This is a fun project I started during the christmas holidays.

I combined thingiverse thing no 10650 with a yoda figure from the 3D galery.
The details have been reduced to make the HQ yoda printable.

Read more details on: ifeelbeta.de/index.php/art-objects/printable-yoda-figure

May the force be with you
BonsaiBrain

A modular cable dock / tidy based on a Duplo brick. Grab some Duplo bricks (or of course print one) and then snap on these cable holders to suit. There's a blank design as well as a USB one and one with an Apple logo. Of course you could expand these to have more symbols for specific devices. I've fixed mine to the base stand on my iMac with Velcro and it works great.

This is a complete parametric version of pourable mendel parts.

All Mendel parts are openscad models now. Some of them where fortunately already made by Tim Schmidt (http://github.com/timschmidt/parameterized-mendel).
All others where completly recreated in openscad after the original stls. This allows to make stls with adapted hole sizes, so they have the correct size when printed on your 3d printer.
No drilling needed.

Some parts where changed to make them easier pourable, those models differ from the original mendel parts in appearance but not in functionallity.
The modified parts are:

z-leadscrew base and z-motor-mount: The long horzontal holes were splitted like in our prusa counterparts.
y-bearing-360: The cavity had to be opened to make it pourable.
x-barclamp_m3: The parts has been made flat on one side to allow pouring.

Some molds look really complicated, but they are pourable without any problem and have already lasted many casts.

The timing belt pulley was taken and modified from Erik de Bruijns design.
The pulley for the x- and y-axis is a modified form of thingiverse.com/thing:3104 with 3 set screw holes to make a balanced fit.

Als before we cast this set with all temperature critical parts tempered to withstand 100° ambient temperature.

Read more about this on: ifeelbeta.de

Buy now at: 2printbeta.de

Or make your own with the files below ! :-)

Your 2Printbeta - Team

This is a derivative work of the original Prusa 3D printer (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4148).

The idea of metrix labs' pourable clonedel parts was good, but the parts have some technical shortfalls.
So I changed some parts into a pourable and working Prusa 3D printer.

This is the result:

The parts are like a standard reprap Prusa Mendel 3D printer. Most of the parts are pourable just the way they are. Only a few parts have too long holes inside or the walls are too thin - these parts had to be changed.
The affected parts: The XMotor, the XIdler and the 2 ZMotors, the vertices and some smaller parts like the barclamps and the endstop holders.

The Vertices of a Prusa have about 2 mm wallthickness around the vertical holes. This seemed to be not enough for a casted part. So we made them stronger, but not as thick as Mendel vertices.

The XMotor, XIdler and ZMotor have very long holes inside. We cut out at the side of the parts to split these long holes. Also the XMotor and the XIdler have large nut traps for capturing a spring.
These nut traps have been separated to a second part. This way the nut/spring trap keeps its function while being pourable. You can simply screw the two parts together.

The clamps and the endstop holders have an increased wall thickness to provide more stability.

The major advantage is: All the casted parts have already holes inside!

We developed a special casting technique in which bridges act as spacers for the holes. In most cases this concept works perfect.
This reduces the amount of holes to be drilled to 10!

The holes which are not pourable are the filament hole in the Wades extruder and the mounting holes in the small Wades gear and the pulleys.
All other holes are already in the casted part.

The second advantage is: To prevent melting of the parts we used a special thermoresistant polyurethan instead of Smooth Cast 325.
After tempering the parts resist temperatures up to 120 °C.

If you want to get more information visit: ifeelbeta.de

I also mixed a making of video: youtube.com/watch?v=tf-F0O9J1nA&feature=player_embedded

A video about the thermal resistance can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=V3zs0h04HIY

You can buy a Set of these parts at: 2printbeta.de

I uploaded only a few parts as stl. All other parts can be found in the 7zip file.

Greetings from the lake of constance
BonsaiBrain

This has been the ultimate project for me, and is now finally functional after 8 months of blood, sweat and ABS.
It is also made on my 3d printed makerbot ( thingiverse.com/thing:3285 )

The printer can easily get taller by adding more z-elements and replacing z lead-screws and wobble arrester bars. I would then end up with almost 800mm build hight.

