Electronic-Geek.com » 3D printing

Kinect 3D Modeler

Adam Flaherty — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:00:31 +0000

Austrian Kinect hacker Sebastian Pirch from ">3rD-EYE in Salzburg has built a 3D modeling system using a Microsoft Kinect controller and an Arduino. Using a pair of custom soft circuit gloves to provide a mouse click, Sebastian is able to model objects in mid air, in 3D, using gestures captured by the Kinect, which are then rendered with an LCD projector. It’s a little crude now, but he’ll probably be designing flying armored suits by this time next year. [via GeekyGadgets]

Tips on Printing Mechanical Parts

John Baichtal — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:00:34 +0000

MakerBot Industries blogger MakerBlock is working on a clockwork spider, and went the route of designing his own gears. He’s sharing his observations of designing and printing his own clockwork parts on the MakerBot blog. Here’s a sample:

Don’t make parts too thin. The parts I printed tended to be designed too thin. If you are designing a multi-part mechanism, don’t skimp on plastic and make the parts unnecessarily thin or small. My original gears and cogs were 2mm thick. The problem was that it was easy enough for the teeth in one gear to simply miss the other thin gear. My new design uses gears that are 5mm thick and they never miss one another.

Mini Home FabLab for Around $4000

Gareth Branwyn — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:00:12 +0000

Bart Bakker of Utrecht, Netherlands sent us these images and a link to a short piece about his mini home fab lab. He built it for around US$4K. The lab consists of an A4 Laser Cutter, a vintage Ultimaker 3D-printer, a Mantis CNC mill, and a CraftRobo vinyl/papercutter. Bart built the Ultimaker and the Mantis 9 at the ProtoSpace Fablab. Both use an Ultimaker open source motherboard and ReplicatorG for control. The 35W lasercutter from HPC costed € 1235.

Mini FabLab

Print Your Own CNC Etch-A-Sketch Gears

John Baichtal — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:00:40 +0000

Thingiverse user BenJackson designed a bracket and two gears that allow you to add numeric ontrol capability to your Etch-A-Sketch.

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.

EADS’s Airbike is a 3D-printed nylon bicycle, actually looks rather decent

Richard Lai — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:50:00 +0000

We've seen plenty of neat 3D printing products over the last year or so, though none are as impressive as this bicycle in terms of scale. Unveiled by EADS (European Aerospace and Defence Group), the Airbike is "grown" with nylon powder using a process called additive layer manufacturing, which is similar to 3D printing but with the added benefit of laser-sintering to reinforce the structure. This way the parts can save up to 65 percent in weight while retaining the same strength (of steel or aluminum in this case), and apparently Airbus was quick to pick up this technology well before everyone else (hence named Airbike, in its honor). It's all well and good, except EADS does say there's still some way to go before we can print our own custom Harley-Davidson bikes without breaking our banks. Shame -- as with many things in life, we'll just have to wait.

EADS's Airbike is a 3D-printed nylon bicycle, actually looks rather decent originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink New Scientist | EADS | Email this | Comments

One-Platform Mendel Part Assortment

John Baichtal — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:00:04 +0000

Thingiverse user lory90sw assembled a full set of Mendel parts that fits on a single 20cm x 20cm Mendel build platform. It accomplishes this by stacking up parts, using breakaway support material to keep them from all sticking together. [Via the Thingiverse blog]

Gyroid Magnetic Assembly Blocks

Sean Michael Ragan — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:55:13 +0000

A work-in-progress from Thingiverse user searchresults. Each block has twelve 3mm supermagnets installed around its six edges, their polarities alternating so the blocks will click together.

Fabricate Yourself Kinect hack turns you into a 3D puzzle piece

Christopher Trout — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:40:00 +0000

We've been whittling our likeness into bars of soap for decades, but lucky for us someone's come up with a far easier way to render our flawless good looks in miniature. Following in a long line of inventive Kinect hacks, the folks at Interactive Fabrication have produced a program called Fabricate Yourself that enlists the machine to capture images of users and convert them into 3D printable files. The hack, which was presented at Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction Conference in January, results in tiny 3D models that resemble Han Solo trapped in carbonite and sport jigsaw edges that can be used to make a grid of small, but accurate renderings. Fabricate Yourself is still in its infancy, and the resulting models are relatively short on detail, but we're no less excited by the possibilities -- just think of all the things we could monogram in the time it takes to produce one soapy statuette. Video after the jump.

Continue reading Fabricate Yourself Kinect hack turns you into a 3D puzzle piece

Fabricate Yourself Kinect hack turns you into a 3D puzzle piece originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink i.materialise | Interactive Fabrication | Email this | Comments

Sharing Hi-Res 3D Fossil Models Online

Sean Michael Ragan — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:45:38 +0000

Interesting item from Dallas’s Southern Methodist University, where paleontologists Thomas L. Adams, Christopher Strganac, Michael J. Polcyn, and Louis L. Jacobs have used laser scanning to make a high-resolution model of a landmark outdoor dinosaur track in Glen Rose, Texas. Exposed to the elements in the town square, the track is (very slowly) eroding, and the team’s freely downloadable 3D model is intended to both preserve it for posterity and to facilitate its study by fossil buffs all over the world. Their results are published online in Palaeontologica Electronica. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]

30 Minute RepRap Clone

Adam Flaherty — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:45:59 +0000

Mark Ganter and his team at the University of Washington Mechanical Engineering Department’s Solheim Rapid Prototyping Laboratory just cut the time it takes to make a RepRap Prusa Mendel 3D printer. Instead of the usual week it takes to output all of the printable parts that comprise a Prusa Mendel, Ganter and students, Scott Tandoi and Travis Nicholes, created a set of silicone RTV molds to produce the parts in a mere fraction of the time. He states that all of the plastic parts for a complete Prusa can be produced in under 30 minutes. You’ll still have to finish some parts with a drill press, but to have all the parts ready in under a hour, rather than a week, is pretty impressive.

They’re calling their version of the Prusa Mendel a Clonedel and plan to “release working STL files of the mold plates to the community at large (hopefully, within a week).” [Thanks, Matt!]