Here's a stylish laser cut BeagleBone enclosure for those that want to give their new embedded computer a good home.

This is a pinch valve for 6mm silicon tubing, made from laser-cut 3mm acrylic, stacked and held together with machine screws. It's ideal for controlling the flow of air, water, fruit juice, hard liquor, or whatever you desire. It's ideal for controlling the flow of stuff you don't want to risk contaminating with a regular valve, and as a result it's intrinsically food-safe.

Power and control is provided by a lightweight '9g' hobby servo; the silicon tubing is simply a push-fit into the top of the valve arrangement.

The photos and video are of an earlier prototype; the uploaded design is slightly refined, but functionally identical.

You can see it in action here: youtube.com/watch?v=4raXnoKUtow

I am just starting to learn to do some metalworking. I needed some place to store my center drills.

The Saleae Logic (http://www.saleae.com/logic/) is a wonderful little thing, but the test clips come in a ziplock plastic bag, and I wanted something a bit nicer and sturdier, so I made this!

It assumes 3mm thick perspex.

These are the designs for Mendel style linear ball bearings. The bearings are for use in a DIY CNC mill.

Since there isn't too much room for the bearings (especially at the Z axis), I designed the printed ball bearing retainers as low profile as possible. The "inner" ball bearings are halfway sunk in the base plate.
This not only keeps the assembly as low as possible, but also guarantees the same height reference for the fixed bearings (the axle sits directly on the plate). All upper bearings are adjustable.

See a video with a comparison of bush bearings and these linear ball bearings on the same rods:
youtube.com/watch?v=nL-CA5Fm8bk

For more information on the DIY CNC mill, see pleasantsoftware.com/developer/3d/2011/05/13/poor-mens-laser-cutter/

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.

New design contest. All submissions need to use bearings in some way to enable the printable side of the submission to do something cool/neat/funny/novel.

So the last contest that required magnets didn't receive much attention and was poorly timed (ended on a holiday weekend). I'm supplying more time and money for this one so hopefully there will be a bigger turn out. I would like to do more of these contests but will probably lose interest if there are too few entries.

Fido, if you are reading this check your email so I can get you the money from the last contest.

Thanks to tmophoto ($15) and Bo L. ($50) for helping up the prize money.

This is a vacuum pick-and-place head design for automated electronic assembly. It features a stepper-driven rotary head with Luer-Lock port for interchangeable needles, and a feature for attachment of an "eyeball" style Webcam for optical placement (you can modify to support your own favorite camera). Vacuum is provided to the head via flex (fishpump) tubing.

This is an adapter to attach Brio style wooden toy train tracks to Lego Duplo compatible brick constructions. The idea was to adapt between two incompatible commercial toy systems, something that would never happen in the retail world.

Useful for building elevated train tracks, subway stations, Highlines, and crazy buildings with trains going through them.

This is a derivative of "parametric lego duplo by danielkschneider"

Update: 2010.10.22 I updated the file with a much cleaner rebuilt STL.

This is a board that allows you to power a Mk4/Mk5 Plastruder, Heated Build Platform, etc. using external mosfets (and an optional relay). It can be directly connected to a stock Extruder Controller without any modifications. The input lines connect to the '-'(GND) terminals on the EC.

After already burning out one EC mosfet, and hearing that you might need to use a relay board to power the Mk5, I finally decided to design and build this board. The IRF520 mosfets I used in the prototype should be able to power a Mk5 Plastruder without any problems, and do it silently ;). They support PWM heating code as well, for better temperature management. All the outputs are protected with flyback diodes, so they can drive inductive loads as well (motors, other relays, etc).

Using this board to power the Plastruder/HBP reduces the current going through the mosfets on the Extruder Controller down to ~10ma per mosfet. Your EC mosfets should not heat up or burn out. If you do happen to burn out a mosfet on this board, it is a lot easier to fix/replace than the ones on the Extruder Controller.

It also reduces the current going through the Cat5 cable going into the EC, which could help reduce communication errors that can occur.

