Fubar Hackerspace (New Jersey) member Graham has been working on an open source liquid fuel rocket engine with regenerative cooling and precise flow control built on Arduino Uno.  In order to test it he’s also built a cool rig for testing propellant flow control:

My project is building Open Source 3D Printed Rocket Engines with Arduino microcontrollers. As an individual interested in building liquid fueled rocket engines as a hobby I quickly realized there were almost no resources online or forums to share or learn from others. I decided to combine my interests in Software, hardware and open source projects to develop and build a functioning liquid fueled rocket engine. However, unlike most other projects it had to be open source and easily re-produced.

In order to ensure it was as open source as possible I used the Arduino Uno board and IDE to develop software to safely control the engine. To meet the easily reproducible requirement I decided that 3D printing was the right approach rather than labor/time intensive traditional machining.

The end result is an engine that can easily be reproduced or modified. This gives others interested in this hobby a starting point for best practices, safety, etc… so that future projects aren’t starting out from scratch.

All of my design files and software are on GitHub  and a detailed description of the write-up is on the FUBAR labs makerspace wiki 

Here’s the video of the testing of the 3D Printed GOX/Ethanol Injector:

Fubar Hackerspace (New Jersey) member Graham has been working on an open source liquid fuel rocket engine with regenerative cooling and precise flow control build on Arduino Uno.  In order to test it he’s also built a cool rig for testing propellant flow control:

My project is building Open Source 3D Printed Rocket Engines with Arduino microcontrollers. As an individual interested in building liquid fueled rocket engines as a hobby I quickly realized there were almost no resources online or forums to share or learn from others. I decided to combine my interests in Software, hardware and open source projects to develop and build a functioning liquid fueled rocket engine. However, unlike most other projects it had to be open source and easily re-produced.

In order to ensure it was as open source as possible I used the Arduino Uno board and IDE to develop software to safely control the engine. To meet the easily reproducible requirement I decided that 3D printing was the right approach rather than labor/time intensive traditional machining.

The end result is an engine that can easily be reproduced or modified. This gives others interested in this hobby a starting point for best practices, safety, etc… so that future projects aren’t starting out from scratch.

All of my design files and software are on GitHub  and a detailed description of the write-up is on the FUBAR labs makerspace wiki 

Here’s the video of the testing of the 3D Printed GOX/Ethanol Injector:

Read more on MAKE

Some of you may have experienced that when you start to print a cube or box-shaped objects they can easily warp on the corners. The reason for this is the change of volume that plastic goes through when cooling down: it shrinks when becoming cooler. Even if PLA, the corn-based plastic we use on the Arduino Materia 101, shrinks much less than ABS, it can become a problem when printing things that require a high level of precision.

That’s why Kristoffer prepared a tutorial to solve the problem and shares some 3dprinting tricks with all of you. Follow the 5 steps of the tutorial and learn how to print without warping.

Check the previous tutorials on 3d printing with Material 101

Interested in getting in touch and showing your experiments? Join Kristoffer on the Arduino forum dedicated to Materia 101 and give us your feedback.

The 3d printing tutorial Kristoffer, our 3d specialist, prepared this week is not part of the ongoing LEGO power functions compatible series but makes you still play around modding the famous bricks to add some cool light effects.

If you follow the 8 easy steps you’ll be able to print bricks with Arduino Materia 101 that can include addressable LED’s in your models. As in the previous tutorials, he modelled it using FreeCAD, but the way he did it should be applicable to just about any CAD-software or 3d modelling software.

Notice that in the last step of the tutorial you can also download the perfect settings to obtain good prints out of small pieces!

Check the previous tutorials on 3d printing with Material 101

Interested in getting in touch and showing your experiments? Join Kristoffer on the Arduino forum dedicated to Materia 101 and give us your feedback.

Circular Knitic is an open hardware project created for DOERS, an exhibition curated by Arduino co-founder David Cuartielles, which takes place at Etopia Center for Art & Technology in Zaragoza, Spain.

It consists of an exhibition and a series of presentations, workshops and seminars focusing on the world of open creation, invention and personal fabrication. It aims to unveil a variety of extraordinary creations, ideas that are transforming the world, but mostly show visitors a group of people: “the DOERS, constantly looking for new projects that surprise us”.

During a period of eight months, 5 knitting machines will be knitting slowly and produce enough tubulars so that the ceiling of the art centre will be covered with knitted scarves.

Using digital fabrication and maker tools like 3D printing, laser cutting, makerbeam, and Arduino Uno— Knitic duo designed a replicable circular knitting machine. It’s not the first time they experiment on knitting techniques. A couple of years ago I interviewed them on this blog for their previous project focused on giving a new brain to old knitting machines using Arduino Due.

Various designers are experimenting with 3D printing in fashion but this doesn’t mean  to 3d print garments directly. Knitic approach shows how digital fabrication could have greater impact on the way clothes are prototyped and produced, especially on producing new concepts of machines:

In maker culture, production of textiles is often overlooked. Circular Knitic demonstrates that beautiful textiles can be produced with digital fabrication tools.

Most of Circular Knitic parts are made with  RepRap 3D printers, some others are made of plexiglass that can be easily lasercut in a fablab. Instructions and all the stl files for the components are available for download on the project’s GitHub page.

The videos below shows the building of the machines and when they are in action.

This week we are presenting you a new tutorial on 3d printing of Lego-compatible pieces with Materia 101. Kristoffer designed a brick with the parametric 3d modeler FreeCAD that can hold a small servo. Following the 10-step instructions  you can easily add wheels to robots built in LEGO and  use specific servos with different sizes.

Check the previous tutorials on 3d printing with Material 101

Interested in getting in touch and showing your experiments? Join Kristoffer on the Arduino forum dedicated to Materia 101 and give us your feedback.

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE

Read more on MAKE