A little tag to put on your dog's collar.

Smiley face cut from 3mm perspex with my CNC converted RapMan

FNB was running an internal competition for departments to come up with trophy ideas. They will be using the idea of the winning trophy and produce more of it.

The power source for the 3 blue LEDs is a small solar panel for which I stripped a keyring flashlight.

I CNC cut all of the parts using my RapMan 3.1 which I attached my Dremel to.

For obvious reasons I cannot share the design for the engraved design but I can at least share the rest.

This handle would probably not be relevant to anyone else but I wanted to show it in any case. Who knows, someone might still find it useful so I included the Solidworks 2010 design files too.

The two end seats on our lounge suite are recliners and the release handle on the one broke about a year ago. Even though I've had my RapMan a few months now it only hit me about a week ago to design a new release handle for it.

I split it into two pieces to make it printable without support.

This is a paper airplane that I was tought to fold when I was a kid of about 12 or 13 years old. It is a design that stuck with me ever since and it's actualy the only design I use when folding a paper airplane as it nearly always flies quite well.

So, I was wondering how a plastic version would fly. I used a sheet of A4 paper and folded a paper version first and tested it's flight pattern first for a fairly neutral trajectory before slightly stalling and diving just a little. Depending on the wing section widths it could either div too much from te go or stall too easily. The best is normaly to aim for no stall or a very slight stall. A slight stall normally helps a bit when it goes into a slight dive as it usually pulls out of the dive until it stalls again and dive again. Depending on the height it was thrown from it can fly quite far with this stall/dive effect.

Due to printing in plastic I decided to add a hook under the nose to launch it with an elastic band. So I thought it's only fair to also do some "tool" to attach the elastc band to, to allow for easy operation.

I am still waiting for it to finish printing...so I don't yet know if it will fly

Just a few days before feilen posted his "Thingiverse Downloader" @ thingiverse.com/thing:9292 I also started working on a downloader too.

Coincidence is an understatement.

Big difference is that mine is meant for Windows and runs on the .NET 3.5 Framework. It integrates with Internet Explorer only at this stage via a right-click menu item.

The IE add-on communicates with the downloader app (called ThingGeT) via a socket connection which means this app needs to run in the background if you want to download a Thing. This is taken care of by letting the app startup automatically when Windows starts and minimizing it to the system tray.

It creates a folder for the thing you're downloading in the configured location and uses the thing's title as the folder name. A shortcut to the thing's page is then created in the folder and all the selected files of the thing will be downloaded and saved to that folder.

At the moment it only has one download thread, downloading one file at a time. In the next version I want it to have 2 or 3 concurrent download threads and to display each item's progress inline in the listview box. I am also contemplating adding a downloaded/completed tab where I can move download items to once completed thereby keeping the current downloads list clean. I can then maybe also add functionality to re-download selected items and maybe also allow the user to browse back to the source page of the thing.

This version will also not operate behind a proxy server that requires user credentials. The next version will also address such functionality.

I recently bought a cheap "spy-pen" camera to mount on my HPI Savage-X monster truck to record the action while playing around with it.

There isn't much place to mount the cam and the easiest in my mind is on the front bumper right behind the bull-bar.

The bumper mount provides for adjustment so you can adjust the pen cam's angle to your liking.

Obviously, only the upper half of the pen with the cam is mounted and not the full length pen.

I decided I to trash my LED strip @ thingiverse.com/thing:8712 due to performance issues. Either I used an incorrect sized LED (unlikely as it was calculated for 10 LEDs) or the LEDs are of inferior quality as the brightness slowly started fading over the course of a few days.

This past weekend I bought a 64 LED headlamp. It works on 3 x 1.5V AA batteries but I'll soon attach wires to the battery holder to power it from an alternative source.

The forehead pad where the head strap also secures to is held to the light unit with 3 small screws. I designed the mounting to be screwed in it's place using the same screws.

The light's base mounting can hinge vertically. The swivel mount attaches that in turn to the "frame mounting" and can turn horizontally. In my case I designed the frame mount to be mounted on the dowel uprights of my filament spool mount @ thingiverse.com/thing:8924

This filament spool mount is specific for the BFB 1kg filament spools.

The spool wheels fit into the spool's hub where the hub's inside diameter is 72mm to 76mm and the wheel's lip diameter is 82mm to prevent it from going into the spool's hub.

The wooden dowel rods used for the framework are 10mm diameter. They might not be sufficient for 2 x 2.3kg filament spools but seem to hold the 2 x 1kg spools fine.

I'm sure that with some gussting / bracing even these 10mm dowels should be able to handle 2 x 2.3kg filament spools. That is defintely something I will look into.

[EDIT] - 2011/06/03 - I have uploaded new parts with the holes slightly opened up to allow for less work to make the dowel rods fit.

