This is an update to my Accessible Wade's Extruder.

The idler is now hinged using an M3 screw.
I have also added support for the central part of the 608 idler so that there is no need to use washers to space the bearing away from the plastic.

I have been using this design for a while now and love it.

Changing filament is a simple as compressing the spring then whipping out the old filament and poking the new one in.

UPDATE: 6 Aug 2011 - Add arcol (cory75 thing:10532) and wildseyed hotend mount options. Im not overly happy with the asymmetry of the arcol option.

Model of Mt. Everest generated from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 90m topographic data. This fulfills a long overdue promise (see thingiverse.com/thing:8763) to publish a recipe for making your own topographic models from raw data.

Pimp your bot ! These instructions detail how to build software controllable RGB Mood Lighting for your ToM. The mood light is controllable via a new menu on the Gen 4 LCD Interface or via GCodes in ReplicatorG.

Your bot can now show it's build status via the color of the mood light.

Video (showing functionality):
youtube.com/watch?v=g3D0ScY6-dg
Video (mood light to music):
youtube.com/watch?v=FQDFPfnHu9o

Additionally, you can set your own RGB color, pick from a predefined list. Also you can pick animated color scenes, for example a Thunderstorm complete with Lightning flashes or signal S.O.S.

This is a beginners level project, with a tiny bit of soldering, and is designed for ToM Motherboard V2.4 (the version currently shipping).

Required parts are a BlinkM MaxM, RGB Led Strip, a couple of resistors and some bits and pieces you likely have lying around. (full parts list in the pdf).

You'll also need:

- The new Gen 4 Firmware: thingiverse.com/thing:15380
- BlinkM MaxM Holder: thingiverse.com/thing:15374

This Mk7 replacement features a spring-tensioned, quick-release 623 bearing idler, and shouldn't interfere with dualstrusion. The back is also open to make it easy to clean the teeth of the drive gear.

I don't have an actual Mk7, but it seems like it will work from my test assembly with parts I had lying around, including a Mk5 gear with the wrong size hole for the stepper and 3mm filament.

Clearance on the head of the idler screw might be a problem. If so, the screw may have to be replaced with some other type of 3mm shaft. A piece of 3mm filament should work.

This is the real deal, no derivatives here. These are the real Printrbot in it's current version. I have a bunch of these printing all day, every day.... it works. It is expandable to larger widths and heights easier than any other reprap out there. Period. Its the most inexpensive bot out there being mass produced. And, its now yours to print, build, improve, change.... whatever you like. I can't wait to see what you do with it. I will post pics of all the various forms it takes, news, etc at printrbot.com
-enjoy
Brook

All the world is a theater and you, with shades, will riff upon it. Seeing the humor in things is sometimes a matter of the company you keep. Laughing at all the world's ills becomes so much easier with Mike/Joel and the bots along for the ride.

You know you want me, baby!
Take a look at some photos of this thing in action: flickr.com/photos/gianteye/sets/72157622837429705/

A RecycleBot is a waste plastic extruder - that can take household polymer waste and turn it into valuable 3-D printer feedstock.

Information about the first RecycleBot can be found here: Recyclebot v1.0 recyclebot.tumblr.com/. This was a great proof of concept and based off of a hand-powered design - although fantastic from an environmental/appropriate technology perspective did not create filament of high enough quality to be particularly useful for open source 3D printers.

The design for the waste plastic extruder (Recyclebot v2.0 and v2.1) is heavily influenced by the Web4Deb extruder, which extrudes HDPE for use as a growth medium in aquaponics. Details of the Web4Deb design are here: web4deb.blogspot.com/2010/12/plastic-extruder-for-growing-media.html. As part of Mechanical Engineering course, that I supervised, Christian Baechler developed Recyclebot v2.0 appropedia.org/Waste_plastic_extruder an automated device to automatically convert household plastic waste into usable material to be fed into small scale rapid prototyping machines, such as the RepRap. This design was improved upon within the group - especially with the help of Matthew DeVuono thingiverse.com/mdevuono to make v2.1. The results of this are extremely promising and the work will be published.

