The worst nightmare of ABS printing is warping. These disks almost reduce completely warping.

Inspired by Thing-O-Fun's "Functional Differential Gear System" I decided i should make one for my RC car. So i did.

I scaled down the gears from the above mentioned Thing, and designed the rest of the parts in my favourite cad software.

And it works surprisingly well, my car is 4WD so i have two of these in the car right now!

I'm trying to make a mind controlled tentacle and this is where I'm at so far.

Right now, the ball and socket joints are a little too loose, and the movement isn't very good (partly due to the weight of the parts).

Also the sockets are a little stiff and fragile when printed with PLA

Once all that is sorted, I'll hook it up to some servos and the obligatory Arduino.

Video of it "working": youtu.be/EVMatHNgC6s

Based on the excellent work of Thingiverse users whpthomas, emmett, and whosawhatsis, this design incorporates a spring-loaded arm to squeeze the filament between the drive gear and a bearing with a constant amount of pressure. We added improvements to the designs, such as a hole below the drive gear to guide the filament into the hot end.

MakerBot Replicator 2 owners will love the ease of this system for keeping filament running smoothly, and we salute the innovative MakerBot users who contributed to this design!

UPDATE! The hardware parts for this replacement are available for sale in our online store. Go to store.makerbot.com/drive-block-hardware-kit.html.

UPDATE! Rev2 files are now uploaded, and there are STEP files for anyone who would like to take a closer look at the design. There is also a version of the Base that can print without support material.

Another [ C60 buckyball / truncated icosahedron / soccer-ball ] lamp.

The facets on this one are designed to shade the lamp bulb only when viewed directly, and otherwise be transparent to the inside of the lamp. This effect was generally successful but less impressive than I expected.

The first design ( modern_pentagon, modern_hexagon, baffel ) had these flaws :
-- weak, flexible walls made hinges hard to manage
-- impossibly tight hinges ( required removing a lot of plastic )
-- weak supports for the light-diffusing inner panels;

The lamp pictured was built with the original design. However, I updated the design ( modern_pentagon_revised, modern_hexagon_revised, baffel_revised ) to attempt to correct these three problems.

I would print and test the hinge fit for the revised pieces, I expect them to be stronger and easier to work with, but there may be unexpected problems. You can also tweak the parameters in the .scad file yourself.

Here are some openSCAD programs that can be used to decorate a sphere. The positions for the decorations are precalculated and held as a set of coordinates that lie on a unit sphere. Given such a set of coordinates a single rotate command followed by a single translate command positions a decoration on the surface of an arbitrary sphere. The decoration can be added or subtracted from the sphere. A cylinder and a cube were added to the decorations to make containers.

Five sets of the coordinates used here come from the Platonic solids. The Platonic solids have faces, edges, and vertices lying on spheres. Coordinates for the faces of the Platonic solids were calculated from the tables of translations in thing:30421, Rounded Platonic Dice. A sixth set comes from the atomic positions of the 60 atom Bucky Ball, a truncated icosahedron.


Six sample output files are included. They are:

tetrahedron_on_sphere.stl
cube_on_sphere.stl
octahedron_on_sphere.stl
dodecahedron_on_sphere.stl
icosahedron_on_sphere.stl
bucky_ball_on_sphere.stl

The programs that produced the files are collected in Decorative_Spheres_Scad.zip

This was the Torture Test used during the 3D Print Weekend at MAKE HQ to test over 15 different printers. The model was designed by one of the testers during the weekend, Cliff Biffle, and is meant to push your printer to its limits!

See the results in the 3D Printing Special Issue, on newsstands November 13th. You can purchase it from the Maker Shed here: makershed.com/Make_Ultimate_Guide_to_3D_Printing_p/1449357377.htm

Before I never upload it, here is a ever-lasting work-in-progress.

Idea 2009, first frame from Shapeways 2010, finaly made one for FDM this year.

Seems like nothing new these days, but back then it was :-)

I completely changed the frame, and it is completely screw-/glue-/tape-less!!!1!!11!1!!!one!!!

Print, clip in components, fly.
Crash, clip in components, fly.

ROBUST!

Request: If you use this firmware, please take the time to click on "I Made One" with a picture of your bot.

This firmware took approx 10 months to write / test.

Because this isn't something printable, the best appreciation you can show for this work is to encourage others to use it by keeping it on the Thingiverse front page. Thanks to those who have done this already.

"A Sailfish is faster than a Marlin".

Sailfish is the next generation of the Jetty Firmware. It's faster and has better print quality.

Supports: Replicator 1, ThingOMatic and Cupcake (TBA)

Firmware Manual: makerbot.com/sailfish

This firmware contains many new features, some of which are: better acceleration, ditto printing, Pause@ZPos, SF50 Volumetric 5D printing.

