Author Archives: Brian Benchoff

CES2017: Really Fast 3D Printing for Large Builds

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About a year ago, Autodesk showed off one of the most innovative filament printers in recent memory. Project Escher is your basic Cartesian filament printer, but with a twist: it has five heads. These print heads work together to build large objects very quickly.

Autodesk open sourced the design of the Escher, and now it’s made it into commercial production thanks to Titan Robotics. The Cronus, which uses the same software as Project Escher, is big! Each of these gantries is driven by closed-loop servo motors and fancy ball screws, producing a total build volume of 77″x30″x20″. This open air …read more

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CES2017: Dissolvable Support Material

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Over the last year, it seems the next big thing in 3D printing is dual and multi-extrusion. This gets you multi-colored objects, but if you have the right filament, it also allows you to print objects that would otherwise be impossible to print. This week, Airwolf 3D announced their HydroFill water soluble support material. They had a few sample prints and a fish tank, and yes this stuff does dissolve in water quickly.

There were a few problems with dissolvable support material in the past. PVA is water soluble, but it doesn’t print well. HIPS can be dissolved in limonene, …read more

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CES2017: Monoprice Unveils Expanded Line of 3D Printers

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At CES last year, Monoprice introduced a $200 3D printer. Initial expectations of this printer were middling. My curiosity got the best of me, and last summer I picked up one of these printers for a review. The Monoprice MP Select Mini is actually phenomenal, and not just ‘phenomenal for the price’. This machine showed the world how good one of the cheapest printers can be. The future is looking awesome.

You might think Monoprice wouldn’t be able to top the success of this great little machine. You would be wrong. This week, Monoprice announced a bevy of new and …read more

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CES2017: Really, Really Big SLA Printing

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Last year at CES, UniZ introduced the Slash, a desktop resin printer. It’s fast, it’s capable, and it’s shipping now, but there was something else in the UniZ booth that had a much bigger wow factor.

The UniZ zSLTV is a gigantic box, a little more than one meter wide, and a little less than one meter tall and deep. Open the lid, and you see a gigantic resin printer turned on its side. The idea here is to fill a gigantic tank with resin, (the build volume is 521 x 293 x 600 mm) and use it as a …read more

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CES2017: Really, Really Big SLA Printing

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Last year at CES, UniZ introduced the Slash, a desktop resin printer. It’s fast, it’s capable, and it’s shipping now, but there was something else in the UniZ booth that had a much bigger wow factor.

The UniZ zSLTV is a gigantic box, a little more than one meter wide, and a little less than one meter tall and deep. Open the lid, and you see a gigantic resin printer turned on its side. The idea here is to fill a gigantic tank with resin, (the build volume is 521 x 293 x 600 mm) and use it as a …read more

Continue reading CES2017: Really, Really Big SLA Printing→

CES17: Arduino Unveils LoRa Modules For The Internet Of Things

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WiFi and Bluetooth were never meant to be the radios used by a billion Internet of Things hats, umbrellas, irrigation systems, or any other device that makes a worldwide network of things interesting. The best radio for IoT is something lightweight which operates in the sub-Gigahertz range, doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth, and doesn’t suck down the power like WiFi. For the last few years, a new low-power wireless communication standard has been coming on the scene, and now this protocol — LoRa — will soon be available in an Arduino form factor.

The Primo, and NRF

It’s not …read more

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Creating A PCB In Everything: Creating A Custom Part In Fritzing

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This is the continuation of a series of posts where I create a schematic and PCB in various EDA tools. Already, we’ve looked at Eagle CAD, KiCad, and took a walk down memory lane with one of the first PCB design tools for the IBM PC with Protel Autotrax. One of the more controversial of these tutorials was my post on Fritzing. Fritzing is a terrible tool that you should not use, but before I get to that, I need to back up and explain what this series of posts is all about.

The introduction to this series of posts  …read more

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Hands On With The First Open Source Microcontroller

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2016 was a great year for Open Hardware. The Open Source Hardware Association released their certification program, and late in the year, a few silicon wizards met in Mountain View to show off the latest happenings in the RISC-V instruction set architecture.

The RISC-V ISA is completely unlike any other computer architecture. Nearly every other chip you’ll find out there, from the 8051s in embedded controllers, 6502s found in millions of toys, to AVR, PIC, and whatever Intel is working on are closed-source designs. You cannot study these chips, you cannot manufacture these chips, and if you want to use …read more

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Hackaday Links: The 2017 One

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You screwed everything up last night. The end of 2016 had a leap second, so instead of the seconds going up from 57, 58, 59… 00, there was a 61st second in the last minute of the year. Yeah, 2016 just wouldn’t quit. [Michel] built a device to keep track of 2016’s leap second using GPS, and everything worked beautifully.

Remember MechWarrior? There’s a reason those mid-90s games used mechs instead of more organic characters. Computers couldn’t draw that many polygons, making MechWarrior a stylistic choice driven by the limitations of technology. Here’s a real MechWarrior that could rip your …read more

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2016: As The Hardware World Turns

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Soon, the ball will drop in Times Square, someone will realize you can turn ‘2018’ into a pair of novelty sunglasses, and the forgotten mumbled lyrics of Auld Lang Syne will echo through New Year’s Eve parties. It’s time once again to recount the last 366 days, and what a year it’s been.

Arduino got into an argument with Arduino and Arduino won. We got new Raspberry Pis. Video cards are finally getting to the point where VR is practical. The FCC inadvertently killed security in home routers before fixing the problem. All of this is small potatoes and really …read more

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