This is part of my webcam project. You can see my webcam mount for the RapMan at thingiverse.com/thing:8618 and my webcam software at thingiverse.com/thing:8684

I used 10 bright LED's (can't remember the MCD value) and a 10ohm resistor on a small strip of project board. I soldered the LED's with 3 holes open between each. I cut an unused USB cable and soldered the red(+) and black(-) wires to the board. I soldered the LED's right on the board's edge (1st and 2nd rows) and cut the board at the 4th row which gave me a width of about 11.9mm.

My reference for the USB cable info was at josepino.com/light/usb_led_light

My reference for calculating the resistor for the amount of LED's was at llamma.com/xbox360/mods/How%20to%20use%20an%20LED.htm but I did not use the calculator referenced on that page as it didn't work but found similar calculator at hebeiltd.com.cn/?p=zz.led.resistor.calculator

The mount for the strip uses two M4 screws and I fitted it to the 8mm top rear cross bar of the RapMan printer. I aimed the LED's at the point where the extruder tip would contact the print bed. I then cable tied the USB cable to the printer's frame to eliminate the risk of it landing in the printer's belts.

Next on the list for this project is a reflector strip (sort of) to fit over the LED's

[EDIT] - 2011-05-11 - I am about to trash this LED strip due to performance issues. Either I used an incorrect sized LED (unlikely as it was calculated for 10 LEDs) or the LEDs are of inferior quality as the brightness slowly started fading over the course of a few days. I will be replacing this shortly with a whole new LED unit.

Thanks to dino-girl for uploading the DXF file fo this design.

I imported the DXF into Solidworks 2010, cleaned it up as the imports aren't always 100%, and saved each of the body parts as a seperate file as the DXF file had it all in one.

I then checked for thickness of the parts by looking at the width of the connecting slots and modified my files accordingly.

Since creating my webcam mount ( thingiverse.com/thing:8618 ) for my RapMan I obviously needed some cool capturing software too. Being a .NET programmer I wanted to write something as I could put features in which I wanted.

Instead of re-inventing the wheel I searched the web for C# source code to use to grab images from the webcam. I came across something that already had about 90% of the functionality I wanted. I found WCamTimeLaps by ShoXDK on Codeplex @ wcamtimelapse.codeplex.com

I made a few small mods like saving the settings to an application config file. I also added FTP functionality to upload images to my web site (temp location for now).

It's a pretty simple application. You set the delay time between each picture, default is 1000 ms (1 sec). You can set a start time and/or end time when capturing must happen after Start it pressed or it will just capture indefinitely until Stop is pressed.

In the Config file I put a setting called NthFrameToUpload meaning every nth image i.e. every 30th image will be uploaded. You can change the ftp server address from the interface but I must still add text boxes for the folder on the FTP site (FTP_Folder), the FTP user ID (FTP_UID) and the FTP password (FTP_PWD).

When uploading the app will check on the FTP folder for the OutputFileName i.e. print_image.jpg and rename it to old_print_image.jpg, upload the new image as new_print_image.jpg and once uploaded rename it to print_image.jpg

As the application's name suggest you can also create time-lapse videos. This program will not make the video file for you, it will only taken the images, but you can use virtualdub (http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/) to make it into a movie clip (see diy.wikia.com/wiki/Time_Lapse_Photography).

I then wrote an ASP.NET page to show off my printing. This page uses an AJAX UpdatePanel which updates every 30 seconds to load the latest uploaded print image.

I still need to change the process to show some other generic image or message when there is no "current" print job running.

I will also be uploading all the time-lapse video I'll be making from the print jobs...possibly to YouTube also.

One important aspect I must look at is the lighting on the print job. For my first "official" run I set up temp lighting which is not up to the level that I want.

[EDIT] - 2011-05-30 - At the moment I am haing some stability issues egarding uploading of images. My FTP seems to timeout too easily causing the upload to fail in total although the time-lapse capturing continues successfully. I have implemented a web-service to which I upload the images but came across an unhandled exception which I have not yet had the time to resolve.

This mount is for a Genius VideoCAM GE111.

This mount is meant for the front left top corner of the RapMan printer.

It just clears the cooling fan for the double-head setup when in the warm-up position.

(2011/05/21) - See my software project for time-lapse video capturing and uploading of printing process pics at thingiverse.com/thing:8684

Yeah, I know it's easier and probably cheaper to go out and buy a new lanyard but where's the fun in that?

This is still a work in progress to get it working consistently.

I have had trouble printing the female part successfully but due to the small base it had. I have made the base bigger and uploaded the file but haven't yet had chance to see if it prints good.

I do need to make a slight adjustment to the male part as it doesn't clip into an "original" female consistently.

I got this as a DXF file off the net quite a few years ago. Don't know where I got it exactly.

Also, I don't have a build diagram for it so therefore it's a puzzle.

