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

This is a design concept for a stand that holds multiple spools of plastic for easy dispensing and reloading. The idea is to use printable parts for the joints and a commonly found broom handle (1" diameter) for the support and axle.

One 5ft. broom handle cut up into 5x1ft sections should produce a stand like the one pictured. If you want to go bigger, you will need more than one broom handle. Also, the feet have features for adding cross braces, if needed.

This is 100% un-tested, and I wont be able to start printing until the end of March. If anyone would like to test out the tolerances/stability, feel free. Any documentation of your findings would be greatly appreciated.

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.

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.

A basic rod style puppet to renact your favorite makerbot adventures.

You have the choice of any head listed below.

I will update with completed picture soon.

There is room for improvement, what ideas do other people have?

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 a base for a bicycle light

3D model of the superman returns logo. Modeled in SolidWorks using an image as reference.

This is a simple bracket for making a field expedient 2M ground plane antenna using a SO-239 connector and 5 pieces of flexible rod or wire.

I made the head in Hexagon 2.5.0.5. I wanted the head to look like the head on the new Robotis robot DARwIn-OP.

robotis.com/xe/

mike-ibioloid.blogspot.com/

sourceforge.net/projects/darwinop/?sms_ss=blogger&at_xt=4cf135c87d86608b,0

This is my second DIY 3 axis cnc machine. It is designed in solidworks 2008 (~50-60 hours) and built mostly out of MDF. Provided are all the source files and drawings in both solidworks and edrawing formats. This machine is possible to make with just some hand & power tools, but I used my first cnc machine to make most of the smaller parts.

The machine uses chinese linear rails and ballscrews from ebay seller linearmotionbearings2008. With the 1.8Nm stepper motors I use with geckodrive g540 it achieves 10m/min rapids and 5m/min feedrates. The working area is about 110cm x 60cm x 10cm.

Expected cost to build a machine like this from scratch is 1000-1300 euros. It also took me over 80 hours to build.

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 model was inspired by a stellation of the Icosahedron. I started out with a cardboard model. To that I glued pieces of CDs that I cut and painted a blueish-green. The center pentagons are aluminum that I cut from pop cans, turned inside out, and glued to the cardboard.

Want to keep your ABS coil dust and jam free? Here is something you can do for cheap and it is stackable for all your various colours!

This spindle came about after finding a Sterilite storage drawer in Walmart that pretty much matched the dimensions for a 5lb coil of ABS that I had.

A bit of foam core board, a 6" lazy susan, a few other simple bits and I was off!

One of the key features that makes this work well for me is that the drawer slides out, and the feed is in the drawer front. Stack several of these with different colours and you are set!

This Machine is an an experimental prototype created for the purpose making light weight hollow castings from rapid setting resins cast into rubber molds.
-Centrifugal force allows liquids to flow evenly to all interior surfaces of an mold and cures to an solid state while in motion within minutes.
- ideally the motion of rotation could be optimized toward the shape of an object and the speed of an curing material so that the casting would have even wall thickness no greater than necessary to support the structure of the shape.
_This process would also lend it self well to casting waxes into rubber molds to produce patterns in an lost wax process for metal casting in an foundry situation.

This is the result of my efforts to produce a reliable hot end for RepRap, using minimal components and tools. In it's most recent incarnations, you no longer need to tap threads for the MIG welder tip, make the nozzle clamp, or cut a slot for the power resistor.

The original instructions are on the RepRap Wiki (http://reprap.org/wiki/Wildseyed_Simple_Hot_End), but I'm not wiki savvy, so I think I'll be posting the progress here first from now on, and updating the Wiki with well tested results.

Lugging a Makerbot around can be a bit tricky. It is possible to grab it in one hand around the top edge, but that doesn't leave much hand capacity for the other little bits like spools of filament, toolbox full o' gear, sample print collections and other stuff.

Some people are using a Pelican case to carry their bots, but that seems a bit too big and furnituresque for my tastes. With the rigid case, you can definitely bring it on a plane or other formal transportation system, and it will be very protected. Mostly, I want to bring bots from the building to the car and to another building. It would need to be for carrying less than 200 feet and for less than 5 minutes of holding. A big fabric bag would be ideal for this, since it folds up pretty small in between relatively infrequent uses.

Back at World Maker Faire 2010, there was a rumor about some really big bags being given out by one of the yarn suppliers. These mythical Makerbot sized bags were long gone by the time I got around to asking. Since then, I've been wanting a roomy canvas bag for my bot. Sometimes I travel with two, and they're definitely an armload.

