When I moved into my new house one of the caps was missing that covered the adjustment screw on my faucet. My wife asked if we could buy new ones, I said "Yeah probably, but we can definitely print new ones".

This bracelet has no clasp; instead you can stretch it over your hand and onto your wrist. It was inspired partially by the Springamathing: thingiverse.com/thing:12053. The design on the outside was inspired by MakeALot's link bracelet: thingiverse.com/thing:7354.

UPDATE: At the request of nycdesigner, a couple of alternate designs are now also available.

This thing is a quick release bicycle headlight using magnets.

Checkout these video for a demo ...
youtu.be/8rBtbKnmoKw
youtu.be/pFVRycwWcl8

Treat your plant to a new home. Print in different colours to customize your plant pot. So many combinations, which will you choose?

After installing thingiverse.com/thing:12538 , with the extruder tangential to the x-axis, I found that I had caused quite a problem with the Z axis - the drive motor would collide with the printer's frame when Z > 30, and X < 10.

So, it was back to the drawing board - same goals as last time:

1) It had to support LM8UU linear bearings.

2) It had to allow the extruder to be mounted tangentially to the x-axis, so that I could recover the print area that was currently being taken up by the extruder stepper.

3) It had to allow easy adjustment of the belt tension.

4) It had to have a place to mount an optical end-stop flag.

5) It had to provide good clearance for the hot-end.

6) It had to be as narrow as possible, so that it wouldn't reduce my print area.

With three additional goals.

7) The hot-end should be easy to remove, without removing other parts from the printer.

8) The height of the entire assembly (from top of drive gear to nozzle) should be as short as possible.

I ended up sacrificing a bit on point 5, because this is a combined carriage/extruder design, and because the hot-end is mounted higher inside the extruder body than in other designs.

I think I succeeded quite well on points 6 and 8 - it's 89mm long, and 95mm high when assembled.

If you have trouble getting keeping the carriage stuck to the printbed, you can enable the "Anchors" in the .scad. The anchors end up attached at the ends of the carriage, and help keep it all stuck down.

Note: This is a bit of a tricky print, because it uses a lot of bridges to avoid having to use supports. Make sure you have highly calibrated bridge settings, or you'll get a lot of droopy mess

Thanks to Wade Bortz, Josef Prusa, and Greg Frost, who's designs inspired this.

It works! It finally works!
youtube.com/watch?v=F9VdXtTlhCU

This revision includes minor tweaks which necessitated breaking it into 4 parts. Thank you nycdesigner, tbuser, and landru for your helpful suggestion, guidance, and sticking with me til the end.

The recorder is one of the oldest woodwind instruments. In the hands of an experienced player it creates a sound synonymous with Renaissance music. Often used in elementary music classes because of it's ease of operation. With 3D printing everyone can have one of their own to make beautiful music on... or wailing screeches if they never got past "hot crossed buns".

Here's a simple molecular modeling program written in OPENscad. It's a derivative of the OPENscad program in "Protein Models". It contains two modules, "atom" and "bond". A call to atom makes a sphere and a call to bond makes a cylinder. Atom requires a radius and a set of atomic coordinates; bond requires two sets of atomic coordinates. For example to make a water molecule we could write:

atom (.3, 0, 0, 0); // an Oxygen at the origin, .3 for its radius
atom (.25, -.96, 0, 0); // for the first H atom, .25 for its radius
atom (.25, .24, .93, 0); // for the second H atom
bond (0,0,0,-.96,0,0); // for the first O-H bond
bond (0,0,0,.24,.93.0); // for the second o-H bond

To render it all together the above commands are included within a union statement. More details in makewater.scad.

Once I had this program I began looking for coordinates of interesting molecules to print. I found a collection of fullerenes at ccl.net/cca/data/fullerenes/index.shtml Better known as "Buckyballs" you can read about the fullerenes on Wikipedia. The buckyball most discussed contains 60 carbon atoms but the coordinate collection has a range of sizes, from 20 to 540 atms.

A simple sphere made from three interlocked rings I made one day to show the whole process to a friend.

The dimensions of the rings in the provided stl files are 60mm outer diameter, 20mm height and 3mm thickness. They have been generated with one face at every 2mm of the perimeter and also, a gap of 0.4mm in the slots which gave a nice fit for the rings printed by bot1334.

