Since my personal MakerBot should be up and running soon, I thought I take a stab at tweaking this awesome design a bit. I added a little stability with some feet out to the side (which eliminate the need for additional M8 bolts to hold the thing together) and added a comb made out of 1/16" PETG to put tension on the spool so it doesn't spin freely and unravel itself.

This is my first attempt at a Sarrus linkage suitable for a Z axis. It has room for a skate bearing, 10-32 threaded rod, and 10-32 nut to drive it. In practice, this mechanism is not quite stiff enough for good printing, but it might be useful for other things.

The total range of movement is just over 100 mm.

this is a VAWT I made at the local fablab(protospace)
according to the labmanager the twist in the blades removes the pulsating noise
the normal darieus makes.
it`s made in openscad but the code is a little messy.(apart from openscad I only wrote some hello world like things for python tutorial exercises)

Nice test piece for a Makerbot and it looks cool to boot!
This is version 2. The printed part pictured was version 1. V1 had some sections that were a little too small and chunks broke off while I was cleaning up the part. V2 should solve this problem.

VIDEO HERE: youtube.com/watch?v=D7nDykz6R1o

Step one: Print one of each, but you will need two caps.

Step two: Assemble wheel onto base then cog wheel.

Step three: Press or glue pins on axles.

Step four: Spin wheel in amazement!

I was trying to dial in my Cupcake using da3v's single walled test piece, and for some reason my Cupcake started to print the design really strangely as I tweaked the settings. Eventually, even restoring the default settings would result in a print with weird blobs and the stage would orbit a lot, even though my first five prints with the same STL file were great.

Anyhow, it sounds like the problem is with my Skeinforge settings not liking the smaller wall sizes. Just to keep things consistent, I remade the part in Alibre Design to have 0.5mm walls all of the way around. The rounded corners have a constant 0.5mm thickness as well.

Based on an idea I got from MakerBlock, I decided to create a Dalek from the 2005 series. I've used drawings from various groups to create it, so it should be to scale. However, I haven't quite worked out how to attach the eye, plunger, and gun yet, so that will hopefully be in a posted update soon. I could use any suggestions on attaching them!

Thanks

This was heavily inspired by the other brain gear shared here on Thingiverse. The other brain gears I've seen are printed all-at-once by a printer with soluable support material or such. I redesigned everything from the ground up such that it can be printed on my (hopefully coming soon) Makerbot. Assembly might not be possible and I'm thinking there will probably be some breakage.

I'll try to update and get rid of some of the bugs when I get my printer in.

Warning: this code is pretty rough, but it works!

This project is a derivative of the code originally written by Allan Ecker, found at:

thingiverse.com/thing:747

thingiverse.com/thing:783

thingiverse.com/thing:849

Code will continue to be updated at github.com/davemenninger/Parametric-GCode

I will try to remember to re-upload the latest versions of the code here on Thingiverse as it changes.

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 my second prototype of a Sarrus linkage type linear axis. A Sarrus linkage uses hinged joints to make linear motion. The idea is to have a linear bearing suitable for making part of an x-y cartesian assembly without needing long polished metal rods, thus getting a 3D printer that can make more of its own parts.

Notice that there is a set of 4 holes on the top armature that match 4 hole patterns on the end pieces. This means that one axis could mount on two others at right angles.

Drive system: DC motor from a cheap garage sale inkjet printer, using the timing belt from the printer. The pulley at the other end of the belt is a screw/washer/spacer combination with a skate bearing. The skate bearing is mounted in a flexure plate style mount to give tension the belt.

Optical feedback: I took a optical quadrature encoder and encoder strip from the same printer as the motor. The encoder is mounted on the moving armature, and the strip is anchored at both ends in the end blocks.

Hinges: The hinges on the Sarrus linkage are made with 1/16" diam brass rod as the hinge pins. The holes for the hinge pins were reamed out with a 1/16" drill bit.

Frank Davies

Model jet engine with rotating fan.

Designed to be printed on an Objet Eden 350 3D printer. RepRap and Makerbot may struggle, but could be a future challenge!

The model was designed and printed for educational material on rapid prototyping technologies.