This is a simple cube that tests the settings of your 3D printer. I tested it on my MakerBot and it came out within .5mm of 40mm on each side.

The two of the corners came up a bit. I'm going to make a bigger raft later and see if I can correct that.

This is the final episode of a three-part mini-series on making things with low-melting-temperature-alloy. The collection of things here form a hot material transfer system that can be used to extrude (sort of) molten metal or wax. This is inspired by earlier work done by Dr. Sells and Prof. Bowyer reprap.org/bin/view/Main/AutomaticDepositionOfMoltenAlloyInt oACastingChannelToCreateAVerySimple Electro-mechanicalComponent .

As usual, remember that low-melt alloys are toxic and hot enough to cause burns and fires, so only use this material if you are experienced in a lab environment. On the plus side, this system can also be used to make things out of wax, which is much safer to use, although you still have to watch out for burns and fires! Possible uses for a wax-handling system include: 1) automated wax casting; 2) use of wax as a support material.

If you omit the heaters, you can probably use the nozzle and syringe pump to deposit slurries or liquids.

The idea of operation is that a standard RepRap prints a layer of plastic (HDPE, ABS, etc). Then the toolheads are switched, and the metal/wax toolhead deposits molten material in the channels or cavities formed by the plastic. If necessary, the process can be repeated for constructing thicker and more complex parts.

We have had good success using the nozzle as a hand-held tool for transferring metal. For example, we used it to make this thing: thingiverse.com/thing:802 .

We have had somewhat less success using it when mounted to a RepRap, as seen in the pictures. The main problem is poor control of flow-rate (see photo of pattern on hot plate). With some modification (such as a smaller nozzle hole diameter) and tuning of parameters (feed rate, height of nozzle above plate, etc) it might work much better. We RepRapped a simple test piece, manually filled it with metal while it was still on the hotplate, then let it cool (see photo of widget with 25-cent piece). This yielded fairly good results, indicating that an automated system may be able to produce usable parts.

The main components of the system are

1) Heated cup - this is a heated reservoir that contains the molten work material.

2) Heated copper nozzle - the nozzle slurps up material from the cup, then moves to a desired location and deposits the material.

3) Syringe pump - a motor-driven syringe controls air flow in and out of the nozzle, which in turn causes the nozzle to slurp or deposit material.

4) Heated plate - this keeps the work hot to improve the flow of the heated material. It also melts the base of the deposited part, creating a good seal between part and plate, so that molten material does not leak under the part. In general, the heated plate seems to help avoid warping, but the downside is that the bottom of the part starts to ooze outwards after a while.

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

Its a tape dispenser with a radius cut to sit the tape spool and a slot cut to place a razor blade. (be careful!)

This is thingiverse user dom's laptop stand (from this comment: thingiverse.com/thing:32#jsid-1237162568-10), with the Hokusai Wave pattern. These are dom's improvements over the original laptop stand design:

- less sharp edges on the bottom
- slightly longer stands so 15'' notebooks also fit
- a 90 Degree Angle at the holding area, so the notebook has a smoother fit
- also made the holding area slightly deeper for a better fit

It fits my 15" Macbook Pro perfectly (only problem is that I laser-cut the notches too wide; jamming a piece of paper in them fixes this - no more wobbling).

I just a simple case again made using heekscad to customize the case for usb stick that is loaded with sugar the learning free sofware platform for kids, so you can get sugar from sugarlabs.org and print this custom XO like case for yours !

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.

This is a blocky bike stem. We machine them out of 7075 aluminum. Check out cwandt.com/blockhead-stem/

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 3D printable piston. This is my entry for the Makerbot giveaway. This is a single acting piston, air is forced in under the piston rod, which lifts it up. You then let the air out to make it go down. There is no top to the cylinder.

This piston has a cylinder head, so it can be powered on the up and down stroke. Another entry for the Makerbot giveaway.

How many times did you lose that model rocket you spent hours on as a kid? Stuck in a tree or on top of your neighbor's roof that was alway my luck. What if I told you that you can rekindle that childhood spark with your 3D printed model rocket? Don't worry about all of your hard work going to waste , just print yourself another and go!

A c-clamp in any size you want. The provided STL file is for a #8 nut.

This box is designed to protect the table beneath your PCB from scratches, while giving you full access to the PCB top layer.

I had been using a variant on the original mendel hot end ( thingiverse.com/thing:2018 ) and was constantly getting heat transfer up to my (sadly) PLA printed extruder parts. These parts were actually deforming a little under the heat. So I redesigned to fit my needs.

This is a new hotend design borrowing from from makerbot's MK5 extruder (see thingiverse.com/thing:3290 ).

It has a nicrome wrapper cylindrical solid aluminum core and fits into a PTFE sleeve at the top which allows it to be used with the original mendel X carriage. Additionally it can be used with the MOSFETs on the mendel extruder controller board and doesn't require large clicky relays. ;)

It makes use of the MK5 nozzle and thermal barrier tube that you can get easily from Makerbot Industries storefront.

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

Calibration block used to dial in dimensional tolerances of your printer.