The zip file contains two more examples (40mm diameter, 5mm and 10mm height and, if I'm not wrong, 2mm thickness) however, I was not using any "gap" parameter for those so... they'll need some cleaning to fit properly.

Some more pics: flickr.com/photos/aubenc/sets/72157627518857918/

UPDATE:
Replaced the OpenSCAD file with v2 version which includes a production plate for the 3 rings in one build.
(I find the multiple colors a much nicer option though...)

Also added:
- A set for three rings that should fit in a Cupcake, their diameter is 48mm, height 16mm (thickness and gap same as above) and they are distanced 2mm.
- Another set for larger build envelopes with huge dimensions (180x60x4dot5.zip)

I have NOT printed those, hope they work fine, good luck if you try them!

BTW, feedback (and picture too) for the big set is highly welcome !!! specially if it doesn't work so no one else will waste time, plastic, energy... trying it out !!!

In order to bake an apple pie...

I really am doing geodesic domes, but there's a long road I have to walk in order to get there.

This thing is the next incarnation of the geodesic library.

Being able to calculate strut lengths is one thing, and definitely a required step along the way to constructing geodesic domes. In fact, if you're just constructing them in the real world, the previous version of this library is enough, because you can calculate strut lengths and be on your merry way. But, if you what you're after is the ability to actually model the things and print them out, then you need a little bit more capabilities.

I found that I not only needed the list of vertices for a particular platonic solid, but I also needed edge lists. That is, a list of vertices that form edges. So, that's what's in this library. Otherwise, no dramatic changes.

I did add a polygon wireframe rendering module which takes the edge lists and renders a nice wireframe of the polyhedron in question. You can specify the radius of the 'wires'. I was toying with being able to render as flat faces as well, but that requires a lot more work than the simple approach I started out with (I am using my table saw to help me figure it out).

Since it's .scad files, you can alter them to suit your needs.

Based on several suggestions, I will likely stop using Thingiverse as my 'source repository', and put sources up on GitHub so they're more easily maintained. Then I can just drop model turds here when there's something interesting generated from the core libraries.

This Thing lets you convert a piece of bungee cord into a general purpose adjustable, secure, yet easily undoable elastic fastener. They are often used to attach a bicycle to a car bike rack, but can be used in plenty of other situations, such as tying up intruders until the police arrive.

The famous expanding and contracting ball toy that also makes excellent structural support for whatever sparse scaffolding you need. Basically, if you can design it as a geometric solid, you can probably make a collapsible version with this. In a pinch, also doubles as a jack or a reacher-grabber claw.

I was looking to build a NautilusX model en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus-X and realized that Thingiverse didn't even have a Hoberman sphere library. It uses one-way snaps might be useful for other projects too.

I'm not nearly clever enough to invent the Hoberman sphere. Thanks to Charles Hoberman for the original concept and helpfully detailed drawings.

This is an electric motor made from a printed circuit board, some 3D printed components, 44 magnets, 44 steel washers, and a handful of electronic components for drive circuitry.

It is similar in design to thingiverse.com/thing:802 but it is much easier to make and the performance is much better. Maximum mechanical power output is about 600 mW. Top no-load speed is about 2000 rpm. This is probably enough power to do something useful.

Also provided is an open source script that runs on Matlab or GNU Octave to generate custom motor coil patterns. The script will export CAM files in KiCad or EAGLE format, so you can fabricate coil patterns of your own liking.

While this motor used a commercially produced PCB for the coilplate, the idea is that users can produce functional motors using nothing more than their own 3D printers.

See reprap.org/wiki/Automated_Circuitry_Making for an overview of using Reprap-style printers to fabricate circuit boards.

Videos of the motor in operation are at
youtube.com/watch?v=aIj4dKaEXnU
youtube.com/watch?v=Gj_GX-TvAQU

This work was presented at ASME IDETC 2011. The paper citation is DETC2011-48602, Design of an Electromagnetic Actuator Suitable for Production by Rapid Prototyping, by Matthew Moses and Gregory S. Chirikjian

This is a library of useful connectors and parts that can be mixed and matched to create interesting linkages and body shapes for toy robots. I'll be adding new bits and pieces to this over time.

Uses OpenSCAD so everything is parametric and hackable to make your own custom parts that snap together using all plastic pin connectors.