It wouldn't surprise me if this is the largest printed multi-piece object, as it is built from 15+ lbs of ABS plastic.

Specs
Footprint: 800x560
Build envelope: 500x300x200+
Platform: Heated with 800W, custom ordered, silicone wire wound element.
- Kapton sheet, custom ordered to fit platform (500x300)
Motors: NEMA 23
Extruder: MakerBot Stepstruder® MK6 Plus
Electronics: MakerBot® Generation 4
Interface: PC/Mac or MakerBot® Gen 4 Interface Board Kit v1.1
Motion: all axis uses linear bearings for smooth motion.

Build duration: 8 months
Plastic used: 15+ lbs
Price: 3000$ (approx.)

Video of the printer in action: youtube.com/watch?v=Cx2OUO-aSFQ

Inspired by the Starship Enterprise from the original series (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8100), I tried to make a printable version of the new Starship Enterprise NCC1701-D.
I found a model of the Enterprise on the google sketchup galery. As always it was hard work to come from the raw stl-export to a one-hull File.
After doing that, I cut it into 3 pieces. So I gave red PLA a try but realised soon that you need some really warp free filament to print the middle part.

A change to phosphorescent PLA and it was printable without support structures.

The final Enterprise was glued together with epoxy glue and is an excellent addition to my romulan warbird (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8789).

Feel free to cut it somewhere else to get it printable with a different filament.
...or try 2printbeta.de to get some...

read more about this on: ifeelbeta.de

Greetings from the lake of constance
BonsaiBrain

This is a design of a lego compartible toothed rack.
It is full parametric because the accuracies of lego are not achievable with a DIY 3D-printer.

With these settings it gets printed on my reprap mendel to a fitting brick.
If you change one value only by 0.1 mm it wouldn't fit anymore.

So try yourselves and have fun.

Read more about this on: ifeelbeta.de

Greetings from the lake of constance
BonsaiBrain

This afternoon I was looking for some nice space shuttle to print. I found one here thingiverse.com/thing:1966 , but it seemed to be a bit to smooth.
So I googled a little and found some fitting object in the 3D galery. I resized it and repraired it using netfabb and after a short time I printed one with a length of about 105 mm.
The upper wing is a bit too thin to be printable precisely, but it is a little more detailed than the mentioned space shuttle.

But the real cool feature: It is glowing in the dark using phosphorescent PLA.

The model you can download here is scaled up to a length of 135 mm hoping that this size is big enough to print a better wing.

Greetings
BonsaiBrain

More about this and where to get the glowing in the dark PLA: ifeelbeta.de

Soft pla is a very good material to print. After the first experiments with the feed and flow rate on my mendel reprap, I found a working profile. Slow but strong.
Just for fun I tried to make a copy of a part of the belt around my x-axis. Because the soft pla has the same color - light grey - I had this idea.

OpenSCAD again proofed to be very good for things like that. I made a singe pattern of one tooth and the following gap and copied it 20 times.

The comparison to the original belt was stunning.

The next step was printing an endless belt. The design with openSCAD was a bit tricky, but I never stop learing commands.
For this I had to tweak the skeinforge profile a little, but the result was worth tuning: The belt is fitting.

I tested it with some mendel parts screwed together and fixed on my desk. The endless belt is around 380 mm - quite ok and not the maximum at all.
It is very though, but not tought enough - you can break it with brute force. But the elasticity is ok. It stretches about 2 mm (~0.5%) until it breaks.
Not comparable to the belts used in the reprap machines but more resistant than ever expected.

More about this and where to get this soft PLA on: ifeelbeta.de

Greetings
BonsaiBrain

One of the most important tools in a car wash is the mop. It's a mess if it's broke.
Especially, if only the screw between the shaft and the brushes breaks.

One has to buy a complete new shaft, because this screw is not available separately.

But if you have a 3D printer, you can reprint this screw :-)

I redesigned it in openSCAD and printed it in blue PLA with a slice thickness of 0.2 mm to have a very clean shape.
The result is one of my best prints since I have my mendel - and best of all: It fits into the brushes on the one side and into the shaft on the other side.