The RecycleBot work is now being carried out by members of the Michigan Tech in Open Sustainability Technology Research Group mse.mtu.edu/~pearce/Index.html.

The v2.2 is -- I am sure over-designed -- but we needed a reliable tool (v2.0/v2.1 were made of wood and we kept breaking it and sending pieces all over the lab). I am sure the attached design is working though so felt ready to post.

Our goal is to have a fully automated system running off of an Ardruino. Imagine pressing a button for recyclable plastic 1-7, shredding your given plastic waste container in a office shredder, having the Recyclebot automatically shift its setting and output commercial grade 3-D printer filament while you go for lunch.

We are about half way there -- if anyone would like to help particularly on the controls side - please drop me a line. Improvements will be posted on a wiki first appropedia.org/Recyclebot as we go and imported to Thingiverse when they are solid.

My best attempt at reverse-engineering the Gömböc.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6mb%C3%B6c

The process began by using AutoDesk Photo Scene Editor on a series of 360-degree images of the original Gömböc published on the Gömböc website. This software lets you define common reference points on an object between images taken from different angles, and extrapolates the shape of the object using the resulting vector field. It yielded a crude Gömböc model which I then used as the basis for an eyeballed CSG model.

It isn’t perfect, and it probably won't actually work as a Gömböc either, because the shape is reported to be very sensitive to dimensional tolerances. But I spent quite a bit of time and energy on this and thought somebody might use it as a starting point for improvements. Or better yet, that it would persuade the Gömböc discoverers that it is time to finally publish the details of the commercial Gömböc's shape in the open literature.

Update

On 2011-07-22, I received an e-mail from Prof. Gábor Domokos, one of the Gömböc's co-creators. Prof. Domokos politely took issue with some of the statements I originally made in this space. My original statement has been modified in response to his comments. It may change again as our discussion continues.

To the best of my ability to research the question and understand what I've read, the Gömböc discoverers, though advancing the claim that the shape popularized and commercialized as the Gömböc is a meaningful scientific discovery, have not actually published that shape for purposes of peer review. Two years ago when I undertook this project, I exhausted the available published resources on the subject, including all the authors' papers on the Gömböc and related topics and the Hungarian IP filings that protect the Gömböc shape for commercial purposes in Hungary.

Since that time the Gömböc shape has received a U.S. design patent (#D614077):

google.com/patents?id=dITOAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=D614%2C077&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=D614,077&f=false

This document includes line art that constitutes the best and most specific public description of the commercial Gömböc shape that I have seen. It still does not satisfy the standards of scientific peer review as I understand them.

Domokos and Péter Várkonyi claim to have produced a shape that has unique mathematical properties, but they have not told the world exactly what that shape is, so their claim for this particular shape cannot be verified. They will, however, sell you an expensive CNC-machined copy of that shape.

I am no mathematician, and though I believe their published works establish to the standards of that community that mono-monostatic bodies exist, I am not satisfied that their claim of that property in the shape publicized and commercialized as the Gömböc is supported by sufficient evidence. Unless they publish exact parameters of the commercialized Gömböc shape in the open literature, their claim that it is really mono-monostatic cannot be verified by other researchers, and hence must remain open to doubt.

Prof. Domokos has politely requested that I remove this file. I have respectfully declined to do so, as I do not believe it violates any of their established legal rights, and I believe it may have actual value for researchers interested in the Gömböc and mono-monostatic bodies in general.

I took this wonderful brain slug: [ thingiverse.com/thing:11426 ], cleaned it up a bit, and added a slot for a standard hair clip. Now you can wear a brain slug in your hair!

> Today's mission is for all of you to go to the Brain Slug Planet, and just walk around not wearing a helmet.

A necklace, shaped like the infamous mask.

I looked all through the Google Sketchup Warehouse to try to find a good file I could modify, but most of them were folded 2d files, and while trying to modify the one's that weren't, I realized I'm not good enough at anything but Solidworks to be able to modify them for my purposes, so I drew one up myself.
I stole the ring size from thingiverse.com/thing:1764 because the ring I had already fit through that to attach it to a chain. I wish I could say I was also inspired by it, but unfortunately the person who commissioned me to design it had no knowledge of that thing (though I printed her one in the meantime).

