Tag Archives: Design

No I don’t!

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it's a matter of size (bigger is better)Short is relative

Suck at brevity, that is. 1  That post has some useful links I’m quite confident I’ll look forward to re-reading.  As this blog is as much an external extension of my memory as it is a method of expression, I’m hopeful you might find them interesting as well.

 

  1. Photo Credit: William A. Clark via Compfight [↩]

How Makers Settle Disputes

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So, here’s the deal.  Renosis and I are settling a friendly disagreement by participating in a design challenge.  The rules are simple:

  1. We have 24 hours to upload and publish a Gangsta derivative STL on Thingiverse, starting 5/26/2011 at 11PM EST.
  2. On 5/31/2011 at 11PM EST, the person with the most number of likes wins.

Here’s all you have to do, go to Thingiverse to see my brand new Fez Pez Gangsta, aka the Pezsta, and click Like!

 

Pick me! Pick me!

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Okay, I’ve gotten the clearance from Pattywac to join in the United We Stand team design challenge.  Although I voluntarily take myself out of the running from every challenge, I love participating.  They’re just too much damn fun.  :)

I never participate in the judging on these things – but it would look a little odd to have me be both someone who blogs about something and a guy who is the subject of the blog post.  Blogging here at MakerBlock.com, I happily post about anything that comes to mind, even if it is ridiculously self-indulgent.  However, I really don’t want the posts at MakerBot to be about me – I want them to be about the awesome stuff people are doing in the DIY 3D printing community.

The potentially ethical problem I faced with this most recent challenge is that as a team design challenge, I wouldn’t want to disqualify an entire team of people just because I was on it. 1  So, my proposal to MakerBot and Pattywac was that as part of any team, I would agree to forgo any winnings of any kind. 2  This was acceptable to both.

So, are you interested in collaborating on this design challenge?  I’d be especially interested in getting collaborative help on any of my existing projects, going from my highest interest3 to lower interest4 :

  1. Clockwork spider5
  2. Open source disc shooter
  3. A printable clock that actually keeps time
  4. A sonic screwdriver
  5. A dalek that can rotate it’s head, roll, and move it’s gun, eyestalk, and plunger6
  6. A better Voltron
  7. A puzzle box
  1. And, really, having me on your team is hindrance enough. [↩]
  2. I just want to feel included! [↩]
  3. #1 [↩]
  4. #7 [↩]
  5. I’ve already had input and help from Dna on this [↩]
  6. Mad props to innovationbylayers for the existing dalek on Thingiverse [↩]

OpenSCAD, ReplicatorG, why can’t we all just get along?

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I need to bolt some shelving to the wall.  Yes, I know the shelves came with some hardware for doing that – but I own a 3D printer and I can design BETTER hardware.  I whipped something up in Sketchup and printed off some brackets.  Next, I needed a slight variation in order to bolt two shelving units to each other.  (Something for which their hardware wasn’t designed).

Unfortunately, ReplicatorG just puked all over itself as soon as I tried to slice the bracket.  I had been tinkering with OpenSCAD for the last week or so, so I figured I’d give that a shot.  Here’s what I tried:

  • First, I tried building the bracket up out of just rectangular boxes.  This was okay, but cumbersome.
  • Next, I tried to design a really really complex polyhedron in the shape of my bracket.  This was a nightmare.  To do it properly, you need to design your object such that you’re defining each of the triangles that make up the object.  If you get set up the triangles by putting the numbers for each corner in the wrong order, in a less-right order, or did some other benign thing, it would make a mess.
  • After chatting with Clothbot, I tried to define a cross section of my bracket as a flat image in Sketchup (again), then tried to expert it to a DXF through a plugin.  I just couldn’t manage to extrude that flat DXF into a 3D image.
  • So, I went back to Sketchup and tried to tinker with the file again, fixed it in CADSpan, exported to STL again, fixed it up with NetFabb again, and ReplicatorG still barfed it up.
  • Back to OpenSCAD (again).  This time I tried to assemble a 2D cross section of other shapes.  This didn’t work as I tried to tinker with the “linear_extrude” function.
  • THEN, finally, I tried to define a polygon (not a polyhedron) based upon the coordinates I had used originally to describe the bracket when I was attempting to build it out of triangles.  This worked to describe a flat 2D section of the bracket.  I tried the “linear_extrude” function again and it worked well.  I then punched a few holes into the bracket with some small cylinders and exported to an STL again.  It’s my understanding that OpenSCAD makes quality STL files – without holes or other cleanup required.  While that may be the case, you guessed it, ReplicatorG tossed its cookies when it saw this bracket.

