Showing posts with label printed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label printed. Show all posts

Friday, November 29, 2013

Hexapoduino: tiny hexapod 3D printed, Arduino controlled

You need the following PRINTED PARTS:
1x Micro-Hexapod
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5156 (by ljon)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34796 (remixed by carlosgs)
files: body.stl & legs.stl

1x battery clip for 4AA
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:109807 (by me)
file: battery_clip_4AA.stl

1x Pen Holder 
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:110331 (by me)
files: PenHolder_hexapoduino_front.stl & PenHolder_hexapoduino_back.stl

You can eventually print an insect head / smile / other to put in front of the hexapod, to personalize it.

You need also the ELECTRONIC PARTS:
1x Arduino Mini or Arduino UNO (or compatible)
3x Microservo 9G
4x AA batteries (better if rechargable)

Then, if you want to make a light follower robot, you need:
2x LDR
2x 10K resistor

If you want to drive you robot using a nunchuk, you need:
1x nunchuk
1x nunchuk adapter (you can buy it or you can remove from an old / broken wiimote)
1x 10K resistor

If you want to drive you robot via bluetooth, you need:
1x HC-05 (or compatible) bluetooth module
1x 2K2 resistor
1x TS2950 33 (or compatible) voltage regulator 


View the original article here

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

3D Printed Spiral Earrings

IMG_0662.JPG3D printers can do anything. I wanted to make a present for a friend, and she loves earrings, so I decided on some fancy ones I designed and was able to 3D printed! They are a great gift! This instructable covers the steps to design one with a 3D modeling program, but I will also discuss several ways to make them unique. Anyways they look great and are very lightweight. I think the natural PLA filament type looks the best, it's a little tough to tell from the pictures but they reflect a lot of light. I would also like to thank my sister for modeling them.

I was fortunate enough to be able to use a Makerbot Replicator 2 to build them, and you can see a time lapse of it below.


A basic knowledge of the 3D modelling program you will use is highly recommended. Watching whatever tutorials/examples they offer will probably be plenty. I used Autodesk Inventor 2013.Ear1.PNGThe first thing that needs to be chosen is the base shape for your earring. I used a circle to keep things simple. To start make a 2D sketch of your base shape in your 3D CAD program. See my picture for help.

View the original article here

Thursday, October 3, 2013

3D Printed Ornithopter - Micro UAV Drone

100_6047.JPGIn the past couple years there has been quite a bit of activity into r&d of tiny insect/drone/ornithopter type vehicles. Two intriguing designs I've been following are Harvard's RoboBee and Cornell's Ornithopter. While some designs, like Harvard's, are out of reach of the average DIYer (check out their white paper, it's awesome) the Cornell 3D printed ornithopter is attainable and I took it as a challenge to make my own. Cornell's use of 3D printing techniques makes it easy to try out and make modifications. Unfortunately they don't give out their files and they built theirs on a 3D printer that cost 100k. My work has been to model my own design off of their work, but make it using commonly available 3D printers. You can see the results below. Quickly I would like to discuss how amazing desktop 3D printers are. So far I have been able to make two versions: the first is blue and printed by my schools 3D printer (6.07 grams), the second is clear plastic and made by a Makerbot Replicator 2 (4.729 grams). For a reference point Cornell's weighed 3.89 grams. Between my first and second designs the weight of the wings has gone from 4 grams to 2.6 grams because the wing thickness went from 0.02 inches to 0.008 inches (200 microns). With the last batch of prints I also made a test wing with a 100 micron thickness that weighed 0.477 grams, multiply that by 4 (for the other half of the wing and then the second wing) and you have a total wing weight of 1.908 grams. You can see pictures of these measurements below.

I have drawn up another version (you can get the files on the next page, all the parts have 'Ver3' in the title. Unfortunately I have not been able to use a Rep 2 to print again, but if my Ver3 model is printed with the 100 micron thick wings it will weigh an estimated 4.037 grams (the previous 4.729 grams minus the difference in the wings (2.6 - 1.908) grams) to make it only 0.147 grams off of Cornell's weight! I am not done with this project yet and would really love to get a design that flies, so please give me your comments and ideas! I hope to have access to a Rep 2 to print out another version of parts and update it, but I thought this project was at a stage where it was beneficial to post it. Thanks!

100_5927.JPGThe majority of the parts for this design are 3d printed. The rest are as follows.

Parts:
Motor - The exact one Cornell uses I coincidentally already owned and is ideal. It is a 1g pager motor with a planetary gearbox that can be found HERE.
Paperclips - Try and find very thin ones. Unless of course you happen to have some carbon fiber wire laying around like the fortunate Cornellians.
The rest are 3d printed.
Batteries - Can use anything around 3V to test and 7.4V for test flights. The arduino's 3.3V pin or a power supply can also work. Power supply is definitely the best but not needed.

Tools:
3d Printer - Pretty vital.
Drill - With some smaaaalllllll drill bits.
Pliers 


View the original article here

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Custom 3d printed car parts

The ability of 3d printing to form any shape is quite remarkable. To be able to imagine a part, design it and then simply place an order online and have it arrive in the mailbox is amazing. Especially when the part in question could not realistically be made any other way.

Take for example these lock levers from my 1962 Valiant. The originals are a diecast aluminium and feature a very fine spline. I doubt they would be able to be manufactured any other way. Even with CNC machining I imagine the part would have to be made in two pieces if it was possible at all.

The replacements were needed due to an oversight on my part. I had made some lovely new door trims for my the Valiant. The fronts turned out so well i went ahead and made the rears to match. However in my enthusiasm I did not take into account the lock levers which only feature on the rears. Show here is the locking lever spline protruding through the trim baseboard before trim, and after I had finished the trim with the padding. No spline protrudes and therefore the original lock levers do not fit. So how to fix this without remaking the whole door trims?

3D printing to the rescue!


View the original article here