I wrote a script to generate lasercut boxes. The script reads a config file with the box dimensions and generates a DXF file and an OpenSCAD model. We use the script for all types of cases here at metalab. The example file attached is the case of our electronic door lock system.

The script can be found here:
svn.clifford.at/handicraft/2009/boxgen/

You might need to install SPL (the scripting language I've used for the script) before you can use the script:
clifford.at/spl/

This is Thing-a-Week #3, previous things can be found here. iheartrobotics.com/search/label/thing-a-week

This is version 0.0 of a modular case for an Arduino and other electronics projects. After testing I am going to look into getting the pieces injection molded in bulk.

They are designed to fit 6 across in a 1U Rack, or 4 across turned the other way.

There is room for most shields, and space in the front of the case for a display circuit board. The end piece with a cutout is designed to hold a 3mm thick plate you can laser or hacksaw out of acrylic, wood or whatever.

I think the Makerbot versions should work if your printer has problems with overhangs. Let me know if I forgot anything.

Feedback is greatly appreciated.

A box for your AVR Dragon!
3 Files are needed , the right order is : 4mm Part, 6mm, 6mm , 3mm and then once again 4mm.
4mm parts are top and bottom, of course you could use thinner or thicker material.
2 times 6mm material is used for the USB opening. 3mm for the ribbon cable opening.
Use 3mm screws to assemble it.
Enjoy!

Modular Boxes.

Print boxes and drawers and combine them as you want.

I've always been a last minute Christmas shopper and it has usually worked out. This year I had a request to get a Connect Four game, but I couldn't find it in stock anywhere. So I decided to make my own version of it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_four

After working like one of Santa's Elfs for a few hours (minus the green tights) I had beautiful Connect Four style game.

flickr.com/photos/spikenzie/sets/72157623097248216/

Just some parametric and printable key rings modeled in openSCAD.org

The trinket is my way of wishing makerbot happy holidays and it was printed before our extruder ran into some trouble a few days ago. I've also modeled icons for other projects I got to know and love (miniature reprap mendel, thingiverse's gear logo, openMaterials logo), and I'm just waiting to be able to print them before uploading those files.

This is my first attempt at making a menorah in a laser cutter out of 1/8\" acrylic. It\'s meant to be glued together not press fit and should accept \'standard\' Hanukkah candles. I stopped by a local supermarket that carries kosher stuff and bought the cheap kind of candles and they fit perfectly.. the thicker tapered ones need a lot of coaxing.. Making the channels wider would fix this... or maybe I\'ll add a taper, so that the \'holes\' are V shaped maybe next week... DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER! It turns out this thing is flamable FLAMABLE FLAMABLE!!!!!! Use it with either electric candles or with some sort of candle holder put into the holes... DANGER

Here's my attempt at a Christmas Ornament in the shape of a Makerbot. This was pretty fun to make, but came out smaller than I thought due to a conversion issue in Rhino. Good thing I'm not plotting a course to Mars...

The large version is just under 3cm wide. The small one is scaled by 75%.

This ornament obeys the three laws of robotics.

Here's a peek at what MakerBeam looks like!

We were hoping to get this printed awhile ago, but people get busy, things happen, and apparently boards fry on neighborhood MakerBots, so here it is: a 10 cm long mockup of MakerBeam.

We call this a mockup because the beam profile will not be this exactly. This should be easier to print, and we're not quite done revising the tooling documents with our manufacturer. It's got the basics down: a 10x10mm beam with a 3mm slot. It won't hold circuit boards or other thin panels as well as the actual extruded beam.

Many connectors one might design based on this profile will work no problem; some might have to be modified slightly. Have fun playing around!

The original file has multiple problems for printing and is included as a reference. The 10mm standing file and the 15x15mm file print fine according to Erik de Bruijn, who made the modifications. I recommend printing the 15x15mm model to end up with something you can play with.

kickstarter.com/projects/701662757/makerbeam-an-open-source-building-kit

Makerbot-printable pliers for light-duty uses. Designed to be useful for holding small things during inspection, or simply doing things fingers can not.

There is a male arm, a female arm, and a printable nut. The female swivels around the male, and the nut constrains the assembly. The geometry of the threads are based on the connections seen in the toothbrush holder and originally in the screwable jewelry box. ( thingiverse.com/thing:899 , thingiverse.com/thing:413 )

Alternatively, if the design is too optimistic, you can try printing two female arms and use a small screw and nut to hold it together.

All three pieces combined use a total of 1.24 cubic inches of material.

While talking to Zach I got inspired to model lego bricks in order to create custom bricks - the ones you always wanted but thought you never could get. Well now you can!

Of course it does not snap in place as nicely as original lego bricks but it should be good enough to create the custom lego piece you always wanted.

I usually watch my iPod at night while I’m sitting in bed - the problem is having to hold the iPod out in front of my face. I thought that it would be nice to have some helping hands, so I designed some.

This is my design for a landscape iPod nano "hand" holder - hence the cheesy "i" prefix to the name.

I don't know why I didn't make this design available a long time ago, but I just remembered I was hanging onto it when I could have been sharing it.


The design is free of charge. You can use it on the proviso that you share a small part of your personal expertise in the education of others. You can do this in any way that you wish and your contribution need only be small. If you’re a busy person then you can always contribute to a charity like The Fred Hollows Foundation hollows.org

A member from CCCKC approached me over a month ago wanting to make some special promotional badges for Defcon. They wanted something like these (http://inventgeek.com/Projects/Laser-Fab-LED-Necklace/overview.aspx) but wanted to keep the form factor of their previous badges (luggage tag size, basically). This is the first prototype version of the resulting LED badges.