!! New version penrose5.stl with a couple of wayward vertices fixed !!

This is a 3D-printable version of the Penrose Triangle illusion, based solely on the 1934 design painted by Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd. The design also appeared on Swedish postage stamps in the early 1980s.

I created this 3D design entirely from scratch using the process outlined in the "Instructions" section below. This work is based solely on Oscar Reutersvärd's design, although some elements are inspired by the Hollow-Face illusion discovered many decades (if not centuries) ago.

This model contains a number of notable improvements over previous 3D representations:

1) It is parallax-corrected for a viewing distance of 40cm, i.e. it will look exactly like Oscar Reutersvärd's design, with cubes lining up on all 3 sides simultaneously. This is a great visual improvement over previous versions, which only lined up on 2 sides simultaneously.

2) It has been resized (to 99.43 x 99.65mm) to make maximum use of the Makerbot build envelope.

3) The top edges are now tapered so as to make the most of your printer's capabilities. The better your printer, the sharper the edges will be.

4) I own the copyright to this 3D design, and hereby distribute it under the "Attribution/Non-Commercial/Share-Alike" licence for all non-profit parties to print, improve and share.

This is a heavily cleaned & modified version of artur83's Penrose Triangle, which was a great design however not printable.

It is now enlarged (longest dimension 99.97mm) and printable on almost any FDM printer without requiring support. Walls have been thickened at the bottom to ensure a secure footing and to minimise excess overhang angles.

Best viewed with one eye closed - looking at it with 2 eyes almost ruins the illusion :)

reggiewatts.com/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Watts

Penrose tilings cover a surface in a pattern with some remarkable properties: they are aperiodic, have 5-fold symmetry, and are self-similar. There are several variations of Penrose tilings--this Thing contains the two tiles needed for the rhombus (P3) tiling.

The edge of each tile has either a notch or a protrusion, which is either round or triangular. These notches and protrusions keep you from creating a repeating pattern when tiling. Round notches need to be lined up with round protrusions, and triangular notches with triangular protrusions. It is fairly easy to wind up with a "defect" where there's a spot no tile can fit.

For more information, see the Wikipedia article, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling (also the source for the pattern I used), and these two more technical discussions: ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-penrose and ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-ribbons

Note that a proper Penrose tiling will require about 16 large tiles for every 10 small tiles, so if you just print a bunch of this file you will have an excess of small tiles.

It is common knowledge that nothing can withstand a shark's crushing bite, even the cap of a beer bottle. When it came time to design a bottle opener, there was only one logical choice. Dunnn Naa Dunn Naa

Are you ready to tear into bottle tops with a fury only known to predators millions of years old? Well then, get cutting!

...But what if it is a twist off? Ah, I've got you covered! Use the hook to keep your hands cut free! The shark also hangs from the hook when not in use, keeping the two parts together and your options wide open.

This was done for my Stanford ME318 (CNC Milling) project.

This is a fun little mechanical gadget. I think it is called a fast return actuator. Turn the crank clockwise and the bird swings back and forth with a very satisfying pecking motion. I made something similar out of wood years ago, pretty fun to be able to draw it in sketchup and print it out.

After taking a picture of a bird on my corgi (http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:20620) I thought maybe I should put corgis on things instead.

Thanks to schmarty's inkscape to openscad extension for making this easy. github.com/martymcguire/inkscape-openscad-poly

I started with a pattern from Eric Droug's excellent book Islamic Geometric Patterns, made some modifications using Flash and Illustrator, exported as a SVG, imported it into CorelDraw for use with NYC Resistor's lasercutter. Once the wood pieces were cut, I backed each piece with some translucent paper and glued it all together with Crazy glue. Final result can be seen here: flickr.com/photos/hirmes/3909380149/

Update: I forgot to mention that after the pieces came out of the lasercutter, the sides were beveled to 45 degrees on an edge sander so that the sides of the cube would match. (Thanks Bre!)