Block measures 0.75" hexagon, 0.5" tall, 0.25" hole through center.

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

These are the production files for Shapercube 2.0, the cool, solid like a rock 3D printer from Germany. It is approx 42x41x42cm big and has a print surface of approx. 190x200x185mm (X/Y/Z).

The DXF file is ideally 5mm aluminum, cut with a water-jet (a powerful laser would work too).

The DXF file include an experimental mount for a second extruder, which limits the X movement to ~140mm.

The STL files have to be printed out on a 3D printer.

All files are published under GPLv2 or later.

The STL files include original and derivative work from:
thingiverse.com/thing:3069
thingiverse.com/thing:4835
thingiverse.com/thing:1794
thingiverse.com/thing:3462
thingiverse.com/thing:2151

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

I built this CNC router from designs I saw all ver the place and like the idea of using aluminium channel and steel. I simply built the table then measured the gantry to suit. You can build any size this way as long as you re-enforce properly. The control board came from HobbyCNC and the motors are NEMA 23. The power supply I built (simple 24v 7A).

This is a calibration thing, that i design to test my printer.
It has several features:
- thin walls in x and y direction 4mm 2mm 1mm 0.5mm 0.25mm
- Holes in different sizes r= 4mm 2mm 1mm 0.5mm
- Overhang test with differnt slopes
- Bridge test with different lengths
the whole block is 50x50x10mm
I did not test it with skeinforge but on repsnapper it works fine.

Some say, Makerbot Operators can't refuse a challenge.
I agree..

A problem arrived at work today.
I proposed a solution and said it would be quite nice a devise a system using a rope and two mounts.
A colleague walked to the door saying; well.. let's think about it!

I take that as a challenge :)
I fired up my bot and inserted VNV Nation to get the bot in the mood.. (Daft Punk doesn't work with mine.. :)
Designed and modeled in C4D quite fast but after a first print,
I realize tolerances play a part here.
The m3 nut isn't appropriate when one over tightens it.
Making this thing a work in progress...

A script to generate snap-together holders for Sparkfun breakout-boards.

The size is chosen specifically to agree with the Sparkfun polygonal proto-boards. This, however, isn't compatible with my previously published dodecahedral protoboard thing: the scale needed adjusting to accommodate all shapes of protoboard.

I have tested and provided instances for 3 different sparkfun boards : the small 3.3v boost converter, the Arduino pro-mini, and the EasyDriver stepper motor driver. The standard Arduino required a holder too large for my build platform, but printing the holder in sections would work. Sometimes some trimming and adjustment was required as MakerBot did not build the part to exact specification.

update : I added breakout_revised.scad.
This file adds support for a default 2x2 piece with cutaways for connectors between the hinges. I think its a good candidate for a standard circuit board element. The revised script also significantly cleans up the code style. See radioshack.stl and isp.stl as example outputs of the revised script.

compatible with thingiverse.com/thing:5859

Snap-together sockets designed for circular PCBs.

I lengthened the default hinge length. This makes for a stronger hinge that is also harder to snap together. It is still compatible with the Breakout Elements hinges.

The .stl files provided are examples and probably won't work for any boards you have lying around. The circle diameter is in the filename, except for "lily" which is an untested version that might fit the lilypad arduino.

compatible with thingiverse.com/thing:5822

I created this model to speed up how I go about calibrating my Thing-O-Matic and associated skeinforge settings.

It consists of the following parts:

- One comb-shaped structure aligned on the X axis with teeth spaced 0.1mm to 10mm apart in 0.1mm increments.

- One comb-shaped structure aligned on the Y axis with teeth spaced 0.1mm to 10mm apart in 0.1mm increments.

- One short square for checking fill algorithms.

- One 608 bearing scale ring (OD: 22mm, ID:8mm, Height: 7mm) for checking inner hole diameter.

Source is maintained at github.com/clothbot/makerbot/blob/master/tests/thingomatic/spaces/test_spaces.scad

Hallo,

This is a quik derivative of the Plywood chess set by ohammersmith: thingiverse.com/thing:855. What's changed? I've added all pieces to one file for easy cutting, also I've created a board that fits the unique laser cut feel of the chess game.

The material I'm going to use is 3mm Plexiglas or acrylics, in two colors that both give nice contrast and still are partly transparent.

The chess board is only rescaled (search puzzle.svg for the original) and colored nothing else, every piece is unique so its a pretty straight forward 64 pieces and 2 color puzzle. That gives the home made chess set a nice touch. I dislike the straight and boring chess sets, this one fits my collection of weird and wacky chess sets. I've yet to design a 3 person laser-cut chess set.

24 June:
I have made a set meself, It works prety well. For my materials, I had to schrink the whole set down to 95%. The puzzle chess board work great, beside that assembling took me around 2 hours. The result looks great.

I planned on designing a board outline for the chess board. and a box for the chess set.

just a note to my pictures... The placement of King/Queen is wrong, because: Queen is always on its own color. Too bad I turned the board 90 degrees...

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.

My wife wanted some jewelry, so obviously I went right to my ToM. I found the flower from thingiverse.com/thing:6504 and used that to make a presentable ring.