Author Archives: Brian Benchoff

PrusaControl: The Beginner’s Slicer

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There are two main applications for managing 3D prints and G-Code generation. Cura is a fantastic application that is seeing a lot of development from the heavy hitters in the industry. Initially developed by Ultimaker,  Lulzbot has their own edition of Cura, It’s the default software packaged with thousands of different printers. Slic3r, as well, has seen a lot of development over the years and some interesting hacks. Do you want to print non-planar surfaces? Slic3r can do that. Slic3r and Cura are two sides of the CAM part of the 3D printing coin, although Cura is decidedly the prettier …read more

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Hackaday Links: June 11, 2017

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PCB art is getting better and better every year. This year, though, is knocking it out of the park. In March, [Andrew Sowa] turned me into money. More recently, [Trammell Hudson] has explored the layers of OSH Park soldermask and silk to create a masterpiece. Now, we’re moving up to full-blown art. [Blake Ramsdell] worked with OSH Park to create a full panel of art in gold, fiberglass, soldermask, and silkscreen. It’s 22×16 inches, and it’s fantastic.

There’s an independent Hackaday meetup going down in Hong Kong this week. The subject of the meetup will be vacuum systems for electron …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Earthquake Warnings via Tweets

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Seismic waves travel through the Earth’s crust at about four kilometers a second. Light travels through fiber at about 200,000 kilometers per second. Taking network lag into account, it’s possible to read a Tweet about an earthquake a few seconds before the shaking starts. This is the concept behind an XKCD strip and a project for the Hackaday Prize.

[Zalmotek]’s Earthquake Validation Gadget is an Internet-connected box designed for those few seconds between asking yourself, ‘is this an earthquake’ and saying, ‘yeah, this is totally an earthquake’. Inside this wall-mounted box is both a sensitive vibration sensor and a microcontroller …read more

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Casting Cylinder Heads Out Of JB Weld

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Like friendship, JB Weld is magic. Rumors persist of shade tree mechanics in the Yukon repairing cracked engine blocks with JB Weld, and last month this theory was proved correct. [Project Farm] over on YouTube took a grinder to the head of a lawnmower engine, filled the gouge with JB Weld, and ran the engine for twenty minutes.

However, as with anything mechanical that doesn’t have a foul-mouthed Canadian in it, arguments ensued. ‘This was not a true test of JB Weld repairing a cracked engine block’, claimed Internet commenters, ‘I won’t even watch the video because the idea alone …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Printing Bones

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You would be forgiven to think that 3D printing is only about rolls of filament and tubs of resin. The fact is, there are many more 3D printing technologies out there. Everything from powders to paper can be used to manufacture a 3D model. [Jure]’s Hackaday Prize entry is meant to explore those weirder 3D manufacturing techniques. This is a printer that lays down binder over a reservoir of powder, slowly building up objects made out of minerals.

The key question with a powder printer is exactly what material this printer will use. For this project, [Jure] is planning on …read more

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Friday Hack Chat: 8-Bit Micros With Microchip

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A few years ago, Microchip acquired Atmel for $3.56 Billion. There are plenty of manufacturers of 8-bit microcontrollers, but everyone makes 8051s, and the MSP430 isn’t as popular as it should be. Microchip’s acquisition of Atmel created what is probably the largest manufacturer of 8-bit micros, with a portfolio ranging from ATtinys smaller than a grain of rice to gigantic PICs.

This Friday, we’re hosting a Hack Chat with the Technical Marketing Engineer of 8-bitters at Microchip. If you love AVR, this is the guy to talk to. If you’re still rocking the vintage 1993 PICkit, this is the guy …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: The FPGA Commodore

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The history of Commodore 8-bit computers ends with a fantastically powerful, revolutionary, and extraordinarily collectible device. The Commodore 65 was the chicken lip’ last-ditch effort to squeeze every last bit out of the legacy of the Commodore 64. Basically, it was a rework of a 10-year-old design, adding advanced features from the Amiga, but still retaining backwards compatibility. Only 200 prototypes were produced, and when these things hit the auction block, they can fetch as much as an original Apple I.

For their Hackaday Prize entry, resident hackaday.io FPGA wizard [Antti Lukats] and a team of retrocomputing enthusiasts are remaking …read more

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The IP Of The Infinite Build Volume 3D Printer

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Last week, the Blackbelt 3D printer launched on Kickstarter. What makes the Blackbelt 3D printer different than any other 3D printer on Kickstarter? This printer has an infinite build volume. It’s built for continuous production. As long as you have a large enough spool of filament, this printer will keep producing plastic parts with no downtime in between. The Blackbelt is a truly remarkable and innovative machine. Yes, it’s a bit expensive, but it’s designed for production and manufacturing, not some guy tinkering in his garage.

However, the Blackbelt 3D website includes two words that have sent the 3D printer …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Sub Gigahertz RF

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For all the press WiFi and Bluetooth-connected Internet of Things toasters get, there’s still a lot of fun to be had below one Gigahertz. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Adam] is working on an open source, extensible 915 and 433 MHz radio designed for robotics, drones, weather balloons, and all the other fun projects that sub-Gigaherts radio enables.

The design of this radio module is based around the ADF7023 RF transceiver, a very capable and very cheap chip that transmits in the usual ISM bands. The rest of the circuit is an STM32 ARM Cortex M0+, with USB, UART, and …read more

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