Its a paper bag catcher for ABP

In the comments from MakerBlock's blog post on the MakerBot blog, tre3 had the idea of making a linear bearing from plastic. Since I really like how my ball bearings turned out using steel BBs, I thought I'd try designing a linear bearing using the same bearings.

The first step was to get the basic BB function working. I designed a "racetrack" so the bearings could make a loop and only contact the bar in a straight line. My original idea was to have three racetracks arranged so that the BBs contacted the bar in an equilateral triangle configuration. This proved very difficult to adjust.

After failing with the three racetracks, I decided to try a flat version with four racetracks. This would be nice and compact in one direction (typically vertically) and be easy to adjust. It would also only require two parts because each part could have two racetracks built-in.

The racetrack is designed so the groove gets larger when the BBs are away from the rod. No reason to constrain them as tightly until they are contacting the rod.

Pictures to come!

This is a small parts bin I made to help keep organized. It is made out of scrap cardboard that would otherwise be thrown away. Similar parts bins may be found in stores for approximately two or three dollars each.

This is my XY plotter that I created to test out our ARC code for our multi axis (up to 254 networked) stepper motor controller called TinyG. You can read more about TinyG here.
synthetos.com/wiki/index.php?title=Projects:TinyG

I do realize that it would not take much more to create a z axis and make this a CNC machine. This is the plan. However if anyone else wants to mess with it. Please go for it. Also, if anyone is in the Washington DC metro area and wants to mess with the machine let me know.

The metal parts are all made from the contraptor frame work. (http://www.contraptor.org) However, that being said you do not have to drill the holes in every part. Just drill them where you are going to need them.

All metal is aluminum with the exception of the Y axis "angle rails" these are made from home depot steel angle. Both steel and alum angle is 1" x 1" x 1/8". Possibly the coolest thing about this design is the fact that all the stuff that needs to be accurate is cut with the laser. Another cool feature is your size limitation of this is really only limited by the length of lead screws / angle rail length you can get. This design should be easy to support 6 - 8 ft tables with no real "changes" needed. (I think..)

The bearings used are 805 regular skate bearings. (5mm centers.. or 5/16") All hardware (with the exception of the 5/16" bolts used on the "trucks" for the bearings) are 10-24 and 1/4"

Threaded 1/4" rods are what are used to "sandwich" the parts together.

The wood is all 1/2 inch plywood. Pick your poison. This should work just fine with 1/4 stuff doubled up. I am able to cut this on my 40W epilog laser in 1 pass ever since I picked up the 4" lens.

A hexapod with servo joints. This design is quite big and needs strong servos but looks really cool ^^.

I used 20 HD-2213MG Servos (http://www.servodatabase.com/servo/power-hd/hd-2213mg) . If you use other servos you need to modify the embeddings for the servos and servo horns. You may make the upper and lower legs shorter to get shorter leverage.

Finally the parts get assembled with M2 thread rod and nuts.

(This applies to the yellow part in the pictures. In the black and yellow assembly you see it in use)

This is an adapter plate that will allow you to put a NEMA 17 compliant stepper motor where there's room for a NEMA 23, and vice versa. I've tested it to work fine for putting a NEMA 17 motor on my X-motor bracket.

The SCAD has become a bit messy in the process because I should have used the specification instead of trial and error. But you will probably only need the STL anyway. The rendering looks odd, but it slices fine with skeinforge.

We are developing a 3d scanner based on parts printed from a makerbot. These files show the printed parts, put together with a logitech camera, a laser, and a mirror mounted on a galvanometer. The basic idea along with our first implementation is described here: abarry.org/stereo

We are developing the software using a microchip PIC to drive the mirror, along with software to obtain point clouds and meshlab to mesh the point cloud. There is a long way to go with the software, but at least we have some nice printed hardware to get the data. UPDATE: new scans -- we've added a screenshot of a scanned artichoke!

I made this as a little present for someone.

