Another improvement

As you might remember, I have a prusa i3 on loan, and had an issue with the cables to the servos breaking due to the movement of the axis. You can read all about it here.

Consequently, when building the Blocks Zero printer, I payed particular attention to the routing of the cables, and securing them such as to avoid excessive stress at the most fragile point, i.e. where it enters the connector. The problem is that the movement induces fatigue at the point the cable joins the connector pins.

It doesn't appear to be such a big problem in the Blocks Zero, as only one servo moves, and moves along with the Z axis, making it not too mobile. Still, I decided to make a jacket for it, to hold the cable slightly above the connector, to maintain the cable/connector connection free of movement.

This is the result:

Again, the printer is so accurate that I first printed a part with an extra 0,5mm tolerance, and it was too loose. I ended up printing one with the exact 42mm.

As usual, the models can be found at the warehouse.

Blocks Zero 3D printer

A few months back I ordered a Blocks Zero 3D printer in kit. It appeared to be a nice printer, made in Portugal!

Received it and finally had the opportunity to assemble it after the holidays.

What a great little printer it is! Great build quality, great assembly instructions, and everything worked right out of the box!

Go check it out! and if you need a small printer - it will only print 12x14x12cm in PLA - I think it is a great contender!

I ordered a heating plate to install a warm bed to be able to print ABS, but I'm not sure I'll install it. At least not now. It just runs so well and produces such nice parts that I'm not sure I want to change it.

If you do assemble one, be sure to check the additional assembly instructions at their website, which I wasn't aware until after I figured out how to assemble those extra parts.

Here are some pictures of the final product.

Once I finished assembly, I wasn't very happy with the black display being left there in the hole, so I designed and printed a little frame for it, which I think really ties the whole thing together. And the precision on the printer is so good, that it fit right in. It's a tight fit! It was a bit difficult to take it out from the base plate, and it broke a tiny bit, which I glued back in place. Might print another one soon.

The files can be found here on the google warehouse.

I would advise to remove the display for installing the frame.

Small teeth box

My small girl lots her first tooth lately, so I needed a small box to keep it: what else could I do besides printing one!

Here it is, the lid matches perfectly with the bottom! I printed this in transparent ABS, but will probably redo it in glow-in-the-dark PLA. If you want to print it, you can find it here in the warehouse

Small box to store the fallen teeth

And closed

Prusa i3 improvements

As I've been posting here, I have a prusa i3 on loan for a couple of months.

A few weeks ago, I got a piece that had no plastic deposited on one specific area, and was fine on the rest. This was very odd, so I had it reprinted and stayed around to see what happened. Immediately I saw that the extruder stepper motor was not turning. I looked around to try to see the reason for this, and found the culprit: a damaged cable:

Extruder stepper broken cable

I tried fixing it, by taking out the small metal tab in the connector, but that didn't work for long.
I talked to the owner of the printer and he had a spare cable. According to him this had happened before, and was a common problem.
The issue here is that a lot of stress is put on that particular cable as it travels left and right along the X axis all the time, plus vertically, although that is a slow and much less often travel.

Since I don't like problems that reoccur, I thought of a solution: a cable holder that transfers the stress from the connector to the cable, which is a point much less prone to failure. So I designed a cable holder that holds not only the extruder stepper cable, but all the cable for heating the extruder and for the fans. Here it is, printed in glow-in-the-dark PLA:

Extruder stepper cable holder

Extruder stepper cable holder

This makes the whole cable behave much better, and I think will also prolong the life of the extruder heating connections. I also printed one for the X-axis stepper motor which travels up with the Z-axis:

X-axis cable holder

You can find these models in the warehouse here.

While discussing this problem, I also realized the cable proving the heated bed with power also keeps traveling back and forth along the y-axis and so it would also fail sooner or later, so I also designed a little holder for this. You can find it in the warehouse here:

Heated bed cable holder

3D Printed zipper fix

I have been very busy with the 3D printer, and have a lot of pictures and material to post here, so stay tuned!

Today it's about a little fix: a broken zipper on my daughters favourite backpack.

As you can see in the picture, the zipper handler was broken, but she was still using the backpack, however difficult it was to open it.

