Printing Tiny Robots

I've not done any 3D printing for a while. Then, earlier this week Peter showed me some things he'd been printing and they looked rather nice. And today on Twitter I saw a link to a tiny articulated bot that looked interesting. I like designs which print all as one. The legs, arms and head are intended to be separate items which stay fitted together because they are made that way. The original model had a print time of four hours, so I scaled it right down to speed things up and get a print time of an hour or so.

I was a bit worried that this would mean that the different pieces would fuse together into a single block but with a bit of careful twisting I managed to free of all the elements and I now have a tiny figure to help me with my breakfast cuppa. 

Robot Recovery

Last Wednesday my balancing robot kind of overbalanced, leapt off the desk and shattered on the floor. You can see the awful damage here. At the time I said that all I'd have to do is design some replacement parts, print them out,  and I'd have him back on his wheels again.

So I have.

These are the FreeCad designs for the two plates that were broken. I did some careful measurement, wrote some Python to do the designs (it's a strange way to work, but I like it) and then printed them out and put everything back together. And it all works, which is nice. I think the new pieces are quite a bit stronger than the old ones. And if they break, I can just change one value in the program, run it again and print out some thicker ones..

3D Printing with iBox Nano

Update: Please read the comments section of this post for the latest on this device. 

Thanks to a combination of poor time management on my part and digging up an absolutely crucial road at rush our on the part of Hull Council I wasn't able to get to the MeetUp at C4DI tonight. But when I did get home I thought I'd fire up the iBox nano printer that arrived last week. 

The printer was a Kickstarter project. I've had pretty good success with Kickstarter. I've only had one Kickstarter project come seriously unstuck - I'm looking at you Agent watch. The iBox project promised a light powered high resolution printer for less than 300 dollars and was too tempting to pass up. So I backed it a while ago (I think it was November) and then waited.

The device was a bit late arriving, but I don't mind too much about that. Lots of people get very upset when these projects have delays, but I'm happy to give them time to get it right. As long as something turns up at the end. I'm still looking at you Agent watch....

The iBox is powered by a Raspberry Pi and uses a WiFi adapter to connect to your network. You set up prints on your PC via a web interface that works really well. There are a few buttons on the machine and some lights to tell you what it is doing. 

So I carefully filled the vat with resin, rubbed the build plate with some sandpaper to make it nice and rough so that the print would adhere to it, lowered the plate into the resin and set it off. 

My first print failed. All I got was a little lump of goo on the bottom of the vat. Oh well. I've got quite good at consistent printing with Una my Ultimaker, but I remember how much fiddling it took to get to where I am now. 

It turns out that, just as with Una, the key to successful printing is the print height. When Una squirts molten filament at the build plate it is crucial that the very first layer is just the right height for the filament to stick to the plate and provide the starting point for the print. With my iBox printer, which doesn't have a name yet by the way, the crucial thing is the distance of the build plate from the bottom of the glass dish, or vat, which holds the liquid resin.

The idea is that the build plate is a tiny distance from a sheet of teflon tape stuck on the bottom of the vat. The UV light makes some of the liquid resin in this gap turn solid. Then the printer pulls the build plate upwards, taking this layer of solid resin with it. Only on my first print the solid bit stuck to the bottom of the vat instead, hence the mis-shapen lump that was produced. So I re-adjusted the build plate and tried again. 

The printer does look great while it prints, like some kind of illuminated mini-tower block. It is completely silent and runs off a standard Raspberry Pi power supply. I'd be quite happy to leave it printing to itself, although you do need to come back and top up the vat with resin if you are printing something tall. 

This time it worked fine, and I got a tiny iBox logo stuck to the build plate. The output is pleasingly solid, although they say you should leave it in the sun or under a UV light to completely cure the resin. 

So I thought I'd go for broke and tried to print a tiny bunny. This was a disaster I'm afraid, with another lump of goo forming in the wrong place. However, I'm pleased to have made something. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to be OK with this liquid resin stuff. Everywhere you see dire warnings about the danger of the liquid touching your skin. I've got some disposable gloves on order but I spent big chunks of the evening fretting about the resin escaping and simultaneously burning a path to the centre of the earth (it's supposed to be corrosive) and poisoning me. 

I guess I might get used to it. It's totally different technology from printing with Una providing a new set of problems to deal with. I feel like a heart surgeon who is not very good at it and has switched to brain surgery in the hope that might be easier. I'm impressed with the iBox machine though. It really does work as advertised. I can now think about producing tiny components.  If I can get over the fear of the resin. 

If you are after a good, cheap 3D printer I think I'd still advise you to go for a conventional, filament powered, one like Una. There are some quite nice devices out there in kit form. Take a look at the nFire device on Kickstarter too. But if you fancy pushing the frontiers a bit and you want small, higher quality, prints then iBox is worth a look. 