Recently, I came into a sewing machine, and after a bit of repair, have been showing my students how to use it. They've been doing some great projects, and I have been looking for a project of my own with the sewing machine. The Makerbot Carrying Bag seemed like a good way to build my skills at sewing while creating a functional Makerbot transport system. While designing and making this bag, I learned a bunch about how to do it, and what I might do differently on the next one. There were a few moments when I could have started it all over, but getting it done was more important than the pursuit of perfection.

Here are the photos:
flickr.com/photos/connors934/sets/72157626507111364/

Hi Everyone

Run my own design and prototyping company; purchased a property and started doing renos. Made lots of custom stuff for myself and clients;

Will be uploading images and files in the weeks to come...

Enjoy!!

This test piece constists of 4 10x10mm squares at 100mm distance on the outside and one 10mm diameter circle in the dead middle.

Use this to calibrate your machines X and Y axis as well as ensure you have 200x200mm print bed by scaling it up by x2. You may wish to work your way up slightly changing the position of the center of the piece until you can print it at x2 scale and it maxing out the corners of your print bed.

Who said we couldn't print useful things? Here's a flat-pack modular rotary hydroponic unit to be produced by most CNC tools.

My Blog Post about this here: engineeringourfreedom.blogspot.com/2011/05/do-cartwheels-feed-people.html
For working examples of such a system, see OmegaGarden.com RotoGro.com or H2ODynamic.com

Call it the ModRotoHydro, RapFarm, FeederBot, Farm@Home, or whatever else you like, I don't care, just help me build them and feed the world. ;D

Some bits of the assembly are made from or based on standard mendel parts, such as the frame vertex and Prusa's Y-bar clamps. The current gear-tooth profile is based on thingiverse.com/thing:8077; I might try a version with an easier-to-print zigzag, though it may be less efficient.

The cylinder has an outer diameter of 1 metre, ID of 80cm, and the trays are designed to hold 75mm/3" rockwool cubes, though it would be very easy to design alternate holders for smaller sizes.

Currently I have designed the system to use a gear ratio of 11/1056, i.e. 44 teeth on each of 24 segments, using a 3-3.6rpm synchronous motor pulled from the base of a broken halogen heater. If you want me to release alternative parts, e.g. with different numbers of teeth on the segment, just say so and I'll get on it for you.

I have been designing the base-frame to try and use 1m lengths of studding with as little random waste as possible, but you could construct this at different sizes with odds and ends if you so wish. It doesn't make a difference so long as a tray and reservoir can fit under the cylinder.

The tray support designed is now up. It uses 8mm studding to span the gap in the design, but I think you could possibly use some 6mm dowel, but don't take my word for it until you or I have done a stress calculation. I'm thinking of having it so you simply hang a polyethylene sheet across the gap in the base to make a sump for the nutrients. There needs to be a hole in the bottom to drain excess away into a reservoir though, and some kind of hose line up from the reservoir to pump it in.

The weight-saving gaps have mostly been placed conservatively using intuition and best practice of avoiding sharp corners, but I have yet to do any FEA on the components to see if this can be improved for even more strength and less weight. However, I expect design 1.0 to work as it is with lightweight infill settings.

Any DXF files that end with a measurement are giving the reccomended thickness of sheet to cut the part out of, in order to fit within this design, however you may be able to change these around a bit and file holes down to fit.
More files to come, and a parts list once the design is finished. Let me know if you want another format.

This is an all-metal design for a RepRap frame that I came up with while on vacation in Puerto Rico. Resources on the island are very limited, but I did find the local Home Depot around the corner, and there was a stash of tools, including a drill and hack saw, in one of the closets of the apartment we rented.

Jibaro is a word that refers to some of the island's rural inhabitants. They tend to grow their own food, and raise chickens and hogs. They are very resourceful, and creative. Many of the craftsmen might be considered jibaros.

This hot end is the result of my attempt to build the Wildseyed Simple Hot End by jcabrer for my Simpler repstrap. I live in Metric land, along with the ROW (rest of the world) which started my journey down the path less taken to begin with...

I noticed that it would be possible to use the previously unused M6 thread on the MIG tip to our advantage, and make the tip itself easily exchangeable. This design also makes the fitting of the PTFE easier and more precisely aligned than I could manage on Wildseyed, with the unexpected bonus of a double seal on the PTFE rod.

