Aldric Negrier, a Portuguese Maker and owner of RepRap Algarve, has created an SLA 3D printer named RooBee One.

Most desktop 3D printers that you’ll see in Makerspaces or advertised for home use drop material onto a bed using a hot extrusion head. The open-source RooBee One, however, employs a DLP projector along with an Arduino Mega to light up each layer in a vat of resin. This causes each layer to solidify, thus making a complete object. You can see this process at around 0:30 in the video below.

RooBee One features an aluminum frame with an adjustable print area of 80x60x200 mm, with up to a 150x105x200mm build volume. Aside from the Arduino, additional electronics consist of a RAMPS 1.4 shield, a NEMA 17 stepper motor, a microstepping driver, an endstop, and a 12V transformer. Negrier also installed a fan on top of the printer to help guide the toxic vapors outside and away from the machine’s operator.

This process may be unfamiliar to those used to “normal” 3D printers, as it “magically” pulls a complete part out of a bath. The project is fairly involved, but the resulting ruby-red machine looks quite impressive. You can find out how to build one on its Instructables page.

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Been working on a building a quad walker probably for a year now. What started of a coding project has now ended up with me learning how to 3d model and building a kit 3d printer.

Along with scope of the project, the size of walker also grew. It was originally planned to use small 9g servers and probably end up 20cm across in total. Though I moved to using standard r/c card servos and as a result each leg will be around 20cm. No idea how big the body will need to be to house everything else.

read more

Primary image

Been working on a building a quad walker probably for a year now. What started of a coding project has now ended up with me learning how to 3d model and building a kit 3d printer.

Along with scope of the project, the size of walker also grew. It was originally planned to use small 9g servers and probably end up 20cm across in total. Though I moved to using standard r/c card servos and as a result each leg will be around 20cm. No idea how big the body will need to be to house everything else.

read more

Primary image

Been working on a building a quad walker probably for a year now. What started of a coding project has now ended up with me learning how to 3d model and building a kit 3d printer.

The size of walker also grew, it started of using little 9g servos and now using full-size r/c car servos.

At moment, I’ve only modelled the leg at the moment, though I’m reasonable confident this will be the near final version before starting the body.

Will post more soon

Primary image

Been working on a building a quad walker probably for a year now. What started of a coding project has now ended up with me learning how to 3d model and building a kit 3d printer.

Along with scope of the project, the size of walker also grew. It was originally planned to use small 9g servers and probably end up 20cm across in total. Though I moved to using standard r/c card servos and as a result each leg will be around 20cm. No idea how big the body will need to be to house everything else.

read more

Air hockey is a classic arcade game consisting of two players, two paddles, a puck, and a low-friction table. But what happens if you don’t have an opponent? If you’re Jose Julio, you build a robotic one out of 3D printer parts.

An updated version of his earlier design from 2014, Julio upgraded the Air Hockey Robot’s original camera and vision system to a smartphone for its eyes and brain. Other components include an Arduino, an ESP8266-based shield, NEMA 17 stepper motors, stepper motor drivers, as well as some belts, bearings, rods, and a few more 3D-printed pieces.

As you can see in Julio’s video below, the robot moves along two different axes with a paddle to cover its half of the table. An Android phone running the Air Hockey Robot EVO app monitors the playing surface, and makes real-time decisions by tracking the puck’s location and predicting its trajectories.

The smartphone’s camera is looking at the playing court. The camera’s captured data is processed in real-time by the smartphone. Detecting the position of the puck and the “pusher robot” (and according to the current location of all the elements on the court), your smartphone makes decisions and commands the robot what to do via Wi-Fi.

Your smartphone will become an augmented reality device, showing predicted trajectories and position of all the objects involved in this game.

Want your own? Julio has made both the instructions and code available to everyone.

There are two kinds of people in the world (and, no, this isn’t a binary joke). People who love the Arduino, and people who hate it. If you’ve ever tried to use a standard prototype board to mount on an Arduino, you’ll know what kind of person you are. When you notice the pins aren’t on 0.1 inch centers, you might think, “What the heck were those idiots thinking!” Or, you might say, “How clever! This way the connectors are keyed to prevent mistakes.” From your choice of statement, we can deduce your feelings on the subject.

[Rssalnero] clearly said something different. We weren’t there, but we suspect it was: “Gee. I should 3D print a jig to bend headers to fit.” Actually, he apparently tried to do it by hand (we’ve tried it, too). The results are not usually very good.

He created two simple 3D printed jigs that let you bend an 8-pin header. The first jig bends the correct offset and the second helps you straighten out the ends again. You can see the result in the picture above.

[Rssalnero] notes that the second jig needed reinforcement, so it is made to take 8 pins to use as fulcrums. Probably doesn’t hurt to print the jigs fairly solid and using harder plastic like ABS or PETG, too. Even if you don’t have a 3D printer, this is about a 15 or 30 minute print on any sort of reasonable printer, so make a friend. Worst case, you could have one of the 3D printing vendors make it for you, or buy local.

We love little tool hacks like this. If you are too lazy to snap 8 pins off a 40 pin strip, maybe you’d like some help. If you’d rather go with a custom PC board, you might start here.

Using ultrasonic sensors attached to a person’s arm, researchers have found a way to let you “feel” distant objects.

The concept of this project is surprisingly simple, but as shown in the test video below, seems to work quite well. Using an Arduino Uno to coordinate everything, when rangefinders see a nearby object, like a wall, the system triggers the corresponding vibrators. This allows someone to sense what is nearby without seeing or touching it.

An obvious use case for something like this would be to help visually-impaired people navigate. Perhaps it could also serve in an application where you need to pay attention to something you can’t quite see, sort of like how an animal’s whiskers warn them of danger before contact is made.

The idea is to have a set of rangefinders in armbands that point outwards around your body. Each armband also has vibrators in that vibrate against your skin at an increasing frequency as the range from each sensor gets smaller. The left armband covers your left-side surroundings, and the right your right-side.

You can see more details on this sensor assembly on RepRap Ltd’s page, including how its case was printed directly on fabric!

In the Harry Potter series, a Muggle is a person who lacks any sort of magical ability. Growing up reading these books, one can only imagine what it would be like to cast spells using a wand. Well, wonder no more as a group of NYC Muggles decided to build their own smart wand that can ‘magically’ control devices over Wi-Fi.

The 3D-printed wand is equipped with a voice recognition module that lets users cast spells of their own with a flick of the wrist, like ordering takeout from delivery.com, turning the lights on and off, as well as playing and silencing music.

Other components include (what appears to be) a MKR1000 board, a LiPo battery, a PowerBoost, a microphone, a switch, and a vibrating motor that indicates when a command is recognized.

Those wishing to buy one are out of luck, as the creators reveal this was merely a fan-made project to celebrate the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”  You can read more about the Muggle Wand here! 

“Since there isn’t a supermoon everyday, make one for your bedside table!” This is exactly what G4lile0 set out to do using a 3D printer, an Arduino and some open-source tools.

The result was a moon phase clock consisting of a 3D-printed model and an LED strip to create the lunar phases. The lights are driven by an Arduino that precisely calculates which phase to show, as well as controls a 0.96″ OLED display revealing the date and time. Other electronics include an RTC module, a DTH11 sensor, a buzzer, and three push buttons.

The clock also features several modes, including an alarm, a wake-up light, a lamp, a thermometer, and a hygrometer. It can even help set the mood or start your next lunar rave with its relaxation and party-like special effects.

You can read all about this project on Thingiverse and find its code over on GitHub.