Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Lutz-R. Frank via Compfight

How amazing would it be to be able to have a balloon in any shape?  What would you want?  A piano?  A cartoon character?  A giant bouncy house?

The New Scientist just reported that a team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Disney Research has developed a method for taking any desired 3D shape, then using their research on how a rubber balloon stretches as it inflates, reverse engineers the deflated shape that would most closely lead to the desired inflated balloon.  Then, once they have the model for the deflated balloon, they create a mold for it using a 3D printer!  If you just can’t wait to learn more, they’re presenting their work at the Eurographics conference in Italy next month.

Thanks to Luis Rodriguez for the link!

Click here to view the embedded video.

MakerBot’s own Tony Buser has put together this helpful video tutorial showing how he uses a variety of programs to fix 3D objects and scans to make them more printable.  There are a lot of ways for things to go wrong with a 3D object.  You could have a flipped triangle, internal structures,  or there could be a hole in the mesh.  Tony’s video provides a great overview and takes you step-by-step through the most popular 3D mesh fixing programs.  Even though this video depicts a 3D scan being fixed, the programs and methods shown could be used to fix any problematic 3D object.  Give it a shot!

MakerBot’s R&D all-stars have been printing up a PLA storm on our MakerBot Replicators and getting impressive results! Last night we did an overnight time-lapse of this skull and it turned out beautifully!

Success!

Thingiverse user arkatipe recently posted their designs for a “device to repair plastic hangers.”  The device itself is little more than a hollow plastic cylinder.  However, the way arkatipe used this simple PLA cylinder is particularly interesting.

This is intentionally a little bit smaller than the hanger diameter. I’d recommend that you clean it up, drop it in a cup of water, then stick it in the microwave for a minute or so. After it’s softened up, press it on the hanger and hold it in shape until it hardens.

PLA softens at a much lower temperature than ABS and tends to hold the heat a little longer, staying malleable.  Having a little plastic part that can be printed very close to what you need, softened, molded, and then left to cool and harden could be incredibly useful.  It really opens up a world of possibilities.  If there were a particular shape that one could foresee being very useful, you could print up several of them and keep them on hand.  When you’re read to use them, moisten, nuke, mold, harden.

Thanks arkatipe!

Device to repair a plastic hanger by arkatipe

Because hangers cost $1.00, and the plastic to fix them is less than $0.01. Design is intended for PLA. Additionally, this can be used to justify the expense of your 3D printer to your significant other, provided you have several hundred broken hangers.

This thing brought to you by

A pick-and-place machine is a robot that picks up very small surface mount electronics and places them in the appropriate location and orientation.  Having such a device allows a user to quickly create electronics using smaller and cheaper surface mount electronics parts.  A DIY pick-and-place machine is a pretty big deal because commercial machines are incredibly expensive – in the tens of thousands of dollars for even a used machine.  Here’s a short video of their prototype pick-and-place machine going through some calibration steps.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Keep up the awesome work guys!

1. Which is really funny given that we’re less than three years old!

DualStrusion is highly experimental right now, and we’re all learning about it — engineers, developers, and tech support agents included.  While it’s a very exciting process, don’t expect DualStrusion to work right out of the box without some serious troubleshooting: that’s the cost of being on the cutting edge.

In light of that, we’ve just created a new support forum for DualStrusion experimenters to share their learning and experiences.  And so, I give to you: the DualStrusion experimenters support forum.

Thing-o-Matic Alternate Front Panel by dougkeenan

Sometimes a simple hack is all it takes.  Just look at dougkeenan’s “Thing-o-Matic Alternate Front Panel.”

Why would you want a front panel that has a little divot in the left side?  Well, if you’re rocking a MakerBot Automated Build Platform, you already the know the answer.  The MakerBot ABP has gears that advance the conveyor belt so that it can keep printing part after part.  However, those gears on the side rob the operator of a few precious millimeters of build space in the X direction.¹  My making a little cut out, dougkeenan has effectively increased the build area for his Thing-O-Matic.  One of the cool things is that you could even just cut this little piece out of your front panel and gain the extra build area too!

