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.

This is a minor update of the previous pinch wheel extruder. I've logged about 40-50 hours on the previous design and have discovered some areas that could use some improvements. This design should be easier to use. For example, the smaller gap between the wheel and the Filament Guide will make it less prone to jamming during inital filament loading.

This is the plastic extruder that we have developed over at MakerBot Industries. It is a primarily lasercut design which uses a pinch-wheel filament drive system and a nichrome heating element. It is heavily based on work we've done with the RepRap project and is compatible with the RepRap mounting system.

You can buy kits for this at the MakerBot Store: store.makerbot.com/featured-products/plastruder-kit-presale.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.

here's a flickr set for this bot
flickr.com/photos/sixmilliondollardan/sets/72157616240288122/

the zip file is a bunch of solidworks files. SW2006 i think. but i can't remember exactly. i will try to find my parts spreadsheet and toss that up as well.

Spring 2008.
I designed and built a simple torso for a Go playing(manipulation driven, not strategy) robot for Prof Rod Brooks at MIT CSAIL. Postdoc Eduardo Torres-Jara works on the motor drivers, control, and hand design. Josh Kargas did some of the electronics mounting and routing.

Robot has 6 Series Elastic Actuator degrees of freedom. But waist is locked out and shoulder joints have the spring shorted out.

DOFS:
waist yaw
shoulder x 2
elbow x 2
wrist vertical axis x 1
wrist rotation axis x 1
neck pitch x 1
head tilt x 1
head pan x 1

yes analog sensors. potentiometers are awesome.

This is a design of the RepRap extruder drive that is compatible with the Darwin quickfit clamp system and the Ponoko lasercut kit. It will take either 16mm PTFE or heatsink based heaters. It is designed to be made with no lathing or machine tooling. An opto sensor may or may not be fitted to regulate rotation speed - I found that this was definitely required with an all-metal heater assembly. If you develop software to do that, we'd love to see it!

Personal 3D Printer rev.3 Beta

A powder-based 3D printer.
Build area: 15.25"L x 8.8"W x 6.6"D
Based on a Lexmark z715 inkjet printer.

This is a revision of a project started at University of Washington, under Prof. Mark Ganter, in the Solheim RP Lab.

Credits:
P3P rev.1:
Kory Koyamatsu, Kristina Olson, Erik Roby, Nathaniel Thompson, Tri Truong
P3P rev.2:
Steven Balkus, Miguel Guzman, Kevin Hawkinson, Ben Palmer, Vlad Nesterov
P3P rev.3:
Kevin Hawkinson


3D printing information:
tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/diy_3d_printing_and_fabrication/

Ladies and Gents! Meet the bull! For the Air Softer. This is designed to snugly fit onto a HFC "M190 Special Force" airsoft pistol.
The M190 has a simple rail below the barrel. This component will slide on, and lock in place. This is designed to hold 'laser pointers' with an average width 17mm or flash light with similar dimensions.

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)

The Plastruder MK4 is the latest extruder design for MakerBot machines. We've fixed a couple of bugs, and improved the design to be more robust. A quick summary of the changes:

* Motor shaft support bearing
* Fully attached dino supports
* Better machined parts (heater barrel, nozzle, etc.)
* Motor is more firmly attached to housing

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.

Obsolete, an updated version is here: thingiverse.com/thing:1899
It uses a better technique (thanks to profounddevices). See the picture with the bright yellow post it on it... ( also here: thingiverse.com/derivative:1634 ). You can screw a nut onto the PTFE, which creates a very good connection. The extruder drive mechanism and/or hot end have to be designed with a T-slot to fit this Bowden cable.

============

Here's a video of it being printed: (first iteration, a bit coarse quality since I reduced backlash in my Darwin frame while I forgot to reduce it in my software backlash compensation algorithm)
youtube.com/watch?v=5ddmB9ScSbQ

This is a holder for a 4.67 mm PTFE cable that serves as a guide for the filament. The plastic feedstock will travel from a driving mechanism to the extrusion head, through this flexible tube. The PTFE, a.k.a. Teflon, a very low friction. This solution will allow you to have multiple extruders on your machine without the moving mass becoming too heavy. The lighter it is, the quicker you can move the heads, e.g. when you're not extruding. The machine will need less current to run the motors, it reduces stringing when not extruding. Even more so, it reduces the weight of the X-axis so much that a much simpler and lighter Cartesian bot is possible. The steel rods wouldn't necessarily be needed, allowing a much larger ratio of self-replication. The Bowden cable itself could be printed in several modules that snap together. This guide could be lined with telfon-tape (available in every hardware store) that can be replaced when worn.