My wife did manage to figure out how it fits together. The parts we're unsure of is the little part on the end of the tail (df5.stl) and the two little round parts (df1 x2.stl). So we left out these two round parts

I couldn't come up with a better name for this box. But as the name suggests the lid hinge mechanism uses a 4-link design which I designed a few years ago....for a car's hood to be exact. I just needed to downscale the measurements by 10 and voila!

Similar to my Android cradle but using Punisher as the theme.

See my Android version here: thingiverse.com/thing:8098

This is my first attempt at designing a cookie cutter so I hope it works fine. I did try to make the "cutting edge" a little sharper in the hope it cuts through the dough easily enough.

The Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.

I split this into parts to enable printing without support.

[EDIT] for some reason these STL files aren't rendering here but my BFB Axon as well as Solidworks do in fact load them up. I have also started printing some of these parts with no problems.

The Cylon Raider is the standard starfighter used by the Cylons, in the various Battlestar Galactica movies and television series. Cylon raiders are used as the main line of defense for Cylon Basestars.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylon_Raider

I split this in two parts to enable printing without support.

Well, the name says it all.

Two notable features of it:

1. The android robot's arms look like the hold the phone
2. Below the phone is a little hollow compartment where you could stash some coins or anything else small enough to fit in there

[EDIT - 2011/05/11] - I have made a few small adjustents to my design:
1. Opened the bottom and created a cable opening on each side to allow for the usb cable to be plugged into the phone while in the cradle.
2. Thicker back support to make the cradle more sturdy.
3. Cut-out in front to give access to the front "buttons" of the phone.
4. Lowered the Android "back-piece" as the top of the head was slightly covering the phone's camera.

Here we also discovered that this cradle is perfect for the HTC HD 2 - however I did not check the HD 2's camera location relative to that of the Desire HD.

A little robot head in 2 different sizes

I got my new HTC Desire HD 3 days ago and last night I sat and designed this tri-pod mount. Added some holes to make it not look too plain and obviously use a little less plastic too.

I first printed a 3mm test piece to check for fit over the phone. It has a nice loose fit so you won't need to force the phone in and risk scratching it.

I do have SW2010 part file available if someone wants to modify it.

[EDIT] I used my Surface Mapping Tool thingiverse.com/thing:7940 and a digital caliper to "map" the contour of the back of the phone. I just did one half and then mirrored the measurements for the other half. So, I can also give you the "map" sketch if you want to design your own stuff.

Some time ago I made a holder / mounting-box for my GPS unit due to the non-existence of units specific to different GPS makes/models. Back then I used a metal elecronics enclosure but it was still not ideal or professional looking although it didn't look too bad and did the job.

Enter the 3D printer...

Now I was able to design a brand new custom box which will look 100 times better and also be easier to use.

The large lower section is at this stage necessary to accomodate the power cable attachment that clips onto the GPS unit.

I plan to eliminate the standard power cable and therefore the bulky lower box section. I want to integrate a power connector into the base of the holder and thereby eliminating the unsightly standard power cable. I can't "hide" the standard cable as I also use it in my car. Then I can leave it in the car permanently.

Not having access to any 3D scanning I decided to do some basic surface mapping the long and tedious way and came up with this tool to use as a template.

The grid holes are spaced 5mm x 10mm and each hole measures 1.1mm x 4.1mm which should allow a fairly snug fit for the "depth gauge shaft" of my Chinese made electronic digital caliper to pass through.

Yes, I'm fully aware that this will be a very time consuming method of mapping a surface but at least it will be reasonably effective.

[EDIT] I used this tool and a digital caliper to "map" the contour of the back of my HTC Desire HD phone so I could make a tri-pod mount for it - thingiverse.com/thing:8039

I just did one half and then mirrored the measurements for the other half.

My first artistic kind of thing :

A hexagonal spiral with hexagonal being the keyword. The six "spirals" are placed on the six corners of the hex and each spiral is also hex shaped.

I found this on 3dcontentcentral.com

Hollowed it out to 0.5mm as Solidworks complained about shell thicknesses of 1mm or greater.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai

sacredsites.com/americas/chile/easter_island_facts.html

3D Metallica logo found on 3dcontentcentral.com

I just made it thinner from 30mm down to 10mm. In BFB-Axon I scale it to 0.3 giving me a thickness of 3mm for the gcode.

I found this on 3dcontentcentral.com and just had to make one. I downloaded in Solidworks format and save to STL.

The big version is really big...over 600mm (length of fighter)

The small version is only 94mm (length of fighter)

I'm busy printing one right now and will load a pic as soon as it's done.

This is just a universal tri-pod mount platform to adapt for other uses. (that's to say if these mounts are made to standard dimensions)

I have included the Solidworks part file for those with access to Solidworks to change it and adapt it for whatever you want to mount on a tri-pod.