I've only tested this with my Mk4 Plastruder and HBP, but the current capability should be there to support a Mk5 (IRF520 = 10A). Since it is not part of the extruder controller, it is much easier to add other cooling solutions (i.e. fans), or even use other types of mosfets. I mounted large TO-220 heatsinks to the IRF520's to help keep them cool.

This is the first 'big' circuit I've designed, so there might be errors in the schematic. If there are errors, or if anyone know of ways to improve the design, please leave a comment.

Future plans/ideas:
1. Try using higher pull-up resistors (100K instead of 1.2K)
2. Add a master/emergency cutoff switch
3. Design/order/test an actual PCB

A quadcopter frame on 1 sheet for easy lasercutting. Files are from the arducopter project
( code.google.com/p/arducopter/source/browse/#svn/branches/jpkh/frame )

1x BatteryHolder
1x CarrierBoard
1x MainSQRE
4x MotorMount Lower/Upper (8pc total)

This is a design for a /really/ inexpensive linear axis mechanism for an open source selective laser sintering 3D printer that I've been designing (but it should be generally useable for anything that requires a one or two axis system). This is a follow up to the selective laser sintering alpha one dual Z tables that I recently posted ( thingiverse.com/thing:3390 ).

The innovations in this system are its extremely minimal vitamin count -- only a handful of bolts, washers, and nuts are required. It also uses several long pieces of kapton tape as a linear slide bushing, to dramatically reduce friction and drag (though regular old scotch tape may work just as well ;) ).

A gripper compatible with a mini servo I used the Topline ES-05 JR, I milled it with a 3-axis cnc machine but its also printable. Made of 4mm hardboard.

A little video:
youtube.com/watch?v=7CUNx4kPw6w

For more pictures and info:
jjshortcut.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/my-mini-servo-grippers-and-completed-robotic-arm/

This is our first public release for a laser cut design for the Mendel.
All parts are redesigned so they can be lasercutted.
This design is made from a sheet of acryl with a thickness of 4mm.

This design is the result of a master thesis at the University College of Ghent(Belgium) by me, Frederic Decru.
My promoter is Peter Van Ransbeeck, my co promotor is Kurt Van Houtte and my coaches Mathias Vermeulen and Batist Leman.

Triggered by the lecture by dr. Adrian Bowyer at our University, and by the design challenge by Bre Pettis @ Makerbot I\\\'m glad to submit this thesis to the public domain by posting it on Thingiverse.

Caution: This version is under development and so a lot of improvements can be made, feel free to post derivatives!

youtube.com/watch?v=5CjsulmxUBw

Coreldraw filles online
The manual and partlist are online

Steam punk(ish) goggles. Laser Cut with 6mm acrylic and suede, mounted with 3mm capheads.

Photo set : flickr.com/photos/zignig/sets/72157623867976330/

The leather should be quite soft , I tried it with polyethelene sheet but it was too scratchy.

A robotic arm printer to be used with geared hobby motors

This is a holder for a NEMA 17 stepper motor. It should be compatible with most motors of that size, but I'm not sure.

UPDATE!!

This was designed for wall mounting the motor, for an AS220 style drawbot. Since my motor has a small shaft coming out the back, I designed some spacers to allow the mount to sit flat.

This is the first draft of a mostly printable linear bearing and a printable linear rail setup. I make no guarantees to prinability, usability, or sanity.
I don't have a 3D printer, so I can't test it myself. If you try it, let me know! If you can't make it work, let me know! I'd like to make this work, so if you'd like to help me, help me help you help me help us all by telling me about it here or on the reprap forums. The non-printable part is the recirculating 6mm balls. Note on where to get them below.

The Geneva Wheel is a simple mechanic base unit for converting a continuous rotation motion into an intermittent rotary motion. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_wheel Its used in clocks and similar mechanics.

It's too easy to think that a laser cutter has an infinitely thin beam. It doesn't. Depending on the material, speed, power, we've found an "effective tool diameter" of 0.002 - 0.008 inches.

This hole gauge cuts and labels 100 holes, from 0.050" to 0.149" in a 3 inch square pattern. When cut into the material you are using it can tell you EXACTLY how large to make body or clearance sizes for various screws and rods, and how large to make tap holes for self tapping.

