Based on Sandy Noble's Polargraph: polargraph.co.uk

This is the first pass at a printable gondola for a Polargraph. It works, but it could use some tweaks.

Anyone looking to improve it: the lower section arms are a little thin, and the spot for the captive nut isn't exactly sized right. I'd also beef up the upper chain mounts, as there's not much plastic outside the hole.

The motor brackets and pulleys I'm using can be found here: thingiverse.com/thing:12403

Lots more photos of the whole process here: flickr.com/photos/jabella/sets/72157627888557352/

This is the 5th version of my printable linear rail, I've gotten everything to finally work correctly. This can be used as a drop in replacement for a 3d printer's X or Y axis. It's rail system is designed to connect together to form any needed length.

This machine hopefully will be my entry for the Gada prize.


Update 06/16/2011:
I worked out a few modifications to the shuttle. Now the lower half of the shuttle can be printed as well, this removes:
4x 5/16(8mm) nuts
2x 5/16(8mm) bolts
2x 5/16 washers

-The next to go is going to be replacing the front 5/16(8mm) hardware with all printed parts. I'm trying to pare this down just the motor and the printed parts.

-I also redesigned the Large helical gear to incorporate the 608 bearing embedded inside of it. think this is an advantage of trying to use 2 bearings in the pillow block. The large helical gear is also now held in place by a printed 8mm bolt 40mm long. This removes one additional piece of hardware.

-The shuttle top now has 4 mounting holes, although I'm just securing the motor with 2 at this point.

-I printed 2 new 3-segment rails, redesigned lower half of shuttle to be printed.
-I also added 2 new pics of the x/y gantry system and uploaded all new parts - I should have another video.

Update 04/30/2013
It's been brought to my attention that the rack file was missing from this. I have uploaded both the rack stl and scad file. Enjoy!

Here is a youtube video of it in action:
youtube.com/watch?v=ScJMPw6UPtw

Comments and feedback are welcome.

Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once?

Is the thought of getting up for that early morning TV Interview really cramping your nightlife?

Never Fear! The Talking head is Here!

Just pipe an audio signal through and watch as the Talking Head comes to life and lip sinks your prerecorded interview.

Guaranteed to be totally effective on TV audiences everywhere.

Here are some video's of it in action
youtu.be/8QQwjhJsz18
youtu.be/U_PERylb8xM

A Collaboration between Michael Curry and Jestin Stoffel of the Cowtown Computer Congress

The Glasses are a scaled down version of thingiverse.com/thing:5544

THIS THING IS FAMOUS! Shows up at 1:54 on this episode of Robot Hospital: youtube.com/watch?v=shpt1hD4z7Y

This thing can be used to see what your skeinforge settings and bot will do for certain wall thicknesses:

0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2

The OpenSCAD is included in case you want to try other thicknesses.

The image has the "as designed" thickness in green, the measured straight wall thickness "as printed" in red (for my bot, of course), and the measured cylinder thickness in purple.

My bot is set up with 0.25mm layer thickness and W/T of 2.0 for theoretical wall thickness or 0.5mm. For reference, I am using the MakerBot 0.4mm nozzle, but that really does not come into play.

Slightly related to: thingiverse.com/thing:7114

DARANISUKE comes for 1,300 years.
This is an old drug in Japan.

In herbal medicine good for the stomach and intestines.
Hangover also takes effect.
It is very bitter.

DARANISUKE will take 30 tablets at a time.
However, the spoon is included, only 10 holes.
I made 30 holes.

I am all right at once in this.

------------------------
Added　DARANISUKE saucer

Maker Block asked if there was a way to have fewer, larger teeth on the escapement wheel, and thanks to the power of parametric design in OpenSCAD, the answer was a resounding yes!

With the larger teeth, this should be much easier to print.

(EDIT: added a beefier, thicker version, slightly smaller so the pendulum fits inside the build platform. Duncha love parametric designs?)