So, if anybody also possesses this kind of mop with a broken screw and - of course - a 3D printer: here is the design :-)

You can read more about it on: ifeelbeta.de

Here is my entry to the Open Call for Open Science Equipment Contest, detailed here:
thecitizensciencequarterly.com/2010/11/25/open-call-for-open-science-equipment/

Start with the video to see what this is all about:
youtube.com/watch?v=1d4_SQBTFjg
vimeo.com/17497511

Download the .zip file to get everything, or get the individual pieces you want.

This is an open-source orbital shaker for mammalian cell and tissue culture and for bench-top science. The orbital shaker fits inside a standard 37 ºC/5% CO2 cell incubator and puts out no heat so you can load up the incubator full of these things. We have used them for 2 weeks now and the design is very simple, inexpensive, and scaleable. Our cells are growing happily in these shakers.

Orbital shakers are typically ~$1,500 and even more expensive if you need one that is designed for a cell incubator so that it will not put out any heat (incubators only have heating and not cooling functions, so if equipment puts out too much heat it will kill all the cells in the incubator).

To accomplish this goal I used an arduino microcontroller, Pololu stepper motor controller, and an inexpensive stepper motor. A DC motor could have been used but it is very difficult to control the rotational speed with high accuracy since the DC motor rotation speed varies based on load. Instead I used a $10 stepper motor and a pololu stepper motor controller at 1/16th stepping.

I used a NEMA 17 motor. Lin Engineering 4218L-01-11 works very well. It can do 75 oz-in and has lots of torque so it can be run at 1/16th stepping and at low current without generating any heat.

I used 3D printed parts I designed and printed with a MakerBot to make the off-axis motor connector and bearing plate holder.

Nuts and bolts are used to finish the design.

Stepper motors are known to put out enormous vibrations, so part of the design also required rubber tubing stand-offs which smooth out the motion of the orbital shaker and also dampen all of the motor vibration.

Coding the stepper motor rotational speed was straightforward once we calibrated the correct delay time between motor steps. We typically run the shakers at 2 Hz (2 revolutions per second) but can easily get anywhere from 0.2-5 Hz with the current setup.

Full sources are available on Thingiverse, posted today.

If you want to buy a commercially available orbital shaker you're going to spend ~$1500.00 USD.

Cost Breakdown for Open Source Orbital Shaker:
First shaker minimum requirements to get started:
ATX Power Supply $30
Arduino $30
USB plug and long cable $20
Motor $10
Bearing $1
Tubing $1
Motor controller $40
Wire $4
Nuts and Bolts $5
3D printed parts $0.50
Total: $141.50

Additional shakers, incremental requirements:
Motor $10
Bearing $1
Tubing $1
Motor controller $40
Wire $4
Nuts and Bolts $5
3D printed parts $0.50
Total Incremental cost for each additional shaker: $61.50

Currently we have 4 shakers being driven concurrently with this setup (one set of electronics).

And here (attached) is a video of them working in our incubator!

My design would benefit from winning this contest by being able to design a lasercut case for the electronics and make a kit that could be purchased directly by customers. I would make the 3D printed parts lasercut instead to make production easier.

All of these parts are sourceable from SparkFun and Ponoko. The motor controller I used is not from SparkFun but SparkFun has many that would work for this application, or they may be willing to sell the controller that I am using (from JohnYang.com). John Yang's controller is available from MakerGear.com.

This orbital shaker is likely to have numerous applications in bench-top science in addition to in vitro cell culture.

This is a steppermotor carriage for a laserpointer. You can mount it to a m8 bar.
It was designed to move the laserpointer of a 3D scanner very slowly but continuously.

The steppermotor has a step angle of 0.9 °. The controller has a substepping of 16, so one complete rotation is divided into 6400 steps.

Now it is possible to scan with a resolution of 1280x1024 with an almost perfect result!

You can drink as much coffee as you like - it will not affect your 3D scans :-)

For more information visit: ifeelbeta.de