Includes a modified inline version of Parametric Makerbot M by br3ttb thingiverse.com/thing:11105

It's a kind of evolution of my Mars Exploration Rover thingiverse.com/thing:10057

I'm leaving for my honeymoon in a couple of weeks, so I needed a way to keep my plants alive between the times when the neighbor will stop in to water everything. So I made this watering spike.

My bit of testing showed that it took about 12 hours on average for the water in the 2L bottle to drain. It lasts a little longer if the ground is wet to begin with.

EDIT 7/26/11: Spike with Threads added. This one also includes 3 "fill layers" in the middle of the spike, which makes a sort of filter at 90% fill. It slows down the drainage a little bit, and keeps particles from being sucked up into the bottle.

I always have need for a good/better vertex to construct space frames.

This derivative thing just makes a few 'improvements' to the original design.

First of all, I've modularized the code somewhat. This doesn't make any particular improvement, but it will make it easier to see what's going on, and how to add to it in the future when more vertices are needed.

Second, being the slave to phi (1.618) that I am, I changed things like the thickness of the connector to be proportional to the radius of the rods that you're using (instead of a fixed value).

I've also made a change such that the length of the connector is automatically calculated proportional to the length of the rods that you're using. The base size is 10mm, and it grows by an appropriately 'phi' influenced length. So, the ones for a 36" rod, for example, are closer to about 20mm, rather than 10mm.

With these changes, it becomes rather trivial to make good new connectors for any size, by just changing the single diameter value, and the rod length.

I've played with a lot of vertex designs over the past few months. This is one of the most compact, and easy to utilize. I give props to Sjoerd de Jong for the simplicity of the design.

In the picture, the struts are 36" long. The overall height of the structure is about 8'. With this design, the fit is strong enough that you can actually assemble the thing with one person. If you've ever done dome development, you might recognize this is a 'good thing'.

The Many Use Thing is a tool that I designed in Sketchup. It can be used for the following purposes:

* Dremel collet tightening / loosening
* 3/8" Socket Driver
* 1/4" Socket Driver
* 1/4" Socket hold for bits

-------------------------------------------

To use as a Dremel collet tightener, slide the tool over the flat part of the collet and then squeeze the arms with your thumb and forefinger while twisting to tighten or loosen.

The 3/8" and 1/4" drive shafts are for sockets. After printing they will need to be "broken in". Trim up excess plastic and force a socket on and off a few times. After that you can be assured that once a socket is put on it will not fall off.

The hole in the middle is 1/4" so you can use it as a handle for bits.

Photoset:
flickr.com/photos/23450595@N02/sets/72157626847828041/

Video:
youtu.be/c26OSuSRPE4

I made a simple sundial.

Make the south the top; and to the left side
9°=1:00
18°=2:00
30°=3:00
45°=4:00
60°=5:00
Make the south the top; and to the right side
9°=11:00
18°=10:00
30°=9:00
45°=8:00
60°=7:00

Projection plate:
Let's create a triangle on the latitude of the place where you live.

Printed Parametric Chainmail

I've been wanting to try this for a while. This is a sheet of interlocking rings, printed in place. The rings are basically square, with cut off corners. Two sets of diagonals cross each other at different heights, with four posts at the corners. Well, it makes sense when you see the pictures!

This is the first thing I've designed in OpenSCAD, so the code is probably pretty sloppy. The major parameters that can be changed are the layer thickness and line width, along with ring size and number.

I searched for "chainmail" on Thingiverse and the only result was a post by Vik on the Interlocking Rings thing: "Next, chainmail. Right?" So I hope you like this, Vik!

By request of Syvwlch ( thingiverse.com/syvwlch ) and WilliamAAdams ( thingiverse.com/WilliamAAdams ), here is a stand-alone public-domain OpenSCAD cycloidal speed reducer. As with the Wankel Engine and Roots Blower I recently posted, this is intended more as an example of an interesting mechanism than as a practical device. If you want a practical printable speed reducer, you might consider one of the other alternatives like

the worm drives on this Tank thingiverse.com/thing:8080 or
differential planetary gears thingiverse.com/thing:7390 or
cascaded spur gears thingiverse.com/thing:7379 or
this planetary gear reducer thingiverse.com/thing:8460