The sizes will cover hardware from 0-80 to 6-32.

Alden

A hexapod with servo joints. This design is quite big and needs strong servos but looks really cool ^^.

I used 20 HD-2213MG Servos (http://www.servodatabase.com/servo/power-hd/hd-2213mg) . If you use other servos you need to modify the embeddings for the servos and servo horns. You may make the upper and lower legs shorter to get shorter leverage.

Finally the parts get assembled with M2 thread rod and nuts.

This is a puzzle box that you can cut on a laser cutter and assemble with no additional parts.

The panels on the cube faces move, and if you move them in the correct sequence, you will open the box!

This is an adaption of Bruce Viney's "Cubey 2" for the laser cutter. His original plans (requiring traditional woodworking tools) are here: homepage.ntlworld.com/bruce.viney/plans.html

This is for mounting a Parallax Ping))) ultrasonic sensor on a servo. This is useful for robot navigation and mapping.

There is also a Shapeways optimized version available.
shapeways.com/model/80059/sonar_servo_mount.html

This is the next step in my attempt to make a Sarrus linkage based 3D printer. The idea is to have a cartesian mechanism without those long rods and bearings.

I built three of the Mark III and mounted them in a x-y arrangement as shown. They can move over a square about 105 mm wide, and someday may carry an extruder. They are driven by DC motors taken from inkjet printers. These motors are driven in a servo arrangement using quadrature optical encoders and optical strips removed from the same printers.

This is a fork from thingiverse.com/thing:964 lasered on 3mm AlMg3.

It uses a 606ZZ bearing to use a 5mm bolt shaft for the idler wheel and has custom mounting holes.

Needs a Kysan 1156006 Gearmotor and a fitting pulley.

License: GPL V2

So after making the fully printable hinge, I was able to move along with making a hand. Its got all of the degrees of freedom as a human hand. Its a bit bigger then a normal human hand, therefore its evil.

All parts total was about 10 hours of printing.

Available fully assembled here: vendio.com/stores/standardcustom/item/custom-design/-robot-hand/lid=2124336

This board is a combination of the PWM Driver Board, DC Motor Driver Board, Temperature Sensor Board, RS485 comms, and an Arduino! All on one board. It has screw terminals for easy hookup, as well as a power jack for power and an IDC header for the rotary encoder. Its an all-in-one solution for controlling an extruder.

Some highlights:

* Onboard atmega168 - program it just like an Arduino because it is an Arduino.
* 3 x MOSFET drivers for controlling up to 14A @ 12V. Perfect for heaters, fans, solenoids, etc.
* 2 x H-Bridges capable of up to 2A each. Control 2 motors, or control one stepper motor.
* A temperature sensor circuit for reading the standard 100K thermistor.
* RS485 connection for noise-free communications with the motherboard.
* IDC header for connecting a Magnetic Rotary Encoder.
* Polarized ICSP header for simple, easy programming.
* It mounts directly to the Pinch Wheel Extruder!
* It is plug and play with the RepRap Motherboard.

This design is a derivative of the Paxtruder-0.2:
thingiverse.com/thing:1125

My idler wheel cracked about 2 weeks ago so I though it would be a good time to experiment with the Paxtruder design a bit. I planned on making it a weekend project because I had plenty of acrylic around and I had some 1/2" thick acetal scrap to make a pusher but, unfortunately, I had to put in an order to McMaster to finish this guy so it didn't get completed till now.

I wanted a drop in replacement for my extruder hardware for testing that could utilize as much of my current MakerBot components as possible, and this design seems to fit the bill. You can use your existing dino mounts (both MK3 and MK4 designs should work) and extruter head hardware to mount this extruder and you can attach the extuder controller as you did with the idler wheel based design.

I made this to drive someone insane. It will not open a hellgate in your living room or anything.

Even though there are lots of great gears on thingiverse, I couldn't resist the urge to model some too :)

The combinations of parameters are too many to upload an STL for each, so I just picked a few.

I also made a version for helical gears: thingiverse.com/thing:1339