Have you ever wanted to turn a CD-ROM motor into a winch? I decided to see how much gear reduction could be fit into a small space, so I came up with this differential planetary arrangement. This is a well-known design, but now you can use the parameterized OpenSCAD version to customize this to your needs and include it in your mechanical designs.

The version shown here is less than 60mm in diameter and 13mm thick, but achieves a 1:246 gear reduction, all with teeth printed on a TOM. The input is the small shaft to the sun gear, the output is the smaller ring gear, and the larger ring gear is to be held fixed. If you stacked two of these units you would have a ratio of 1:60516!

Babbage's Difference engine. Can calculate polynomials.

Animation: youtube.com/watch?v=8X6iIpjawZU

Parts:
Figure wheel: thingiverse.com/thing:7605
Restore arm: thingiverse.com/thing:7610
Sector wheel: thingiverse.com/thing:7711
Sector wheel tab: thingiverse.com/thing:7712
Sector wheel restore arm: thingiverse.com/thing:7713

What can I say? I've never been able to draw anything with an Etch-a-Sketch. I won this one in a Christmas gift exchange some years ago and hung onto it with the idea that someday I'd CNC it.

The stepper motors are 7.5 degree Airpax steppers I got surplus many years ago. It turns out those mounting ears are actually NEMA 23 compatible so this should work unmodified with "square" steppers as well. The 7.5 degree steps led me to make the most aggressive gear reduction I could fit in the available space. They take me to about 0.15mm (6 mil) steps with half-stepping.

The stepper drivers are L297+L298 almost straight out of the appnote. They're built on a piece of copper clad with a combination of dead-bug and Manhattan prototyping. I bought all the parts years ago and never got around to etching PCBs. Those flyback diodes are ridiculously oversized because I didn't know better.

I chose reprap.org/wiki/Teacup_Firmware because of the builtin gcode interpreter. That saved me from having to integrate with any desktop software. I ported it to the AT90USBKEY you see in the picture and added support for LUFA-based serial right in the AVR. (I already had the AT90USBKEY or I would have just bought an Arduino!)

It easily goes 8000mm/min (which is how fast the pictured spiral was drawn). Given the torque and the large step size I suspect it could go fast enough to melt the stylus if you cared to.

The gears (as printed and uploaded) have slightly too much backlash. The "exact" fit was too tight so I backed off by 1mm which was way too much. They're derived from thingiverse.com/thing:5505 .

The spiral was drawn in Inkscape and converted to gcode for Unicorn with thingiverse.com/thing:5986 . I plan to modify that to make more Etch-a-Sketch friendly output.

Video: youtube.com/watch?v=6UV05jmrK7k

I saw this design: arkwhat.com/17-arkcanary-ii and decided to make my own. The holder.stl fits an iPhone 4 ass, but the parts are separate if you would like to make one to fit your phone's ass.
Video if it in action: youtube.com/watch?v=apK3GMyn45w
Designed and printed at hive76.org/

blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/05/3d-printed_combination_lock.html

instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Combination-Lock/

This was for a final project for my 3D modeling class. I went with a Combo lock. It was done to show how a basic combo lock works. Total size is 4 inches wide. 3.5 front to back and 2.5 tall and is made of 10 parts.

I was going to do a Anniversary release of the files, but I am releasing it sooner because I get asked every once in a while about the .STL files or the Inventor.IPT files so here you go. Enjoy.

Inventor IPT files are for Inventor 2009

I hit the store to buy a ceiling mount for my Optoma HD66, but the store was out of stock. So I designed up this one, and printed it out. It's designed specifically for the HD66's slightly odd 100 x 100 x 110 mm triangular M3 mount, but a redesigned ProjectorPlate.stl will let you stick any projector on there. Swivels in XX, YY and ZZ, and is fairly stable too.

This year don't go around looking for a pumpkin! Print it out your self, with sum orange ABS.

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.

Just a test to see how would it work a printed chain drive system.

It works but... because of the "curling" of the filament and the inaccurate assembly of the steps, the chain is too much tensioned to make it move with a nema17 like motor.