Thing-o-Matic alternate front panel by dougkeenan

panel outline is slightly trapezoidal, with a notch for the ABP gears

This thing brought to you by

1. Left and right.

Those of you who got a chance to stop by Maker Faire this weekend (or read our earlier blog post) are probably wondering when you too can experiment with dual extrusion heads. The answer is: now! We’ve integrated tools into ReplicatorG that simplify the process of creating a two-material print. They’re not in the released version of ReplicatorG yet, but they are available in a git branch for experimenters who want to get a jump start on the future. And who doesn’t want to get a jump start on the future? Details for the bold below!

First of all, you’ll need to check out the “dualstrusion” branch of ReplicatorG. As always, all the code is available from our github repository. If you’re new to running ReplicatorG from source, take a look at the build instructions. Once you’ve cloned the repository and successfully run ReplicatorG, you’ll just need to check out the experimental branch and rebuild:

> git checkout dualstrusion

> ant run

Once you’re up and running with the experimental code, read Ben Rockhold’s guide to designing for dualstrusion, which will explain how to design and print objects for dual extrusion.

Additionally, if you’re using multiple toolheads and having trouble with communications, you’ll want to try building the latest firmware from source, as the current version in git implements a protocol change that greatly improves operation for multiple toolheads.

A special thank you goes out to Ben Rockhold, Noah Levy, and Will Langford, who made all this awesomeness happen.

Good luck, and as always drop me a line or a comment and let me know how it goes!

Gnome and Gnome

There is no doubt Tony Buser has definitely done more for the 3D printing community than anyone else when it comes to advancing gnome duplication and teleportation technology.  However, I’m convinced that his SpinScan open source software and hadware has a larger potential besides assisting in the controversial practice of gnome cloning. ¹  Tony hasn’t finalized the materials list, but the final project would probably involve a decent web camera with good low light performance² , a cheap laser³ , a stepper driver, a stepper motor, an arduino, a few bearings, threaded rod, and some nuts and bolts.  The whole lot would set you back around $200 and significantly less if you can scavenge a few parts.

So, if you could scan and print anything, what would it be?⁴

Spinscan by tbuser

Gnome Scan #3 by tbuser

This one came out pretty well and is the most complete 360 degree gnome scan yet. It was also the first scan using my new printed turntable and spinscan software from thingiverse.com/thing:9972 Spinscan isn't calculating the Z axis correctly, so if you download the point cloud you'll see it was stretched. I had to shrink the Z axis in blender. Other then that and 2 steps in meshlab, it required no cleanup or merging of multiple point clouds, spinscan got a complete scan of all sides in one go.

This thing brought to you by

1. I mean, the anti-gnome-stem-cell lobby is just insane!
2. Perhaps around $100
3. He got a $4 laser from eBay
4. But, perhaps a better question is…  what are you waiting for?!

Northrop Grumman RQ-4 UAV Drone - (the coolest drone photo I could find!)

Using a 3D printing technique for nylon laser sintering engineers at the University of Southampton designed, printed, and flew a printed unmanned aerial vehicle¹²

No fasteners were used and all equipment was attached using ‘snap fit’ techniques so that the entire aircraft can be put together without tools in minutes.  The electric-powered aircraft, with a 2-metres wingspan, has a top speed of nearly 100 miles per hour, but when in cruise mode is almost silent.

With no need for special tools, tooling skills, equipment and no extra expense or time “penalty” for complex structures, they were able to produce wing structures that would have been extremely expensive and difficult to manufacture in any other way.  This is a truly amazing demonstration of the versatility of 3D printing and snap-fit designs.

Via Slashdot

1. Think drone airplane.
2. Photo courtesy of gordontour