So, what is it? Is it the bracket?  Sketchup and ReplicatorG?  Is it OpenSCAD?  Suggestions?

OpenSCAD and randomness

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A quick google search tells me that OpenSCAD doesn’t have a random number generator.  That’s a bit of a bummer.  I was just thinking how cool it would be to have an OpenSCAD file that would give you little variations on itself every time you generated an STL.  I’m thinking snowflakes, giant fingerprints, and other things that have a little bit of chance and chaos built in.

Or, perhaps some kind of Mad Libs-esque system where you tell it to create an alien or monster figure and you get a random number of eyes, heads, noses, arms, legs, and tails.

Now, I figure with CloudSCAD it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to add a little bit of javascript that can include a random number with given parameters…  So, it’s at least possible.

Playing with OpenSCAD / CloudSCAD

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Inspired by MaskedRetriever‘s last few Thingiverse blog posts on OpenSCAD I tried it out again.  Well, to be fair, I’ve been trying Tony Buser’s CloudSCAD.  I’ll get around to actually installing OpenSCAD, but playing with CloudSCAD is so dang easy.  It is limited by the power1 of my netbook.

I have always enjoyed the ease and immediacy of Sketchup.  Complex objects and forms are easy.  Amusingly, sometimes the smaller simpler bits can be more difficult to tame. 2  But, CloudSCAD does appeal to my programmer/hacker nature.

In any case, I’ve managed to conjure simple forms – spheres, cubes, boxes, cylinders, and cones.  I can assemble and subtract forms from one another.  But, it appears that more complex or irregular polygons are more difficult.

What CAD program do you use and why?

  1. Or, lack thereof [↩]
  2. Wouldn’t you agree Chris? [↩]

Sonic Screwdriver progress

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Printable screwdriver

Printable screwdriver

I just redesigned the printable screwdriver in order to make the parts fit together better and be more printable.

It should be easier to see how these parts go together.

Basically, you take the “mid-handle” at the far end of the build sheet, turn it upside right, clamp the two “lower handle” pieces on either side of it, and slide that bottom ring onto the lower handle.

I still need to redesign the upper handle, hollow out the mid-handle, and make sure there’s enough room inside for the GoodFET / electronic sonic screwdriver guts.

Now I’m wondering if it is also possible to make this a piece of MakerBot origami – and make it printable on one build sheet…

Real life sonic screwdriver

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This morning I received an e-mail from Bre out of the blue introducing me to Travis Goodspeed.  Apparently Travis has been working on building sonic screwdriver guts out of the GoodFET, a universal JTAG programmer, a “sonic screwdriver of hacking.”  Travis suggested a GoodFET could be programmed to act as a TV-B-Gone, light show, or any number of other things.  Given that his circuit board is about 3″ x 0.85″ x 0.2″1 , there shouldn’t be a problem finding space for it in the sonic screwdriver I’m in the middle of designing. 2

Freaking sweet.

So, here’s my real life sonic screwdriver wishlist:

  • Lights.  Red LED3 , white LED4 , green LED5 , and a UV LED6
  • An actual screwdriver bit or spot where you can attach a screwdriver bit.  It would just be cool to have a sonic screwdriver that could be used as a screwdriver.
  • A shakey Tic-Tac container style recharger.  Having a sonic screwdriver that doesn’t need batteries would be awesome.
  • A tiny speaker that played the sonic screwdriver sound.
  • A tiny magnet.  I remember watching Doctor Who back in the day, black and white old school episodes, where he used his sonic screwdriver to take screws out of things, bolts out of doors, etc in the worst stop motion animation the BBC could get away with.  Still, if this sonic screwdriver had a magnet, it could actually affect a physical change via magnetic force.
  • TV-B-Gone.  On the episode “Midnight” Doctor Who shuts off a bunch of TV’s using his sonic screwdriver.  This would be an INCREDIBLE feature!
  • Flash drive and/or mini-memory card reader.  Perhaps with the entire library from PortableApps.com installed.
  1. For those of you non-imperialists out there: 76.2mm x 21.59mm x 5.08mm [↩]
  2. TBuser, if you want to help, lemme know! [↩]
  3. For night vision.  Also, there are suggestions that a sonic screwdriver can have a “red setting.” [↩]
  4. As a flashlight. [↩]
  5. The 11th Doctor’s screwdriver has a green light. [↩]
  6. For making things fluoresce such as secret messages, blood stains, and monsters. [↩]