Using the gas connector nipple also gives a flat face for the heater, making working with nichrome a bit easier, giving you a choice of heater technology.

Note that this hot end is very definitely a work in progress, and that the instructions will be updated as I go along.

To tell the truth, I really wanted to cheat when making this part this past weekend. Greg's extruder is now so well tuned, that it will probably be one of the first upgrades I'll print myself when my repstrap goes on line.

But, it is all about the journey. And I had lots of fun hacking this extruder together

I do not expect anyone making this thing, but here are instructions for the foolish, or the brave (or possibly both)

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

A 3D videoprojection screen based on a Dodecahedron dome. I created this for the "Spielplatz" exhibition of photography and video art at Raststätte in Aachen/Germany (http://raststaette.org).

The projection is done using a simple DLP projector and a hemispheric mirror. Using the hemispheric mirror I'm able to fully project onto the whole dome from the inside with just a single projector. Here is a great video by Michael Kowalczyk of the Projectahedron in action:

vimeo.com/28900633

In this first version the projected image is severely distorted. I'm planning to measure/calculate a correct mapping function for the system which eliminates the distortions. You will be able to display undistorted images on the faces then.

The Dodecahedron was created using variations of the great OpenSCAD scripts from thingiverse.com/thing:9359 .

If you want to install or exhibit my Projectahedron anywhere, please feel free to contact me.

These are simple connectors for building your own Korean fighting kite.

My son needed to build one for his project on Asia so I designed and printed out corner connectors, t-connectors, and a central connector with my Cupcake.

I went with this design for our kite:

kiteplans.org/planos/coreen/coreen.html

You will need to use Google Translate to translate the page from French to English. One thing that I did was up-scale the dimensions of the kit a bit so that they're slightly larger than the metric-to-english conversion on the above design.

There are similar designs on kiteplans.org/pln_1564/ as well.

Steel rabbit target. Bulls eye is a trigger. When hit, the target spins Powered by a weight on a cable which is wrapped around an axle. Made of materials to withstand low caliber shots.
youtu.be/Fta_Ps9fvfA

This is a rough draft of a Darrieus/Savonius combination vertical-axis wind turbine intended for use with an axial flux generator.

I built zgbot's air filter for my Thing-o-Matic during the machine's build process. I made it to sit on top of the machine, but after about 6 months of being moved around the duct tape started to come loose. Between that and a circular saw I hadn't had a chance to use I decided to make a version out of plywood.

It takes a square cabin air filter about 8"x.75"x1", which I believe is used on Toyota and Lexus cars such as the RX 350. I'm not really sure because I just bought one from an auto parts store that looked like I could build something around it and I never really paid attention. The filter I bought has activated carbon in it to help with the smell.

The air filter goes in the top, and sits on the edges of the bottom half. It's actually a big pain to get in there so if I had it to do over, I'd make one of the side panels on the top section come off (instead of the lid) and slip the filter in that way.

There are 2 80mm fans on top, which make a little more noise (and push more air) than I'd like. The next time I'm doing some internal work, I intend to move them from 12v to 7v so they'll slow down. I've got a simple switch on the line so I can turn them on and off, and I used a barrel plug from RadioShack so I can disconnect the filter and remove it.

The top is a little short, just enough to be able to hang the LCD controls off the front of the machine. The back of the filter sits on the back lip of the ToM. This way I didn't have to put a cutout in for the Z motor. On the sides, I sanded out little channels to be able to fit over the M3 bolts on the top of the machine.

The base section is 3" tall, which was just enough so that the filament drive wouldn't hit the bottom of the filter when at max Z. With the new MK7s, it looks like it could be reduced almost all the way. As it is though, there would be enough room on the front panel of the base section to embed an LCD and control pad, which could look pretty neat.

All measurements are in inches (because I don't seem to own a metric ruler or tape measure), and should more or less correspond with what I built. It's designed for 1/4" plywood. The panels are secured together with brads through the ends (into holes I pre-drilled with a 1/32" or 1/64" bit), and I glued and nailed some 3/4" wood strips in the corners to provide extra support. The top lid is simply screwed on into tapped holes in the extra wood strips. I believe, all together, I used less than half a sheet of plywood.

I've been using it for a few weeks now, and it works quite well. Having the filament feed straight through the top has worked out quite well. It requires punching a hole in the air filter, but it means that it can drop straight down into the extruder.

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?