There are several cycloidal-type mechanisms already on Thingiverse, such as
thingiverse.com/thing:3617 and thingiverse.com/thing:3736

There are also several interesting external sites like:
zincland.com/hypocycloid/
fabricationsofthemind.com/2010/07/09/extruder-design-1-printable-1001-hypocycloidal-gearbox/
github.com/triffid/Differential_Hypocycloid
reprap.org/wiki/Differential_Hypocycloid
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerotor
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear_pump

and many many interesting youtube videos such as
youtube.com/watch?v=bRn1K2XeWVE
youtube.com/watch?v=3WvPF6uGCq4
youtube.com/watch?v=CG2sPuqEXBg
youtube.com/watch?v=AMtyFwMDL7w
youtube.com/watch?v=h236SP86nnQ

This present script is based on a design by M.F. Hill described in his 1928 patent "Internal Rotor", number 1,682,563:

google.com/patents/about?id=mdF5AAAAEBAJ&dq=1682563

Note that this design is based on an offset hypocycloid, similar to Figure I in Hill's patent. Most of the contemporary designs appear to be based on an offset epicycloid, more closely resembling Figure V in the patent.

The motivated student can modify the code so it generates epicycloidal-based profiles. Hint: start by making a module ``epitrochoidBandFast(n, r, thickness, r_off)". The motivated student could also probably clean up my train-wreck of code and/or figure out how to do arrays in OpenSCAD.

Note also that these rotors can be used for pumps - see the gifs in the comments for an example.

This is adapter to turn your micro sim card into a standard mini sim card.
This is relevant if you buy a apple iPhone 4 or iPad2, which require the new micro sim. If you for some reson should want to plug your sim card into another unit that requires mini sim card, you can print this adapter and there you go.

I saw this design: arkwhat.com/17-arkcanary-ii and decided to make my own. The holder.stl fits an iPhone 4 ass, but the parts are separate if you would like to make one to fit your phone's ass.
Video if it in action: youtube.com/watch?v=apK3GMyn45w
Designed and printed at hive76.org/

Here is my take on merging the lowrider and the mendel inspired y carriage for the cupcake.

link to bearings:
vxb.com/page/bearings/PROD/3mm/623ZZ10-1

I went with smaller bearings than the Mendel because it allowed me to do everything with M3 screws and it allowed me to drop the height a bit.

This design is shorter than the standard platform by 10mm, I was pushing for more, but the bearings killed the height gains. It does mean that you can gain back about half of the height that you loose by putting in the automatic build platform.

Also, the y rails have been separated to 70mms so hopefully that means that the platform is a bit more stable.

I attached the solidworks file for people who want to play (WARNING - the file is messy and I was bad and made all of my parts in one part file). If you would like any other formats like .igs, .step and the like, just shout.

Should have all of the holes teardropped later today. - Truncated teardrop holes are up, that's a pain.

Update:
The stl files from solidworks would not slice in Rep G, I have no idea why, if you know please tell me.

I reuploaded all of the stl files and tested them in Rep G 19 they seem to work but I will not have a chance to print until Monday.

I have all of the parts, now on to the debug... so you do not have to...

The updated files are in the zip file, I got rid of the first generation of parts. Things were moved around a bit and these are the updates after printing round one and putting it into the makerbot. I should have all of the gen 2 parts printed and through debug tomorrow.

Update 2 - I got the bearings in and other that a few "What the hell was I thinking..." moments that were easily repaired with an X-acto knife, everything went great. I'm in the process of printing the gen 3 parts and everything should be cool now. I'll post pictures and video once the final draft is printed.

Update 3 - In process of using gen 3 platform to print gen 4 platform. Once I have printed and assembled it, I will upload files. I think that will be it for variations.

Update 4 - Gen 5 files are out and I can now say you can download them and print!

Update 5 - Instructions are up.

Update 6 - I just uploaded the gen 7 version - I have not had a chance to print it yet, I was getting annoyed with the slight curve in my heat spreader and decided to rip it apart and lap it until it was flat.

This update addresses:

Adding nut pockets on all adjusting screws for bearing tension to make adjusting easier (do not have to hold nut in place)

Back X bearings cluster has been reworked so the is less interference with the X pulley.

Back X bearing adjustment screw head has been nested into the plastic to have less interference with X belt.