I still had a few pieces of the lasercut scrap wood from my internship at Makerbot Industries over the summer and I liked the black/wood aesthetic of my wall clock thingiverse.com/thing:834 so I decided to make a box with the same stuff.

A python script to generate OpenSCAD models to generate two parts of a box that screw together and snap fit if you find your way through the maze :)

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 a printed spindle holder. It's more than strong enough and still uses only a little plastic filament. It's designed to accommodate the Bits From Bytes filament spindles. It's not the cheapest source, but it's really nice for various accents. Also, if you print toys, using colour really gives it the toy feeling :)

The one with the blue filament is my last iteration. It works really well. Also, there is little friction so skate bearings are definitely overkill for this application (which are used in my other spindle holder and the excellent derivatives by others)

Tip: just the A part will also work, especially when its a bit oversized it will be a bit convex. You can then put the spindle on its side and it will revolve like a carousel. It's slightly less reliable but much, much simpler.

Related blog post: Accessories evolution: Spindle holders!
blog.erikdebruijn.nl/archives/123-Accessories-evolution-Spindle-holders!.html

This design is a derivative of the Paxtruder-0.2:
thingiverse.com/thing:1125

My idler wheel cracked about 2 weeks ago so I though it would be a good time to experiment with the Paxtruder design a bit. I planned on making it a weekend project because I had plenty of acrylic around and I had some 1/2" thick acetal scrap to make a pusher but, unfortunately, I had to put in an order to McMaster to finish this guy so it didn't get completed till now.

I wanted a drop in replacement for my extruder hardware for testing that could utilize as much of my current MakerBot components as possible, and this design seems to fit the bill. You can use your existing dino mounts (both MK3 and MK4 designs should work) and extruter head hardware to mount this extruder and you can attach the extuder controller as you did with the idler wheel based design.

This is a calendar that you can reuse over and over again. Each month, just pop out the tiles and set them in place for the new month. You should mount this in a frame or something with an incline, as nothing but gravity keeps the tiles from coming out while it's in use.

I've designed form for casting silicone button pad. They have exact same dimensions as buttons on monome. Now I have to do few more tries to avoid some errors but Itll be great. Designed in OpenSCAD and its parametrized, so you can generate as big form as you want :-) there is a room for LED inside button, just like in button pad from Sparkfun etc.

It works, but the feel of pressing isn't same as on the monome, I've updated design a little and it should be better now.

If you have vacuum chamber you are lucky and you can have bubble free cast :-)

I've tried to embed some conductor when casting, but it wasn't great idea. Next time > cast and then glue the conductor :-) (in this case simple aluminium foil) >>> any tip for better and easier conductor??

Faceplate and PCB for this button pad is on the way too!! I'm looking forward to print my own MONOME!!

I thought it would be point less to publishing this, but after seeing "Sumobot Chassis by langfordw" I said to my self why not. The EEEI Robotic ieee.rutgers.edu/robotics/ club at Rutger was inviting all student to joint the line following competition to build a robot from a kit. More detail description of the kit can be found here ieee.rutgers.edu/robotics/attachments/069_Kit_Description.pdf. They also made four classed meeting once a week for student who have no skill in soldering or programing to assemble the kit. After the four classes student have two week to prefect their bot before the competition. The kit costs $65, but since I already had Atmega sitting alone in a box I decided to get the kit without the Freeduino for $45. I got chance to use the Atmega and learn how to program it. I could not let this opportunity just pass by.

So this is a project I've been thinking about trying out with my robotics club here at Tufts. I played with sumobots a while back in highschool but it turned out to be sort of boring because everyone was using the same kit robot and the same code. The Makerbot is a game changer here. The ability to totally customize a sumobot from the ground up with relatively little effort is awesome. I can't wait to see whole Makerbot sumobot tournaments.

Full disclosure.... this is a relatively difficult print and really pushes the limits of the build size. My makerbot was up to the challenge of the 2.5hr print and resulted in only minor warping but it was definitely a little stressful to watch.