Thus the results of the test are: needs improvement :-P

Sorry for:
1. The scad file, it works fine for the assembly in the pictures but it has not been tested so it may not work when you change the parameters.
2. The instructions... too much words I guess...

More pics? aubenc.imgur.com/chain__pinions#2Yi6B

*** UPDATE ***

There's people out there making things with this thing, GREAT!
So I've make few changes to the code to make it a little bit easier, just a little bit.

Basically, now is easier to stack pinions together.

I remove the scad file and upload the new version (which is also capable to produce the old parts), I also upload a screenshot from one possible set of pinions and, of course the stl files for this example.

Enjoy!

*** Again an UPDATE ***

New scad file (oups!). I had to remove some silly thing I did in previous version but the real reason for this update is the 5mm (hope it's enough) of clearance I added to the system holder to allow assembling thing 5690 by foxdewayne.

I'm using a pololu and carrier to drive the extruder on my mendel. I didn't have a good place to mount it so I made this little bracket to mount it over the extruder board.

It leaves enough room for good air flow and to reach the ttl header, reset switch and to turn the screws on any of the other terminals.

This is a redesigned Huxley inspired by the Prusa simplified Mendel.
thingiverse.com/thing:4148

It uses the PLA Bushings like
thingiverse.com/thing:4434
I modified the scad script to use 6mm rods.
(basically just put in 6mm for rod size and 12mm for width)

I have also redesigned the X and Y motor brackets to be able to use nema 14 or 17 motors. The Z now takes 2 nema 14 motors.

I designed it around 1/4" threaded rods and #6-32 bolts. It should work with 6mm rods and M6 bolts, but I'm not sure.

This should work with the same extruder as the regular Huxley. I believe.

The image is of the current build status, it needs the Y Stage and some belts on it before it will go, and an extruder. But the Z movement is working well so far.

Edit: Got the belts in and installed on the X Axis
Test Videos here
youtube.com/watch?v=rji863B-JnA
youtube.com/watch?v=pw6CKZPRubw


The design files are in SolidWorks

Edit 12-8-10: Found a problem with the X-axis parts.
the bolts used to tighten the rods in place had a nut bigger than the rod, so I put in a slot on the side. This weakened the structure to the point where tightening the bolts enough to keep tension on the belt, it would break the piece. I redesigned them after finding "Undersized Hex Nuts" (McMaster carr part 90760A007 for 6-32) which allow me to insert them the same as prusajr originally had. I also added more material to the sides to help with this. I am currently printing them out for testing.

Edit 12-9-10: I added more material to the x-axis parts to make them a bit stiffer again, I didnt get a chance to test the last version, so it may work just fine.

Rhombot 0.3 alpha

See an animation of it on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=zSeg-Th1tRw

The Rhombot is a printable XYZ stage based on 3 chains of rhombus shapes. It is currently just an early alpha version. It's a rough sketch of the idea. See one of the two .MOV videos for how it is intended to work.

The Rhombot can be used with Makerbot motors, electronics, and extruders. All parts can be built in a Makerbot, or in itself. The Rhombot has no rods, belts, pulleys, nuts, threads, screws (other than the screws on the motor), sarrus hinges, moving towers, or moving motors.

That last point is important. The XYZ motors and extruder motor are all fixed. The X motor does NOT move a carriage carying the Y motor. The Z motor does NOT raise a platform carrying the extruder motor. Instead, all 4 motors can be permanently mounted. This means it will work with motors that are arbitrarily large and heavy. That should help when we start printing motors, since the early ones are likely to be large and heavy.

The green build platform has a Z coordinate that is the sine of the rotation angle of the NEMA17 stepper motor under the light blue panel. X is the sine of the dark blue arm's motor, and Y is the sine of the purple arm's motor. To use this to print, it would be necessary to modify Skeinforge to take the extra sine into account.