The broken handle

This hardly asked for a 3D printer to fix, but, since I was busy printing stuff, why not print a handle for the zipper? So that I did.

The handle, in glow-in-the-dark PLA

I then used a dremel to cut a groove on the printed PLA (glow-in-the-dark) part, and used epoxy to glue it on.

This is the final result, she is very proud of it, and of me having fixed it, and she loves that it's glow-in-the-dark!

The handle glued in place

3D printed Apple Airport Extreme Wall mount

I got a 3D printer on loan from a friend, it's a Prusa i3.

I have used it before by designing and taking the files to him for printing, but this allows me to quickly check and made adjustments.

So to start, I had a wall holder for an Apple Airport Extreme wifi router design that I made a few months ago, but never got to print, since I then made such a holder out of acrylic.

By accident, the acrylic holder broke a few days before I got the printer, so it was the perfect opportunity to try it. Here is a rendering of the holder:

I printed it using PLA, and got quite a nice result! Here are a few pictures.

I use Sketchup to design the models. If you want to have a go, you can find the sketchup model on the warehouse here.

Chimney Turbine fix

Another unconventional fix, this time the chimney turbine.

The Chimney Turbine

It's been there for a 4 or 5 years, rotating steadily and stealthily, until a couple of nights ago, it nearly drove me crazy as I searched for the origin of a faint noise as I used the computer in the attic. I thought it was from the hard disk, then the boiler, and finally, after a night or two I realized it was from the turbine. It didn't help that there wasn't much wind, so it only turned intermittently.

Come the weekend, and I jump on the roof to get it out, disassemble it, to find a rusty bearing at the very bottom. The hole where the axle is assembled is protected from water ingress, but I guess not protected enough, and over the years, some water accumulated, and got the bearing rusty.

The rusty bearing

A trip to the local hardware store later, and I ordered the bearings on eBay, from some German store. The local store closed at 12:00 on a saturday!

The rusty bearing opened and the new one about to be installed

They arrived today, so I prepared it all, ready for final assembly and replacing it on the roof!

Kids Robot

I recently promised my daughter we would make a robot together, one that could make drawings.

After searching for some inspiration, I found a really simple one, here, that could be easily built and that she could understand.

So here are my plans, most steps, if not all, can be make by the children with some assistance:

Materials: a battery holder, motor, switch, tie wraps, and a piece of wood; some basic tools are also needed. I have pre-drilled the wood with 6 small holes for the feet, and 4 larger holes for the motor mount, and pre-soldered long wires to all electric components, so that the child can connect them.

Kids: Cut 3 lengths of solid core wire, strip it, and bend it to fit the holes, see next picture:

Kids: Mount like this!

Kids: Mount the motor with the tie wraps. Mount a thin flexible tube on the motor. Here I used a bit of thermo retractable sleeve. On the tip of that you mount a tip of a pencil.

Kids: Also the battery holder.

Connect it all via the switch. I used a push button, but a regular ON-OFF is also fine! even better maybe would be a ON-OFF-ON to reverse the direction!

Here it is a better view!

It then got decorated with antennae and mouth :) The kids really enjoyed it!!!

The idea is that the vibration both draws and makes the robot move. Mine was a bit too heavy to move, but I'll work on that!

I'm already thinking of the next ones! slightly more complex!

GoPro waterproof case power supply

Back quickly, and back to electronics! Or in this case, electrics!

The problem is well known: You have a GoPro camera and would like to power it beyond the battery life for e.g. some outdoor long time-lapse movie.

There are some external batteries available, and some projects that connect a USB cable through the case, but they either require a hole in the case to pass the cable, or involve some very thin conductors, which, do not damage the case, but do potentially compromise the water proofness of the case.

So here's what I've done:

Got a USB cable and stripped it to the connector, and trimmed the connector as to be able to put the camera with the cable back in the case:

Connected the 2 power wires to two of the buttons on the case, from the inside.

Since the buttons are metallic, all that is left is to connect the other end of the USB cable to the buttons on the outside! Lo and behold, you have power to the camera via the buttons, with no damage to either camera or case, and all it costs is the price of the USB cable, which you probably have lying around anyway!