Requirements: makerbot.com/sailfish/#toc2

Support:
Help with using this firmware can be found over at the Jetty Firmware Forum:
groups.google.com/group/jetty-firmware

Authors:
Dan Newman
Jetty
A derivative of firmware released by Makerbot Industries.

Any updates will be placed here, so check back often.

Medallion was created with OmNomNom Creator:
thingiverse.com/thing:24639

Note: This is not an official Makerbot firmware release.

This is a project I did for my wearable technology class. It is a BlinkM with a mercury switch sewn to a glove. When your hand is down the device is off but when you have a question you simply raise your hand and the mercury makes the electrical connection activating the light making you stand out as though your question can't be missed! A wonderful blend of digital and analogue tech.

I was asked for a series of Dinosaur inspired spikes that would be able to house a line of bright LED's and could have variable shapes and sizes. So here they are!

These spikes can be added to any shirt or jacket to transform yourself into a freaking dinosaur, more specifically a Stegosaurus, or even a Godzilla!

Print them from clear PLA and add LEDs with the base plate. A laser cuttable version was on hackaday: imakethin.gs/blog/glowy-dinosaur-hoody

Print your own flexible watch band. Perfect for digital and other types of watches. Use the openscad files to customize the band to the width and length you need.

It's an 8-bit heart, ready for Dual extrusion! Looks great on a key chain!

These are the parts you need to print to make your very own Fixbot from our latest video! Head over to Instructables for a full guide on how to build this quirky happy robot!

Fixbot video:
youtu.be/azhI2yFsJVU

Instructables:
instructables.com/id/EBJZVMCH5Y9WD94

The Minimalistic Mk7 replacement works so nicely, I wanted to put them on my Replicator as well. It required a slight redesign in order to fit under the piece that holds the guide tubes. I use 693 bearings on this, but you should also be able to use 623 bearings like on whosawhatsis' original.

I get much better prints with these than the stock Mk8s because they grip much better on a variety of filaments due to the compliance and there is much less friction thanks to the bearing. I was using Protoparadigm's PLA and having all kinds of problems with missing filament after reversals, but not anymore. No more lost steps or stripping on the extruders, and an added bonus is you can now clean the drive gear without disassembling the unit. Also, switching colors is quicker since you can just squeeze and pull instead of going through all that unload/reload filament business.

I have cabinets in my bathroom that were made by Ikea. I got some cool feet that screwed on to the bottom. We re-did the bathroom and put in title, but that meant that the legs were now just a bit too long.

Unfortunately, they don't make the cabinets or feet any more, I don't think. I don't want to throw away my cabinets just because the feet are an inch too long.

So I modeled up feet that slip on over the threaded rod (no threads - might be in version 3). And this way we get a choice of colors!

An art toy to be used to draw patterns on a paper. In the SketcUp file there are different sizes of the big inward gear.

Update: A friend found the real name of the thing its a: Spirograph - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph
I didn't know that when I made it. :)

Not just for beehive hairdos and potato cannons anymore - AQUANET Extra Super Hold hair spray may just be what you have been looking for to improve your 3D printer's first layer adhesion.

I made huge improvements with my leveling procedure ( thingiverse.com/thing:23257 ). Still, over time, even when my Kapton tape looked good and the build plate was level, parts would not stick.

Putting on fresh Kapton tape was the only thing that fixed this particular problem but it is a pain to do, the tape is expensive and I am cheap and lazy.

As luck would have it, I just happened to have a can of this hairspray laying around from a potato cannon project and thought "What the heck?". It does say "Super strong hold" on the can so I gave it a try. Like that first meeting of chocolate and peanut butter I had my "Eureka" moment.

I have not tried with large prints yet, but I did do an entire week of building miscellaneous small to medium sized parts with only one build plate level and perfectly bonded parts. There was no edge lifting even on parts that had a first layer chamfer!

It has to be good it has the word Miracle in the title!

This is a 3 extruder setup with a single hot-end combining nozzle, to 'mix' and blend coloured filament plastic or different materials on a RepRap or other 3D printer.


Also check out my blog at richrap.blogspot.com and

website at richrap.com

And Youtube Channel - youtube.com/user/RichRap2011

Parametric servo arms generator with OpenSCAD.

Download last version on GitHub : github.com/hugokernel/OpenSCAD_ServoArms

A couple of people on the forum have mentioned that they've broken blades on their Replicator extruder fans. Well, that sounds like a need for a fan guard.

I can't decide which one I like better, the radial, or the honeycomb pattern; so I uploaded both. To tell the truth, I'm not exactly thrilled with either, and I'm expecting someone to come up with a snazzier pattern.

The honeycomb pattern is probably more airflow restrictive, and it might benefit from a larger honeycomb pattern.