Mounts on the top corner of the Replicator 2 frame and holds the hex keys that come with it so you don't lose them.

There's no separate design file, it only exists as polygons in an STL.

Someone on the mailing list asked for one. This is the central part of a dream catcher, inspired by this real one: tinyurl.com/79o6ath

Polycarbonate is great stuff to mill but the little gritty swarf gets everywhere. I also find that my 1/16" bits tend to wind up any strings of polycarbonate and eventually build up enough that they form a little puck of fused plastic around the tip that destroys the work surface.

I built this attachment to take the tube from my shop vacuum and apply suction right next to the head on the mill. The photos and MP4 show it in action, it works pretty well (for those who are interested, it's cutting 3 mm polycarbonate with a 1/16" TiCN coated two-flute spiral at 10,500 rpm, feedrate 600 mm / minute).

The polycarbonate sheet is being held in version 2 of my laser-cut fixture, previously posted as thingiverse.com/thing:20281

I use a lot of polycarbonate, but unfortunately it's not laser-friendly, so I wind up milling it. I lasercut this fixture out of acrylic to hold 4" wide strips of 3 mm polycarbonate, a convenient stock size that works well in my Taig CNC mill.

It allows repeatable positioning (I can loosen the M6 bolts, slide more polycarbonate in, and tighten them again and run the same job without having to re-zero), keeps the material fairly stiff while cutting, and doesn't waste a lot of room with big clamps around the edge. NB make sure you have enough cutter length so the collet clears the M6 bolts at maximum depth. I run a 1/16" 2-flute spiral cutter at 600 mm / minute at top speed and it climb cuts nicely. Moving in the conventional direction I get strings of polycarbonate which wrap around the cutter and melt onto it, and scar up the work piece (circular scar in fixture at upper left side is an example of this).

The data for this STL is taken from a micro-CT scan of a mouse skull, processed in ImageJ - rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ . The original data was provided by Mark Henkelman of the Mouse Imaging Centre (MICe) mouseimaging.ca

Files include the whole skull, and then a left half-skull sliced just to the left of the midline. I made this one as I was interested in the structure of the turbinate bones in the nasal passages, and it can be tricky to visualize complex 3D structures like this on a computer screen, even with 3D rendering.

Note that this is downsampled from the original micro-CT image as ImageJ was not able to cope with converting the full file to an STL on my computer. I will also try to upload the 160 Mb 3D TIFF file containing the full scan. The internal detail visible in this file is amazing (sequential images scan from the tip of the nose through the back of the head).

Photos show the half skull printed on a Stratasys FDM machine (black) and an Objet 24 (white). The FDM print is scaled up by an additional factor of two due to resolution limitations.

UPDATE 2012.10.15: Uploaded a demo print of the model done on the Zcorp ZPrinter 450 (same size as the black ABS one). The colour is arbitrary, I put it in to test the printer's colour capabilities.

UPDATE 2013.04.06: Uploaded a demo print of the model done on the Replicator2 (red, same size as the black ABS one). Quality on surfaces where I had to remove support / raft is only marginally inferior (if anything) to the Stratasys machine using soluble support, surfaces that did not require support are equivalent.

This is a derivative of Sublime's Three jaw keyless chuck - thingiverse.com/thing:9179 , these are replacement jaws. From the discussion on that page hexitex may have some better jaws on the way, hopefully this principle can be applied to them too.

I angled the base of the jaws a bit (1 or 2.5 degrees) such that when they are tightened, they will want to lean in towards whatever they are holding a tiny bit, applying more clamping force.

I developed some microwells for use in my day job ( tinyurl.com/6bm6bth if anyone's interested), and when I am e.g. presenting a poster it's useful to have some examples to show people what I am working on. I made this demo case a couple of years back to hold them and keep dust out etc. I am posting it here as someone asked about strategies for fitting parts together - in this case I have tapered the interface between the two parts (look closely at the join between the wide and narrow sections of the insert, and the corresponding surfaces on the case), and it clicks together nicely. IIRC I put either 0.5 or 1.0 mm allowance in the direction of travel (not normal to the surface), which has worked out perfectly and allowed for wear over the last couple of years.

The nice thing about this strategy is that you slide it in until it fits right, so as long as you can handle a bit of +/- in the one axis, it's very tolerant of imperfections in the print. Probably zero allowance would have been OK hot off the printer, but after many cycles of opening and closing it has worn down a bit - it still works perfectly, but only because I left that allowance. It was printed on a Stratasys Dimension printer.

This item was designed for the "cutbag" competition - see blog.makerbot.com/2011/03/14/twotimes-design-challenge-cardboard-bags/

The object is commentary designed to draw attention to the ways in which our technology is increasingly constructed with "features" beyond our control. The specific "feature" this object draws attention to is the EURion constellation - secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/EURion_constellation - an anti-counterfeiting pattern printed onto many modern currencies that is recognized by various pieces of software and colour copiers etc, causing them to refuse to print or copy the e.g. bank note in question. Now, counterfeiting is clearly something that should be discouraged, but I am a bit troubled by the increasingly prevalent idea that if I ask my technology to do something for me, it must first check with e.g. the government to see if it's OK. This is an area of increasing importance to the 3D printing community as well - imagine a world where all 3D printers were legally required to check in with a central repository before every run to make sure your print doesn't infringe someone's IP or security concern. Sounds ridiculous now, but in ten years, there will be people advocating for that...