Next step is to make a nice connector to put on the outside over the buttons, with all the wiring!

I'm back! and this time with a completely different project!

I've been away from posting here, as I did not have much available time to report.

I did some things, which I still intend to report, but this time, I am redoing the upholstery on some old chairs!
These are some pretty old chairs, that belonged to my grand-mother, so they are at least 40 years old, I guess more than that.

About 15 years ago I replaced the internal foam and elastic bands on the sitting area, but left the top intact. Now, after an unfortunate incident, the cloth got destroyed, so I had to fix it!

Started by removing the bottom from the chair, and the artificial leather cover.

 

You can appreciate the work that went into the cutting and placing of the cover!

The round headed nails were placed by me during the foam replacement. The original nails are the flat headed, and they are very short and tapered, very interesting nails! Possibly special upholstery nails...don't know...

I then cut a piece of new material and stapled it all around. It is not as stretched as I would like to, but it was the first time...I'll try to do better for the second chair!

 

I also inserted some screw studs (sorry don't know the correct name) to be able to use metal screws instead of wood screws.

Overall the result is pretty neat! but I'm not gonna do the back, as that is something for a professional.
The photos aren't great, but the phone was all I had around.

I'll try to make a time-lapse movie of the repair of the second chair! stay tuned!

Digital Photography

This will be a short post (good news!)

Just was busy doing my photo backups, and decided to make a graphic to see the evolution of storage needed.

I have had a digital photo camera for 10 years now. Started with a very very nice Minolta Xt, which I still think was the best compact I ever had (only had another one after that :), and eventually moved to a digital SLR, and now a SLT.

So here it is, the number of photos taken, and the associated storage. I think one can deduce the year I bought the first SLR and the year I upgraded it to a model with so much more pixels!

Note: I bought the first camera in Christmas 2003, so the bars don't make it to the visible area :)

Fan Controller reloaded II

So here is the continuation of the previous chapter, the saga for a nice product.

Final version:

The eagle eyed among you might notice some small changes. Nothing major.
The ones really paying attention might notice the mistakes: DS18B20 is one wire, not I2C, as is indicated (cosmetics), and the silkscreen for the 12V and the 5V regulators is inverted (cosmetics with high potential for disaster). The soldering holes for the screw connectors could also be a tiny bit bigger, but that depends on the connectors used (could be problematic, as I used some big ones).

I only noticed these mistakes after the boards arrived, luckily before soldering the regulators, so no harm done!

but, following the intense design sessions, I sent it out to be manufactured by Fritzing, and the boards arrived, a bit more than a week later! Great service is all I can say. Here they are in all their glory:

 I really think they came out amazing!

And here in the box, with some components located, not soldered yet:

And finally, in the box, with the components (attiny is missing):

In the third chapter, the completed thing, with screws, micro, lid, everything! and some considerations for improvements.

Fan Controller reloaded

I've been busy redoing my fan controller, and now, that I'm about to post about it, I just realize that I never presented the previous work finished, so here's a picture of the prototype:

So there it is. I especially bought those little orange and gray connectors to try out for this project.

It had been working fine for one year, but the power supply that comes with the radiator is in a DIN rail format, so I have been wanting to find a DIN rail enclosure, and make a PCB to put inside it.

I found a nice box in Conrad, and proceeded to make a shield for a JeeNode, that would fit the box. I decided to use Fritzing, to try out the manufacturing service.

1st attempt:

Great! only to realise, that the JeeNode on top of this would cover the access to the screws of the connectors. Not to mention, that the box had some mechanical constraints.

2nd attempt:

Notice that I have completely replaced the JeeNode by a Attiny of 8 pins. I decided I do not need statistics on this. So it is now a fully standalone micro-controlled controller.
notice also the mounting holes in the middle, and a big hole for a big plastic column in the box (pictures will follow). Time to print the thing and check that it fits.

3rd attempt:

Of course things didn't really fit, so I had to shift a few things around. I also decided to add some connectors to make the whole thing tidier. This is almost it! 

In the next post I'll put some pictures of the final product: beautiful boards, made in Berlin! and the assembled thing.