matic.


Update 2-20-13:

I added a photo of a PC board that I made using this tool. I layed out the board in Eagle PCB and made the makerbot G-Code to route the traces using Visolate.

I did not end up using the PCB vise, instead I drilled holes in the board and screwed it directly to the build platform carrier. Considering the high precision needed for these surface mount chips (which are finer pitch than SOICs) I felt that more support on the backside of the board would be useful.

Since I discovered how awesomely useful one of these is from living in flats that had one installed a couple of times, I've wanted to produce one myself.
See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Maid
google.com/search?imgtype=&hl=en&q=sheila+maid&tbm=isch

The basic concept is a rack of narrow planks or similar suspended between a pair of coathanger-like blocks, which are usually made from cast iron. The frame is lifted up to ceiling-height with laundry on it using a pair of pulleys, one of them a double-pulley, and some string. I am trying to design one that could have the end-pieces 3D printed, and if required for heavy laundry (big towels and sheets), possibly used in lost-wax casting with something like scrap aluminium or brass, with the rest of the materials (beams, pulleys) from salvaged or cheap stock.

Plastic endpieces are probably only capable of supporting small laundry items repeatedly, and I have created a separate small test-piece model in order to find out how much weight can be supported by the most-stressed part of the hangars, the string/rope-hole at the top, before it plastically deforms or breaks. I have yet to perform these destructive tests.
I guess that a plastic part would have to be ridiculously thick in order to form the frame of the pulleys and not break, so I am currently thinking that those ought to be simply made out of parallel pieces of sheet-metal, unless you can find some suitable pulleys to re-use, which would be even better.

R1: Open Source Blocks Construx

More information: exergy123.blogspot.com/2012/02/u1-y-r1-open-source-construx-blocks.html

It is somtimes useful to include cantilever springs in a plastic mecanism. But, because of the many variables involved in printed plastic parts, there is very little information on the properties of the material. Thus experimenting with many different desings become a solution that consume a lot of time and resources.
This device is intended to measure the elasticity constant (Young's modulus), the yield strength (the force required to deform the part) and the ultimate strength (the force required to break the part)

Second batch open on Goteo: goteo.org/project/foldarap-peer-to-peer-edition?lang=en
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More on the regularly updated wiki : reprap.org/wiki/FoldaRap
More pics/vids on flickr : flickr.com/photos/watsdesign/tags/foldarap/

After 5-7 months of development, I'm now able to travel around the town/country/world with my little folding RepRap ! Which still have a 140x140x140mm build area :D

Almost every files are here (the BOM is on the wiki), and the Sketchup models for those who want to play with it :)

Github repo here : github.com/EmmanuelG/Foldarap

I started by a folding reprap the size of a Mendel, based on my VertX, then a smaller version more Huxley-transportable, and finally I'm developping this one build with aluminium t-slot extrusions. It's the first iteration of the Folding RepRap.

(main pic by Belowdesign : flic.kr/p/dW6tMP)

AKA sildenafil for Prusa Mendel, part of the mythic quest for less vibrations and bending, a more rigid frame that can work with more tensioned belts.

Also check: Y motor mount torsion box for Prusa simplified Mendel thingiverse.com/thing:11017
Smooth rod / shaft collar from a drilled out M8 nut thingiverse.com/thing:11068

Selis Mendel features a plywood or acrylic plate there, Prusa Mendel has nothing. I am too lazy to cut plywood right now, so here it is.

Inspired by Lateral support for Prusa by Miro87043 thingiverse.com/thing:14606 , this solution is, I believe, more comprehensive with a full triangulation, while staying out of the way and keeping the filament needs reasonable: about 40 grams for both side pieces, and 28.5 grams for the top assembly.

This part has been thought as an unobtrusive upgrade: no need to dismantle your pyramid amid much fear and loathing, the thing has brackets to bolt it over the existing studding. This comes at the cost of slightly more filament and just a few bolts.

The top part has some residual flexibility along the X axis. This might help with dampening, or not. Alternatively the part can be printed as a box, or massive by editing the dxf and re-exporting the stl from openscad. The code is a huge mess, in a big need of cleanup and parametrization.

Update 20120109: Thanks to thingiverse.com/Justblair 's excellent work, a finalized version has been uploaded (all.stl and the openscad revised files).

The youtube video here youtube.com/watch?v=DBnKPEnt9a4 shows how to add flats to motor shafts that do not yet have them.

Loosely based on the "Vise pad for holding 8mm threaded rod by ChatterComa" I created the part that helps you to grip the motor shaft properly in place so that you do not apply force to the motor inners.

This is the best, most practical, and simplest filament manager I've seen or used for a Prusa Mendel. It gets the filament reels out of the way into "unused" space above the printer, allows you to stage two reels for easy switching back and forth, and makes it simple to change reels and to see how much filament is left. When printing, the filament itself is in free air between the reel and the extruder head so there are no jams or problems.

Holds from 1lb to 5lb standard filament reels.

A compact Hot-end that can be build without high-tech tools and materials.
And you don't need great engineering skills either ;)
The total length can be as small as 30mm (between top mount and nozzle)!

I looked for a filament splicer “thingi” without finding much. So I knocked this one up. Surprisingly - it seems to work!
It’s based on having a hot tongue to lick the filament ends and butt them up while they are hot and sweaty. The re-shaping of the filament takes place by being forced through a PTFE tube while it’s still malleable – basically at the same time as the buttering up takes place.

If you build, e.g., Prusa Mendel printers, you'll spend a lot of time cutting and filing 8mm threaded rod. I created these vise pads to hold this size rod securely in a bench vise without slipping and without marring or damaging the threads on the rod.

Can optionally include small disc magnets, available here:

kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=D64

to secure the pads to steel vise jaws when the vise is open (if you put them in right, they also hold pairs of the pads together so they don't get separated in your tool drawer).

An easy to build, small sized Hot End for 3d-printers.

Not so much a derivative, as a companion piece to Triffid_Hunter's Printable LM8UU-sized PLA bushing.

You're using Triffid_Hunter's Printable LM8UU-sized PLA bushings, and decided you'd rather upgrade to G300 polymer bushings? ( igus.com/iPro/iPro_02_0001_0000_USen.htm?c=US&l=en%20Igus - part # GFM-0810-10 or sdp-si.com/eStore/ - part # S99GGFM081010 )

Print a set of these to fit them into an LM8UU sized hole!

If your printer makes them too tight, or too loose, adjust the "slop" settings in the scad file. You want the inner diameter of the adapter to be fairly close to 10mm, as polymer bushings are designed to be compressed down to a tight fit on the smooth rods.

This is currently configured for flange bushings - the scad is fully parametric, and configurable for other bushing types (brass sleeves, for example).

This is my British themed Prusa Mendel.

For more details on the design and build, please see my Blog - richrap.blogspot.com/2011/10/made-in-insert-country-here-british.html

Video's of the build and printing can be seen on my Youtube channel - youtube.com/user/RichRap2011

I hope you like it.

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.

A pen made mostly out of 3d printed parts. Fist thing I have ever 3D printed.

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?

2D hanging plotter for white board pens with parallelagram stabilisation

I don't have a drill-column at my disposal so designed this Dremel attachment to center the 8mm bolt while hobbing.

Pictures say more than words....