It has one major drawback. The need for a control mechanism that accounts for pressure on the filament is needed. The tube is a bit flexible, and so is the plastic filament. This makes the assembly a bit springy. But when you use a flow-control system that accounts for pressure, you will end up with much better quality. The extrusion starts and stops *very* sharply. You can do this by pulling back after extruding a segment. After that, you push it in as much as you pulled it back and simply start extruding again. You do need stepper based extrusion to adequately be able to control how much the filament is pushed into the extruder and pulled back out.

The concept of using a Bowden cable as guide was suggested and pioneered by Ed Sells. See his post here:
blog.reprap.org/2009/04/bowden-extruder-concept.html

How do you make a great idea like Makerbot-printable (clothing) buttons better?

Why, make them Lego Compatible! Naturally.

Update 2009/10/04: In the design files, the knobs are 5mm in diameter. I remeasured my source Lego disc after getting back some Shapeways test prints and the Lego knobs are actually closer to 4.8mm in diameter. I lucked out with my MakerBot-printed buttons; shrinkage brought them down to about 4.9mm in diameter. The Shapeways printed versions are more accurate, 5.00mm diameter, +/- 0.05mm. There's enough give in the plastic materials for them to still fit 'regulation size' lego blocks, but the metal one was simply too wide a diameter.

Update 2009/11/07: I've been playing around with OpenSCAD (http://www.openscad.org/) and came up with the attached DiscButton_20091107 variation. I even added bottom "sockets" to this variation. It's almost too easy when it's all code!

Disclaimer: LEGO is a trademark of the LEGO Group and these explorations are in no way associated with LEGO Group. Heck! The files are CC-licensed; nothing to stop them embracing and extending it themselves if they so chose! ;-)

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

This bracket is intended to be a printable replacement for the laser-cut brackets used for the threaded z-axis rods.

The side-mount bolts pass through captive nuts to lock the bearing (608-style skate bearing) in place, removing the need for precisely aligning the nuts holding the bearing in vertical position on the threaded z-axis rods. It also may allow for easier removal of the z-axis rods themselves when combined with the revised U-shaped z-platform Small Makerbot Parts (thing:926).

Note 1: My test ABS print is quite tight around the bearing so the inner radius may need to be increased by 0.1mm or so.

Note 2: The 20090928 variant increases the inner radius surrounding the bearing by 0.5mm. A 1mm ring has been added to the top to strengthen the tear-drop, side-mount bolt holes.

Note 3: Download the LaserCut variant if all you have is a laser cutter.

Parts of the Cupcake design were used to design this part so License is inherited GNU GPL.

The Frostruder MK2 is a radically different approach to frosting extrusion. Instead of using a motorized plunger approach such as with the Frostruder MK1 and Fab@Home paste extruders, we've switched to air power. The result is a Frostruder with excellent characteristics: nearly instantaneous start/stop capability, vastly simplified design, a high pressure capacity, and an awesome steampunk aesthetic.

The way it works is pretty simple: The frostruder is basically a syringe connected to a pressure source, typically an air compressor. There are two solenoid valves to control the pressure: a 'Pressure' and a 'Relief' valve. When the Pressure valve is on, the syringe is connected to the main pressure source and that pressure forces out whatever paste material is in the syringe. When you wish to stop the extrusion, the Pressure valve is closed, and the Relief valve is opened. This part is critical because even after the Pressure valve is closed, the syringe is still pressurized. By opening the relief valve, the pressure is released and the Frostruder stops extruding almost immediately.

The frostruder is capable of extruding nearly anything with a paste-like consistency. There are many materials to possible, from food based items to awesome engineering resins. So far, we've had success extruding the following materials:

* Frosting
* Peanut butter (creamy)
* Jelly / Jam
* Nutella
* Clay
* Silicone
* Epoxy

Designed for an upcoming robotics competition at WPI in which the robots must "improve quality of life" in some way:

Bloombot is an open-source automated hydroponics system that aims to build community and increase the engagement of people with their food. Bloombot is capable of growing plants like lettuces and herbs throughout the year and, through use of Twitter integration hopes to build off the work of other products (like AeroGrow and Botanicalls) to integrate some of their functionality to produce a machine that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Still working on finishing up the parts list but it's almost complete.

Clips for a refrigerator shelf restraint.

I recently moved into a new apartment with a missing bottom shelf restraint. Thanks to MakerBot and OpenSCAD, I can finally replace it!

The hole on the left side is a bit more damaged than the right, so I created 2 different clips.

One fun exercise when creating this thing was modeling an M5 nut in order to remove it from the model later. I recommend everyone try it. :)

I thought it would be point less to publishing this, but after seeing "Sumobot Chassis by langfordw" I said to my self why not. The EEEI Robotic ieee.rutgers.edu/robotics/ club at Rutger was inviting all student to joint the line following competition to build a robot from a kit. More detail description of the kit can be found here ieee.rutgers.edu/robotics/attachments/069_Kit_Description.pdf. They also made four classed meeting once a week for student who have no skill in soldering or programing to assemble the kit. After the four classes student have two week to prefect their bot before the competition. The kit costs $65, but since I already had Atmega sitting alone in a box I decided to get the kit without the Freeduino for $45. I got chance to use the Atmega and learn how to program it. I could not let this opportunity just pass by.