The build volume is large enough to print all its own parts. The animation even shows it building 4 of its own parts, as well as building a cube large enough to hold any of its own parts. The build volume actually extends beyond this cube, but is an odd shape. The cube in the video is the largest cube that fits within the build volume, oriented that way.

This has now been printed on a ZCorporation ZPrinter 650. It glues powder together to give an object similar to sandstone. This means the pieces are extremely rigid, but break easily. The printed Rhombot has hinges that move smoothly, with almost no slop at all in the direction of the hinge, nor orthogonal to it. The smooth movement is surprising, since the surface feels like sandpaper.

If you hold two panels that should stay parallel and try to twist one, it seems to allow almost no twisting at all. The small amount of twisting that it does allow seems to be from some of the hinge pins that are too thin. The hinge pins are wooden toothpicks, and don't have uniform diameter. They will soon be replaced with segments of 2.4 mm diameter aluminum rod.

The next step is to build this in plastic. It will be far stronger, but it may start having problems with panels bending and twisting. That's the big question. There are also several design changes that should make it into the next version.

Nice holder to keep you IPHONE or IPOD of the ground while charging. Large print, can only be made on Mendel right now. But I bet somebody will chop it up for there makerbot to print. Also a folding charger would be cool. Possibly some M3 screws and nuts, or just 3mm filament?

Inspired when I saw this for sale at Bed bath and beyond over the holidays

bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?sku=15825464&utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=shopping

Solidworks model is available to modify. If you phone is in a big case, make the over all height larger to accommodate you demand. This wall outlet cellphone holder can also support other micro usb charging phone with the correct cable. (USB to micro)

This year instead of sending Christmas Cards I decided to use my Makerbot to make something unique for my friends. And naturally the project took on a life of its own.

The final result was 20 Lego Men at 4x the normal size. Each inscribed with a holiday greeting.

Before dispatching them off to the world, I decided it would be nice to take all 20 brothers on a photographic tour of Kansas City.

picasaweb.google.com/skimbal/LegoMenOfKansasCity?feat=directlink

Happy Holidays to all of the Thingiverse Community.

-Michael Curry

Stop Playing the Guessing game with is my bed level. Easily clamps onto the Back of the Carriage Assembly to measure Depth.

1" SAE/Metric Digital Indicator From Harbor Freight

harborfreight.com/1-inch-sae-metric-digital-indicator-93295.html

Just another filament spool, designed to be makerbot printable, relatively cheap to make and free spinning, and it doesn't require an overly tuned makerbot to print.

Inspired in part by : thingiverse.com/thing:4641 which is an even easier option for a filament spool

Also usefull as a cheap revolving tabletop thing (note that the spokes tilt slightly upwards before attempting to put anything flat on it), unsure yet of how much weight it will hold.

I'm planning on adding more components (such as a bolt on filament guide and central core to hold the filament neatly) so more to come.

Note: Numbers on part filenames are just part of my rudimentry version management

01-DEC-2010: Filament Guide Add-on Kit now available from: thingiverse.com/thing:4982

3D Printed Miniature Centrifugal Pump Prototype

Prototype only - uploaded on request. Improved version coming soon.

Youtube Video of it in action : youtube.com/watch?v=H102VH8a8bM

madox.net/blog/2010/11/16/miniature-3d-printed-pump-using-up-pp3dp-printer/

Super Miniature version of it here : thingiverse.com/thing:4857

[Update] This thing unfortunately was one of the victims of the recent “catastrophic hardware failure” at Thingiverse.com. It used to be "thing:4811", now it's "thing:4812" :)
I'm not sure if it's possible to recover the comments on the original thing (as far as I know, the comments section is outsourced and not part of the thiniverse servers).
Also, the "Likes" are gone... Do you still like this thing?

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Since the original frame of my Gaui 330XS Quadrocopter was damaged in a crash, I built a new frame from scratch, using printed plastic parts.
The four arms are 10x10mm wood profiles (cheap, sturdy, light weight). The motors and electronics are cannibalized from the crashed Gaui Quadrocopter. But it should be no problem to use other motors and/or electronics for this.