So anyway, by exposing the design both to direct viewing, and by functioning (in a limited way) as a privacy-protection device (presumably photos of you carrying this will not print on certain devices / with certain software) this object will hopefully spark discussion around this issue. Meanwhile, it may also function in a limited way as a digital "opt-out" for collection of your personal image in some contexts.

Attributions - inspired by this: martinbackes.com/new-artwork-pixelhead/
and the EURion constellation was taken from the public-domain image found here: secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:EURion.svg

Update 2011.03.19: Added file body3.pdf - same as original file, but includes the QR code for this page.

Update 2011.04.04: Added an image. The laser cutter has temporarily gone away, so in the interim this is a bonsai version cut out by hand, but I did use the posted design files...

A handle for hand-tapping acrylic. It holds very well, it should work for tapping metal as well but I haven't tried it. Designed for my M6 tap ("WALTER METRIC 6.0MM TAPER HS TAP - 03-D061") from HD supply but fits the other ones I have around too.

If you need a case for your tap see thingiverse.com/thing:5670 - at some point I may try to merge these into one object.

My M6 tap ("WALTER METRIC 6.0MM TAPER HS TAP - 03-D061") from HD Supply came without a case, so I lasercut one.

If you need a handle for your tap see thingiverse.com/thing:5672 - at some point I may try to merge these into one object.

This object was designed such that a single image of it contains the information necessary to calculate the relative location of the camera used to capture the image. It is intended to be printed using a standard colour printer, and then folded into shape and affixed to e.g. a wall etc.

This design was inspired by the potential of remote-controlled, camera-equipped vehicles such as the Parrot AR drone (http://www.parrot.com/). While these systems can theoretically be fully computer controlled using dead-reckoning to navigate (IIRC the Parrot has available Linux drivers), inevitable errors in positioning will accumulate, preventing the drone from making long distance runs, returning to a charging station, etc. The idea here is to permit the drone to navigate autonomously and periodically correct its position by capturing images of strategically located reference markers.

The black and white border (A) provides a high contrast identifier and sets the reference frame, while the red, green and blue corners break rotational and reflective (in case your drone sees one in a mirror) symmetry. The angled blue / yellow panels in B permit distinguishing between the angled view from one side vs the other (or a bit above vs a bit below), and the raised central area C contains whatever data you wish to put on it. This version contains a QR code linking back to this site, however you could substitute simple identifier codes to distinguish reference markers at different locations, or any other data you want.

Possible applications include anything from autonomous orienteering challenges (each marker displays the instructions to find the next marker) to home security systems (for example a drone patrolling your hackerspace at night, updating its location by capturing images of unique positioning references in each room, and returning to a 3D printed dock/charging station as needed to top up its batteries).

An array of holes, from 1 to 30 mm in diameter as printed, designed to test the ability of a 3D printer to handle voids accurately. You can of course scale it as needed to test a larger or smaller range of sizes (for example you could try scaling by 0.1 to get holes between 0.1 and 3 mm to see where a system fails and how). A complement to the grid test print device I posted, which tests ability to print thin walls.

I am uploading both the STL file, and the Art of Illusion script I wrote to make arrays of holes of various sizes. Photos of actual printed results will be uploaded when I have time.

This device is designed to assist a repetitive pick-and-place operation in a confined space. It is worn on the right index finger, with a vacuum line attached to the fitting at the back (see detail image below).

Normally air can enter both through the pickup end and through the side port. The side port is located adjacent to the right thumb's normal rest position so that the thumb can easily cover the hole. If a flat object is placed in contact with the pickup end and the side port is covered, the interior is at reduced air pressure and the object is picked up (if not too heavy). When the thumb is removed from the port, air can enter and the object is released.

In order to improve conformal contact at the pickup end, I designed it such that a skeletal framework only is printed, into which I cured some silicone rubber to form a gasket (see close-up image). The casting stand is designed to hold the device in the correct position while the rubber cures in a small annular well.

This version is a bit too big to fit my hand directly, it was designed to fit over gloves and would be more comfortable if scaled down slightly. Also as printed, the material is not air-tight - it works reasonably well with a good vac pump but I think I will paint it with something (maybe more silicone rubber) to seal it better.

UPDATE (2010.10.07): I wiped it down with methylene chloride (aka dichloromethane) which fused the ABS and gave a nice glossy finish and seems to have sealed all the holes. NB this was done with gloves on, using a piece of tissue paper held in metal tweezers, in a chemical fume hood.

This is a test object to determine real-world 3D printer resolution and behaviour when confronted with sub-resolution features. Units are millimeters. It consists of an array of otherwise uniform grids of decreasing wall thickness (2, 1, 0.75, 0.5, 0.4, 0.3, 0.25, 0.2, 0.15, 0.1, 0.05 and 0.01 mm). I have also included the Art of Illusion script I wrote to generate the grids, in case you want to vary the grid size, wall thickness, periodicity etc.