This is Thing-a-Week #1, other things can be found here. iheartrobotics.com/search/label/thing-a-week

This thing holds your solder. It has a few special features, including a front mounted solder winder to store dispensed solder and an integrated wall mounting system. Springs can be added to apply friction and prevent excess solder from being dispensed. Compatible with Kester leaded and unleaded 1 lb spools and possibly with others.

If there is interest I'll make an optimized version for sale. This version uses way too much plastic and I don't have time right now to optimize the design.

shapeways.com/shops/iheartengineering

This is a simple spindle holder for my nichrome wire spindle. I designed it in 2d and extruded it with OpenSCAD.

A printable upgrade to allow increasing the tension on the X axis belt / pulley by turning a screw. Unlike the Y axis tensioner, ( thingiverse.com/thing:1618 ) the X axis tensioner only requires a single piece. The Sketchup file is included if you want to modify.

Make sure your X pulley is assembled as shown to the left and is adjusted to the correct height so that the X belt is totally level all the way through ( wiki.makerbot.com/cupcake-xy-stage-installation#toc3 ). The tensioner may work if you have your pulley assembled differently, but you'll have to make sure the pulley doesn't rub against the tensioner.

Special thanks to SSD ( thingiverse.com/ssd ) for testing and feedback. Version 3 has a slight change suggested by SSD which may help some people.

If you're trying this for the first time, use Version 2.

Getting the Y axis belt tight enough can be a real pain. That's why I've designed this printable upgrade to allow increasing the tension on the Y axis belt / pulley by turning a screw.

You can find my X axis belt tensioner here thingiverse.com/thing:1673

V1 - Based upon a single captive nut.
V2 - Fixing an alignment issue.
V3 - First printable version. The smaller piece that holds the captive nut was too long.

2010-01-23
V6 - Same concept, but a different design using two captive nuts on each side of the Y axis pulley. My test print is suffering from some X stage problem, so the prints aren't coming out right yet. However, I wanted to post this in case I could get feedback from others.
2010-01-25
V7 - Same concept with a few improvements.

I created the screenshot from Unrepentantgeek\'s Sketchup version of the Cupcake CNC. thingiverse.com/thing:1449

I had a spring loaded retractable measuring tape which stopped working. After trying to get it to work I figured I might as well take it apart. After all, a spring loaded retractable measuring tape that doesn't retract is just a bulky measuring tape. It turned out several small plastic components inside had broken and were now either so destroyed I couldn't measure/replicate them or were just plain missing.

Version 1: Uploaded 2010-02-02
makerblock.com/2010/02/retractable-tape-measure-reloaded/

Version 0: Uploaded 2010-01-30
makerblock.com/2010/01/new-print-retractable-measuring-tape/

For a larger picture and a little more detail, visit my blog at makerblock.com

First I designed a small flat open ended cylinder which would hold the metal spring. It had to have two notches - one notch to hold the end of the tape measure and another to hold the outer-most end of the metal spring.

Then I designed a plastic holder for the small flat cylinder to fit into. It has a small spindle/axle in the center with a notch for the interior end of the metal spring.

FAIR WARNING: The interior spindle snapped right off when I tried to assemble this. Thus, I had to improvise a little to put it together. If you look closely, you\'ll notice both the spindle and the interior edge of the larger part have a slight overhang to help keep the other parts in. I built these features in hoping that it would just hold itself together. In the end I just put two bolts through it to make it more permanent. That\'s why the picture you see has two M3x16 bolts/M3 nuts holding the interior part in place. It doesn\'t spin quite as freely as I\'d like - but it does work.

This was really just a way for me to fritter away some time and over-engineer something that wouldn\'t have even cost me $2 to replace entirely. If I were to design this from scratch I would build it to use a skate bearing inside, captive nut, and short bolt.

I've included the Sketchup files in case someone wants to take this further.

I wanted a heated build platform, but I don\\\'t have a way to work with metal. Thus, I designed this Aluminum with NiCr heating element heated build platform to be put together with little modification from parts that can easily be ordered online or picked up at a local store.

2010-02-28 - UPDATE: Tested it and it works great. The corners do not melt and, in fact, provide an easy way to handle the hot build platform.

2010-04-07 - UPDATE: I covered the AL with Kapton tape (1" strips) and it seemed to work much better than the Lexan, but then my extruder started having "issues" so I am fixing that. I did not re-print the four "standoff" pieces when I did this, but one could download the scad file and change the variables to 0 for the lexan height since the small gap is not necessary.

This is a project box I designed to house an AC transformer that I needed to mount to the wall.
Updated to fix a bad face on the cover object.