Interference between Y belt attachment nuts and plastic bodies has been addressed

X belt attachment point has been lowered.

First shot at integrating endstops have been added.


I think that that is about it. I will shout when the directions have been updated, everything should be the same except the endstop part.

If you have already printed this and do not want to reprint, reprint parts 09 and 16, those have to do with X belt and pulley issues. (and they are small)

I just sent out the third package of nuts, washers, and screws. If anyone else wants them, just message me.

Gaffertape kindly updated the files so if you are using the older repG and skeinforge, use the resaved gen 7 files.

Update: Finally updated for mechanical endstops, instructions still need to be updated though.

Changes from Mark I:
* handle below gimbal-assembly
* handle offset to be on the axis of the center of gravity
* handle free to yaw due to 2 608 ball bearings.
* attachment of side-handle still possible and compatible with Gimbal Mark I
* Gimbal Mark I can be upgraded by replacing "grip_v07" with "grip_v08"+"handle_v08". "inner" and "outher" are basically unaffected

A slightly more parametric version of the above thing. I needed a quick handle for a 5.5mm bit, and this turned out to work quite well.

You can scale the bit holder and screw cap with a single parameter. To adjust the handle, you will still have to adapt a bit more to your needs. It has a few unparametric template objects to cut off the handle (for smaller build surfaces) and reshape the handle grip (to make it more comfortable). The scad file requires the stl files of the above thing.

Feel free to flattr this, the original thing, or any derivatives if it helped you like it helped me. I did.

For a very nerdy Valentine's Day, I give you heart gears. This was inspired by Greg Frost's Broken Heart thingiverse.com/thing:4683, but it fits in the palm of your hand and can be twisted like some kind of worry ball. It makes use of the heart shape from thingiverse.com/thing:6190, the MCAD involute bevel gear script from thingiverse.com/thing:3575, and nophead's polyhole script for making properly dimensioned tap holes thingiverse.com/thing:6118.

UPDATE: If you lack a 3D printer, you can now buy these from CarryTheWhat at etsy.com/shop/CarryTheWhat.

I was daunted by the complexity of Greg's design, so this one is much simpler, having fewer gears, and a much simpler attachment design (simply thread the bolts into tight plastic holes). It also uses a smooth heart shape and is made for the hand instead of the desk.

This edge lock system for paper and plastic works great for realizing meshes from thin sheets of material. It avoids the negative accumulated error common with the classic glue and tab method of construction. Instead the edges have enough freedom to adjust towards the perfect position.

Look here for more examples:
shadowfolds.com/SlideTab
flickr.com/photos/shadowfolds/sets/72157625779410170/

A kinetic sculpture made using my parametric bevel gear script inspired by this: brainblog.to/item/2008/11/herz-aus-zahnraedern
I modeled the entire thing from scratch in OpenSCAD, starting with the Parametric Involute Bevel and Spur Gear script I posted some time ago. I have added an additional complexity to the movement because not only do the gears spin, but the axes of the gears rotate too.

Being a kinetic sculpture, you really need to see it in motion:
youtube.com/watch?v=Zx28cHA4_KI

Be warned that before you attempt to print this, an improved technique for attaching the gears to the central mount is really needed.

I have the openscad files for everything, although there are so many parts that it is a bit of a process generating the STLs from them.

If someone wants to collaborate on a better way to mount the gears, let me know.

connectors for 5 and 6 point connection to build a dome based on 8mm (M8) rods, see


In the openscad you can edit the some values for sizes and strength.

Use on your own risk.

Mashed Wades Geared Nema 17 with Adrian's hot end so I could check out Adrian's new hot end ( reprap.org/wiki/Geared_extruder_nozzle ) and another hot end by Tim. It is 14mm wider to allow 2 4mm bolts to attach to trapped 4mm nuts. This is only the extruder block the rest needs to be download from Wade's original extruder or other derivatives there of.

Warning - after some testing the bolts got too hot and pulled through the extruder block / redesign on the way.

This is an LCD and keypad control panel for controlling a Reprap Motherboard based fabber like the MakerBot CupcakeCNC. With this you will be able to use your fabber without needing to attach it to a computer. You can set heater temperatures, move and zero the axes and print .s3g and .gcode files directly from the SD card. The LCD will show you continuous temperature readings, position, and build progress.