Category Archives: 3d prining

Budget Dehydrator Gives your Damp Filament a Second Chance

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If you’ve had the misfortune of leaving your 3D printer filament out on a muggy day or, heaven forbid: showering with it, it’s probably soaked up quite a bit of moisture. Moisture will do more than just make your printer sound like Rice Crispies, it’ll ruin surface finishes and cause the filament to string into thin wisps between separate geometries on the same layer. Luckily for us, though, both [SafetyGlassesRequired] and [Joe Mike Terranella] give us the breakdown on taking a pair of snippers and about $40 in cash to start drying out our filament far away from the possibility …read more

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3D Printed Airplane Engine Runs on Air

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One of the most important considerations when flying remote-controlled airplanes is weight. Especially if the airplane has a motor, this has a huge potential impact on weight. For this reason, [gzumwalt] embarked on his own self-imposed challenge to build an engine with the smallest weight and the lowest parts count possible, and came away with a 25-gram, 8-part engine.

The engine is based around a single piston and runs on compressed air. The reduced parts count is a result of using the propeller axle as a key component in the engine itself. There are flat surfaces on the engine end …read more

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3D Prints That Fold Themselves

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3D printing technologies have come a long way, not only in terms of machine construction and affordability but also in the availability of the diverse range of different printing materials at our disposal. The common consumer might already be familiar with the usual PLA, ABS but there are other more exotic offerings such as PVA based dissolvable filaments and even carbon fiber and wood infused materials. Researchers at MIT allude to yet another possibility in a paper titled “3D-Printed Self-Folding Electronics” also dubbed the “Peel and Go” material.

The crux of the publication is the ability to print structures that …read more

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Polyurethane, Meet 3D Printing

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3D printing makes prototyping wonderful. But what do you do when your plastics of choice just aren’t strong enough? For [Michael Memeteau], the answer was to combine the strength of a vacuum-poured polyurethane part with the ease of 3D-printed molds. The write-up is a fantastic walk through of a particular problem and all of the false steps along the way to a solution.

The prototype is a connected scale for LPG canisters, so the frame would have to support 80 kg and survive an outdoor environment. Lego or MDF lattice were considered and abandoned as options early on. 3D printing …read more

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3D Printing T-Shirt Designs

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Usually, t-shirt designs are screen printed, but that’s so old school. You have to make the silkscreen and then rub paint all over – it’s clearly a technique meant for the past. Well, fear not, as [RCLifeOn] is here to bring us to the future with 3D Printed T-Shirt Designs.

[RCLifeOn] affixes t-shirts to his print build platform and boom: you’ve got 3D printed graphics. He started by using PLA which, while it looked great, wasn’t up to a tussle with a washing machine. However, he quickly moved on to NinjaFlex which fended much better in a wash cycle. While …read more

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3D Printing With Yarn and Silicone

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This one is apparently a few years old, but the idea looks so good that we’re left wondering whatever happened to it.

[Seyi Sosanya] made what amounts to a 3D printer, but one that prints in a unique way: wrapping yarn around pillars and then post-dipping them in a silicone glue. The result is a tough, flexible 3D mesh that’s lightweight and looks fairly resilient. We’re not at all sure what it’s good for, but watching the video about the project (embedded below) makes us want to try our hand at this sort of thing.

So what happened? Where did …read more

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Collider Prints Hollow Shells, Fills Them

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3D printing is full of innovations made by small firms who’ve tweaked the same basic ideas just a little bit, but come up with radically different outcomes. Collider, a small startup based in Chattanooga TN, is producing a DLP resin printer that prints hollow molds and then fills them.

That’s really all there is to it. The Orchid machine prints a thin shell using a photocuring resin, and uses this shell as the mold for various two-part thermoset materials: think epoxies, urethanes, and silicones. The part cures and the shell is dissolved away, leaving a solid molded part with the …read more

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The 3D-Printed Mutoscope You’ve Always Wanted

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[John] got his hands on a 3D printer, and did what any hacker with a new toy would, printed himself a Mutoscope. (A what?) A Mutoscope is an early flip-book based motion picture machine, and in this case it displays 24 frames from “A Clockwork Orange”. [John]’s 3D-printed machine is, not coincidentally we assume, printed in orange plastic.

The model for the frame is up on Thingiverse, but there’s not all that much to it, honestly. It’s a frame and a few wheels that hold some skewers in place. The rest of the work is making the flaps.

But getting …read more

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Direct To Object 3D Printing

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As the patents for fused-filament 3D printers began to expire back in 2013, hackers and makers across the globe started making 3D objects in their garages, workshops and hackerspaces. Entire industries and businesses have sprung up from the desktop 3D printing revolution, and ushered in a new era for the do-it-yourself community. Over the past couple of years, hackers have been pushing the limits of the technology by working with ever more exotic filament materials and exploring novel and innovative ways to make multi-colored 3D prints. One of the areas lagging behind the revolution, however, is finishing the 3D print …read more

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LVL1 Hackerspace Builds A DOOMcano

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When you need a DOOMcano, there’s no real substitute. And they’re not just selling these things on the street-corner. Nope, friend, you’ve got to get the hackerspace together and build your own.

For a fundraiser, and we suspect for the fun of it, the folks at LVL1 in Louisville, KY built a metal case with four (4!) flame-thrower jets. The idea is that you donate, and they’ll burn stuff for you.

Or you could build your own, following their detailed build log. LVL1 earns clever points for the use of 3D printer nozzles as gas jets, and for the laser-cut …read more

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