These badges are glued together, so they don’t have any protruding fasteners, but the battery can easily be replaced (the LED can as well but that’s a little harder). The battery door is meant to be kept in place with a key ring or badge clip, but seems to stay in place with friction on the prototypes. I’ve included both 3mm (if you’re using 1/8” acrylic) and 5mm (for 1/4" acrylic) LED templates. If you want a thinner badge, use the 3mm LED version, but be warned that warping can be an issue if you etch it too deep. I have black acrylic in hand so the back and middle sections of the badges are cut from that, but there’s nothing stopping you from making the entire thing out of clear acrylic.

This is a small wooden box I made while learning the box-making process. The design allows the box top to be placed on the bottom in any orientation without disrupting the checkered pattern. Also, all four sides are identical, as are the top and bottom. I did this so I wouldn't have to keep track of which part belongs where.

Okay, this is not quite done, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

This version is less prone to cracking. Instead of a washer and nut, there is an M6 tapped hole in a piece of aluminum. But best of all, two can be bolted together to form a dual head extruder. Yes, you can have one or two of the same extruder! I'm working on a mount for this right now.

See my YouTube videos of previous versions for theory of operation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMjVrmLJvIU) and how quickly the filament can be changed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_isuzpvjBc)

Subversion svn.makerbot.com/users/charles/paxtruder/

This is a box I made for exposing photoresist-coated PCBs to ultraviolet light. It's what Kelly used to make the PCB connector for the thermal printer [1]. I used scavenged parts, so I can't give a list of everything I used in making it. You can find more information for this box and photo etching on our wiki [2].

[1] nycresistor.com/2009/10/13/thermal-printer-success/
[2] wiki.nycresistor.com/wiki/Photoresist_PCB_Etching

Designed for an upcoming robotics competition at WPI in which the robots must "improve quality of life" in some way:

Bloombot is an open-source automated hydroponics system that aims to build community and increase the engagement of people with their food. Bloombot is capable of growing plants like lettuces and herbs throughout the year and, through use of Twitter integration hopes to build off the work of other products (like AeroGrow and Botanicalls) to integrate some of their functionality to produce a machine that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Still working on finishing up the parts list but it's almost complete.

In honour of Thingiverse Thursday here's a design that has been sitting on our hard drive for a little while.

Its a simple little box that makes wiring up an 8 x 8 LED Matrix easy. It uses the MAX7219 (or 7221) LED driver chip from Maxim and uses the Matrix library in the Arduino library.

For Details on how to wire up and program try:
arduino.cc/playground/Main/MAX72XXHardware

A small video of it scrolling a Valentines day message:
flickr.com/photos/snazzyguy/3277618701

A design for an USB tiny ISP kit, sold by Adafruit Industries. This thing replaces the supplied black enclosure.

A little box for holding 5 potentiometers and three switches. Making it super easy to add inputs to your next Arduino project.

It seems that many of my things I'll be giving as Christmas presents this year are small, less then a few inches in dimensions. That brings up the question, How do I pack it? One could put the thing in a envelope or a small plastic bag, but all of those like a distinct "giftiness", they don't really look like a gift.

Enter the Folded Box, it's small enough to print and/or cut from a piece of standard size card stock. You can also easily customize it with a logo or name to make it that much cooler.

The box is cut from a single sheet of material. Thick paper, card stock and poster board work well. This pattern will not work well with corrugated cardboard since the thickness of it will make the folds difficult to make.

There are two sizes:

The 7x8 pattern produces a final box that is about: 2.5 x 2.5 x 1 inches inside.
The 8x8 pattern produces a final box that is about: 3.5 x 2.5 x 1 inches inside.

If you are interested in more of my stuff check out: 4volt.com

It's a geared calling card! Two slots in the top layer display different information as you turn the smaller gear, and a little window lets you watch the gears mesh.

A calling card with working planetary gears. Astound your friends, frustrate your nemisii.

(Update: I've moved the gears slightly to the right, reducing the number of cut parts to assemble.)

Felt like the Old School Space Rocket needed a stand to show it off to best effect... and I needed something to play around with automatic tab generation in sketchup.

Here's the result, dressed up to look like a cartoon exhaust cloud.

This is a 4-pin tumbler lock with a key and display case. Insert the key and turn clockwise to get a smiley face!

This version is for 1/8" thick acrylic, rather than 1/4", and half the height. A single 12"x12" stock will get you two complete nave sections, i.e. eight times the Gothy goodness of the original.

Isn't multiplication fun?

This is a model of the classic pulp SciFi rocket, which takes the hero, the sidekick and the romantic interest, to the stars!

For something that fits in a 12"x12" sheet, this thing will tower nearly 15" tall, overawing any primitive aliens you are likely to meet. Well, the shorter ones anyway.

Heavily inspired by Herge's Tintin comics, which are a must read.

The other day while hacking at NYC Resistor, I realized I was getting a crick in my neck sitting hunched over at my laptop. I needed some sort of laptop stand to get the screen up higher, and one that I could get my external keyboard under so my computer wasn't too far away. I'd never seen exactly what I was looking for, so I figured I'd whip one up!

A little while later, with some help from Inkscape and our Lazzzor, I had this laptop stand.

Because the stand is made from 3 flat pieces which you can take apart, it's extremely portable and light.

Keys and a candle stick. First foray with the lazzzor so just seeing how it does. Wee!