What have you made and shared today?

Bathtoy by Request!

After explaining Thing-A-Day to my daughter, I asked her what she would like me to design for her for day 2. Answer: A sailboat for the bathtub.

Tool for a Working Artist!

Last night, my wife needed a circle template for an art project she was doing. This took about 15 minutes to make in total, from design to finished product. And that is why 3D printing is awesome.

Jewelry (and Tool for Future Jewelry)!

This design is intended to be an envelope to be boolean used (intersection) with other textured designs, we’ll see….

Tool for Learning About Clocks!

I figured this tool might be useful for the MakerBot Clock Makers project and for educators and students looking to explore basic gear mechanics.  (I am spending time each day designing new attachments for it.)

Keep checking back to see what other Thing-A-Day participants are sharing on Thingiverse — and get out there and make some stuff.

Mechanical Animals by sconine

Thingiverse citizen sconine has just shared some really amazing toy mechanical animals.  Colorful, playful, and whimsical, each of these hand crank toys is sure to delight a child. ^1 2  Guaranteed not to wet the carpet, bite, or require you to let them out in the middle of the night these creatures would make excellent pets for any kid.  Interestingly, since the coolest instances of these toys is with multiple colored components in each toy, this is one of the few multi-piece prints that would not be well suited for printing plates!  I especially like how each of these toys has a distinctive motion to them.  I can’t wait to see what other little mechanical toys Sconie shares!

Also, over the last two weeks or so I’ve gotten into the habit of handing out imaginary and arbitrary points.  10,000 awesome MakerBot dad points to Sconine!

Mechanical Animals by sconine

These are 3 different machanical animals. They are all pretty basic mechanical devices that turn rotary motion into more of a linear motion. My kids (and their friends) have gotten a real kick out of them. I drew them all in sketchup.Jumping Prairie Dog Turn the crank and make the prairie dog jump up and down.Diving Dolphin Turn the crank and watch the dolphin dive through the waves.Wood Pecker Turn the crank and see the wood pecker peck away. (This was originally posted as a pecking bird, but my kids all call it the woodpecker, so I'm putting it up as part of this collection).

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1. Or, as in my case… the child-like. [↩]
2. They are also very reminiscent of the popular Trammel of Archimedes [↩]

Blooming Flower by bongoboy23

How’s this for a printable demonstration piece?  Bongoboy23 has created a little flower bud that will bloom, or close back up, as you rotate the base.  Besides being technically interesting, it showcases a MakerBot’s ability to fabricate functional and pleasant mechanical parts.

Blooming Flower by bongoboy23

***IMPORTANT*** Check back for updates as I revise the files This is an amazing blooming flower! Turn the gear on the bottom and the flower blooms, exposing the beautiful flower within! Original purpose for this design was creating something to turn rotational movement into linear movement, using something that could be printed on a Makerbot. Figured the easiest to design was something screw-like, but with overhang restrictions, I was unsure whether a tight screw design would work. And it turns out it does! ***DESIGN VERSIONS*** There are two different versions. First version uses glue and filament as the hinges for the petals. Pros to this is the petals are much tighter, and don't wiggle around alot. Con is that it requires more glue. Second version uses links as the hinges. Pro is that less glue is needed. Cons are that it wiggles alot more, because the links require some give to snap into place. Also, when snapping into the base, the base links have a significant chance of breaking off. I have added supports and fixes to prevent this from happening, but there is still a chance. Extra stl for broken links to glue on in case this happens. ***DIFFERENT GEARS*** NOTE: Applies only to large flowers In order to turn the gears, I designed two different gear systems. First version allows the entire bottom to turn, but is more difficult to get on the base. Second version is easier to get on, but the gear is slightly more difficult to get to, and could prove more difficult for some people to turn. ***FILES*** Files are placed in zip files, for easy organization. Credit where credit is due, flower in center is from:thingiverse.com/thing:5883 Internal screw is 1 rotation per 20mm rise. Design files included. (I apologize for the messy designs, didn't organize or rename anything in the ipt files :P ) NOTE: For those who want to design a different center piece without the cap, the rod in the center is 5mm diameter. This way you can design the hole directly into your variation. ***UPDATES*** UPDATE 7/7/2011: Edited Version 1-Large Flower-Base updated. EDITS: Forgot to edit the top ring of the small petals, they were 1mm too wide. Also the main circle of the base is several millimeters too small, causing the small petals to be too close to the center shaft. Sorry to those who have already printed this. UPDATE 7/8/2011: Edited version of Gear 1 for Large Flower uploaded. 1 zip with all current STL Files as of 7/8/2011 uploaded. EDITS: Center shaft is not long enough on Gear 1 bottom (Gear 2 is fine). Really sorry I missed this.(Note it says v1, but it is also for v2) UPDATE 7/9/2011: Edited version of large flower petal for v1 uploaded.....hinge was too big.... Re-upload of Large V1 zip with correct STL Files. Revised version updated. UPDATE 7/12/2011: Makerbot out of commission ATM, can't test any of the un-built files, but they should work just fine. UPDATE 7/22/2011: Hooray! Got my replacement parts, TOM is back up and running, will start printing some new flowers in the next few days! If you find any other mistakes, please message me.