A python script for making involute gear STL models.

A cleaned-up Stanford Bunny, with the holes in the model sealed.

We bought lots of white ABS with our shapercube.. Lots. But who wants
to print everything in white? After a while that got a
bit.. samey. So, an experiment, jam a coloured marker in the feedstock
inlet and see what happens. What happened was, coloured prints came
out. So the idea for the marker organ was born, a way to attached
several coloured markers to the feedstock, and pick which one, or
combination, is colouring the plastic.

This is the first attempt, a simple clamp over the feedstock which
holds a single marker against it.

This is a Matlab script to convert a surface (technically a function of two variables) into a solid that can be printed.

I wanted a way to visualize (in solid 3D) mathematical functions, and this gives you a way of converting from a mathematical description, directly to a solid.

I haven't uploaded the scripts here, because they are already at mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/30709-surf2solidMatlab file central and keeping them up to date at one point seemed more sensible.

Who hasn't wanted their own TARDIS at some point? The Old Girl (or Sexy, as she prefers to be known) can be yours in miniaturized form, complete with light on top.

This micro-TARDIS just looks small from the outside (5cm tall) - there's a lot more going on inside.

---TARDIS Blue---
To get the best colo(u)r, I recommend printing with blue ABS, and covering it fairly evenly BEFORE printing, with a blue Sharpie. This changes the print colo(u)r from blue to dark blue. (Approx 0073CF to 0000B8)

---Bits and Pieces---
You will need 1x 5mm LED (in white, blue or UV), some wire, 2x small cell batteries, and an empty drinks can (or similar).

I've got some smaller LEDs coming in the mail, and I intend to get this small enough to attach to one of my infamous hair clips. The photograph shows my iterations, but it looks a bit like the TARDIS is moving through time in a way that only Baker-era special effects could claim ;)

One of the first things I designed and printed for my Thing-O-Matic was a cover for the Arduino/motherboard opening in the side of the bot. The cover has holes in the right places for the USB cable, SD card and reset button. the cover replaces two of the 3/4" spacers under the motherboard and that is how it is held in place.

I think it cleans up the look of the printer and maybe protects the motherboard from being poked at by curious little fingers.

Small (and dirty ;) ) script to convert grayscale heightmaps to stl models. Usable for landscapes or terrain prints.

Supported Image Formats: GIF, PNG (preferred), JPEG, BMP

This is a square solid inside a triangular hole within a triangular solid inside a square hole.

The predecessor to this design featured a triangle inside a square hole within another triangle inside a square hole. It sounded nice but the square hole broke up the symmetry of the triangle, plus it didn't exploit the reciprocal capability of a reuleaux triangle to contain a square inside a triangular hole.

Official Write-Up at protoparadigm.com/2011/12/abs-glue-weld-cast-texture-and-more/

Here's something that should make plastic life a lot easier. Fuse parts, smooth, shine and texture prints, even cast ABS at room temperature.

This is a pen cap with connecting features to make geometric shapes including a truncated icosahedron. This item was inspired by other pen cap items on Thingiverse thingiverse.com/tag:bic


180 pen cap parts assembled make a "BICky ball" (AKA: truncated icosahedron, bucky ball, c60 and buckminsterfullerene)

60 pen cap parts assembled make a dodecahedron. (The last two pictures show the dodecahedrons)

The large "BICky ball" was not able to support itself so I had to build it with something to support it on the bottom. (the support is an upside down mini-trampoline covered with a sheet)

I uploaded a video of the shapes and the connectors to YouTube youtu.be/rWfps0nxLuI The end of the video shows that the caps also mate with Lego small ball joint parts.

This is a ornament of an Elephant Mother and Child.

I wanted to try and make something that would interlock, so I made this as a test.

I uploaded the STL for you to print and skechup files if you wont to make changes.

I discovered I have access to a 10m resolution elevation model of Norway.
So I decided to see if I can print my next paragliding spot.

The original model is 1000x1000 points at 10m resolution = 10km x 10km. The downsampled version has a 100m resolution. The cliffs are roughly 450m high.