I'm working on another (maybe better, maybe worse) version with multiple parts that slot together which would ensure more uniformity across makerbots.

There are some little plastic mounts used for attaching mini servos together. They are NOT strong enough to support any weight, but they work well enough for playing with the servos. I used this assembly to test some servo control ideas, including inverse kinematics for positioning. More information available here: blog.notzero.net/2009/11/playing-with-servo-motors.html

The models were made in SketchUp. The parts in the SketchUp file are all scaled by a factor of 1000 (meters instead of mm), because SketchUp gets weird with small dimensions.

I've included a rough model of the servo motor used, which can be used to design other parts that attach to the motor. The mini servos I used are less than $4 each from DealExtreme: dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20023

Here is a squeeze buckle like you normally have on a backpack or hiking gear. I removed all of the supports for a strap on the fork part, since it just wasn't printing properly.

Also the fork fits into the sleeve in only one direction, due to the edits I had to make to make it printable.

Enjoy!

This thing is a part of Contraptor - a DIY open source construction set for building Cartesian robots: contraptor.org

Motor mount is used to attach NEMA23 stepper motor to Contraptor assemblies.

Sketchup source:
sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=contraptor+motor-mount

These are MakeBeam 10cm prototype .STL files that have been run through "Magics 14 64bit" to remove all kinds of errors and make play nice with the majority of 3D printers throughout the world... (courtesy of Materialise)
I've included a 254mm (10") for yucks (if you print on a Dimension - wrap it with support material otherwise it will bend on you ...)

Note: as a curiosity I made a horizontal an a vertical lay/orientation - and as you would guess the horizontal is a lot stronger. If I had unlimited funds, it would be interesting to do real testing to see at which orientation (90, 60, 45, 15, 0 with rotation components also - permutations get astronomical), would be best to build for overall beam performance verses maximizing in a single plane of force (vertical lay/orientation with no side forces would win hands down, compression load only)

This thing is a part of Contraptor - a DIY open source construction set for building Cartesian robots: contraptor.org

A pair of shaft mounts with bearings support a threaded rod used as a pulley shaft or a lead screw.

Sketchup source:
sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=contraptor+shaft-mount

The idea is to put a power distributor in the box and jam it in between of two tables. The power conectors are now easily accesible and there is no tablespace wasted.
Come and take a look at the showcase in the metalab.at Hackerspace! :)

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.

SSS (servo suspension system) is designed to support standard servo motors and act as a basic suspension. It is still a work in progress and has not been tested yet.

Will update results soon.

This thing is a part of Contraptor - a DIY open source construction set for building Cartesian robots: contraptor.org

Linear bearings ride on linear rail thingiverse.com/thing:1071, driven by belts or leadscrews. A pair of rails and at least a pair of linear bearings are needed to make a complete linear stage. There are three sizes of the linear bearing: 3.5", 2.5" and 1". The part list is for 3.5" size.

Sketchup source:
sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=contraptor+linear-bearing

This thing is a part of Contraptor - a DIY open source construction set for building Cartesian robots: contraptor.org

Sliding elements slide on perforated angle thingiverse.com/thing:1066, driven by either leadscrew or belt. There are three sizes of the sliding element: 3.5", 2.5" and 1". The part list is for 3.5" size.

Sketchup source:
sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=contraptor+sliding-element

Support to hold a PS3 Eye horizontally.
This is a first draft, hopefully there will be an improved second draft,.. soon ;)

A single-digit split-flap display, like the displays in old train stations. Rig it up to a stepper motor and you'll have yourself a low-power retro-cool display. This Thing doesn't include any controlling electronics. Big ups to Metrix Create:Space, where this was designed and made.

This is my hack at the Utah teapot, fiddled so that it will actually print on a RepRap with no support material. I had to fill in the inside of the lid to do this, and the inside of the top of the teapot gets a bit gnarly as I increased the wall thickness there in a rather rustic manner. I also took a few liberties with the line of the spout and managed to beat the overhang problem in the end.