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Printable Clock, Parametric Proof of Concept by syvwlch

Syvwlch has been busy at work on his printable clock over the last week.  He’s produced SEVEN iterations of this design so far.  I’m a huge advocate for posting unfinished or even obsolete designs – the is a perfect example of the benefits.  At any point someone could have jumped in to help out with these designs, the formulas, or contributed code.

Following the evolution of his designs as been very educational for me.  I’ve struggled with how best to design a multi-part mechanical device.  Syvwlch clearly has the right idea – starting with the centermost component – the escapement mechanism – and building outwards upon it.

Printable Clock, Parametric Proof of Concept by syvwlch

Another proof of concept along the way to a WORKING printable clock. A working clock would, for example, have a case. :-) Aside from such petty concerns, this clock is complete, in that we have a power source (a drum to wind a string and weight), a whole gear train (5/3/2/2/5/3/2/2), a Graham escapement, a (token) pendulum and three hands mounted on concentric shafts to show the time. It is fully parametric, animate-able, and about as modular as I could make it within the current constraints of OpenSCAD (recursion would be nice for the eight gears in the gear train!). The code uses three different types of gear wheels, each able to support any level of nested concentric shafts if needed for support or to run clock hands: 1. A drum with an outer gear along one rim, 2. A pinion wheel with a gear supporting a smaller gear, 3. An escapement wheel supporting a smaller gear. It also automatically positions them relative to each other, ensures that they mesh properly and rotates them according to the correct gear ratios to support animation and to check the design. It uses the involute gear script from the MCAD library, and my own escapement library. I intend to move as much of the script into another library at some later date, and like in some of my previous scripts, to provide both the current assembled() module and a handy laidOutToPrint() module. Lastly, the modular nature of this PoC should allow for separate tweaking of the various components of the clock until they all work, without having to print an entire clock every time. (EDIT: fixed a bug, kindly pointed out by DaveD, and uploaded a fixed version of the OpenSCAD script, along with an exploded version of the STL and a JPEG of same.)

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Sliding Parts

As my clockwork spider project develops, one of the goals I’ve had in mind is a final end design that can be assembled by hand, without tools, or additional hardware. ¹  This is an ideal to which I hope I can adhere.  I just like the idea of printing off a plate of parts, handing them to someone, and letting them assemble all of the bits on the spot.  Getting a box of Legos is fun in part because it comes with absolutely everything you need.  Without a barrier to assembly, the part out of which the toy is assembled are toys in and of themselves.

If one is to design mechanical parts, I think there are two important considerations.  The first consideration is just how close can two objects be designed and printed such that you don’t need too much force to snap them together tightly.  If the tolerances are too tight, perhaps the parts can’t be reliably printed or easily fit together by hand.  If the tolerance are too loose, the parts won’t stay together.  The second consideration is just how much clearance parts need before they can rotate or move against one another smoothly.  Too tight and they’ll bind, catch, or seize up.  Too loose and they’ll wobble out of place or simply not connect to other critical parts reliably.

After several revisions, I’ve found a “sweet spot” for parts printed with my Thing-O-Matic:

• Interlocking Parts: For a part that needs to fit tightly within another part, I design them so that they have 0.25mm clearance on all sides.
• Moving Parts: For a part that must easily slide within another part, I design them so that they have 0.5mm clearance on all sides.

After some tuning of my profile² I think I might revise the “moving parts” tolerances to 0.4mm clearance on all sides for a fit with less wibbly wobbly. ³  And if one is to use tools, such as a vise or pliers, and not rely on hand pressure, a clearance of 0.2mm on all sides would probably work for parts that needed to stay locked together.

Do you design mechanical parts that need to fit together?  What kinds of tolerances do you use in your designs?

1. Photo courtesy of j-ster [↩]
2. Again, with Dave’s Profileinator – the only way to tune a profile [↩]
3. Or timey wimey. [↩]