NFire 1 3D Printer on Kickstarter

Alex from C4DI has recently launched his NFire 3D printer on Kickstarter. It's a good looking beast, as you can see. The ideas is that you can easily swap out components and print larger pieces or add a second extruder. The price is very competitive (particularly if you managed to snag one of the early bird offers) and it uses a very nice hot end (the bit that actually extrudes the filament.

Worth a look if you are in the market for a low cost and extensible device.

iBox Printer has Arrived

Last year I backed the iBox printer project on Kickstarter. It is a tiny 3D printer that uses UV light to solidify resin. It's a more precise way of printing than my Ultimaker, which is why I fancied having a go with it. Normally light powered printers like this are powered by video projectors and have highly expensive optics in them.

The iBox printer uses a bunch of ultra-violet leds and a small high resolution LCD panel to control which bits get printed. It can only print small objects (around the size of a chess piece) but since the resin is kind of expensive I don't really fancy printing anything large. And anyway, I've got Una to print the large stuff.

The iBox prints "upside down" in that the build plate (which is not shown in the picture) is dipped in and out of the resin, with a new layer being deposited underneath the previous one. Each layer needs around 20 seconds to harden, but the great thing is that every layer takes the same time to print, which is better than the Ultimaker, where larger things take the print head ages to fill in.

The device is well put together. It uses a Raspberry Pi to control it and tiny stepper motor to drive the printing plate up and down. The Pi has a WiFi interface and you control the printer via an in-built web server where you can upload objects for printing and start print jobs.  

I've not got around to firing it up just yet, but I'm looking forward to having a go.

Put "Windows 10 on Everything" with my LogoBlaster

I've just arrived at the hotel where we're staying for the Windows 10 celebration event. I've unpacked a few gadgets...

I'm helping out on the Internet of Things front, and on Sunday night I had a great idea for a device I could demonstrate.  Which I've built. In 36 hours. Go me.

I call it the "Windows 10 Logo Blaster". It really can put "Windows 10 on everything". It's a Raspberry Pi coupled to my lovely little projector. It runs a Windows 10 application that lets you select logos and images to "blast" onto the surroundings.

These are the 3D printed components. A tray for the Raspberry Pi, a cover that supports the projector and a handle which contains the trigger buttons. I've learned a bit over the years, and I now make designs that are easy to construct. As opposed to ones which can contain the components, but you can't actually get them inside.....

You can see how it all fits together here. Its showing the Windows 10 boot screen on the wall. When the program is running it shows different logos that you can switch between by pressing the buttons on the handle.

It works a treat. Battery life isn't great, but it does work. And I really can put Windows 10 (or at least one of its logos, onto everything. Tonight we've been told to wear white shirts as part of the event dress code, which should make the images show up a treat........

I'll put the designs and the software up on Github when I get back to Hull. I'm amazed that we now have tools and software that will let me go from idea to product in such a short time.

I'm really looking forward to the event tonight. I just hope everything works.......

Thingomatic Box

We need the finished "Thingomatic" for the Windows 10 GameJam tomorrow. So of course today I'm finishing off the box. I've designed it in the usual way, a Python program that runs inside FreeCad and drops out the designs. I can print pretty much anything this way.

Especially if it is rectangular.

C4DI Hardware Meetup - You Should Come Along - Really

If you live in the Hull area and have any kind of interest in technology there's a very good chance you'd enjoy a C4DI hardware meetup. They are first Thursday of every month and we have a mix of folks who like playing with computers and hardware and stuff. This month we had a Raspberry Pis of various flavours (which sounds wrong but it's right), flashing lights, amazing embedded devices you can get for less than a fiver and some brilliant discussions amongst other things.

Keep an eye on the Hull Meetup site for the next one.

Printing a Microsoft Band Stand

One of the nice things about having a 3D printer is that you can, er, print things with it. And so when I wanted a stand for my Microsoft Band I was able to find a design on Thingiverse and then make one.

This is actually the second attempt. The first printed fine but unfortunately because of "squeezage" (something that happens that makes holes smaller because of the way the printing takes place) the slot for the cable was far too tight. I scaled up the design by 1.15 and this has given me a lot more slack. Perhaps 1.12 or so would be perfect.

Anyhoo, I'm very pleased with the result, which means I can just drop the Band on the stand at night and have it freshly charged in the morning. The Band actually has a sleep tracking function, but I've not tried that yet.

Red Nose Day Tags Now Available

If you have discovered that what is missing from your life is a small, 3D printed piece of plastic with a unique arrangement of disks and squares on it, in a variety of colours, then I have just the thing for you. A Red Nose Day tag.

They are on sale in aid of Red Nose Day from our Departmental Office in Computer Science. They look great on a key-ring or as novelty ear-rings. Every one is unique and we will be using them in the lecture on Friday for some fun and games. They only cost a pound each. Bargain.

And don't forget that you can sponsor me, and maybe get me into that tutu, here.

Seventy Degrees Print Bed for Perfect Prints

I've been doing a lot of 3D printing lately. For some reason I've got it into my head that it might be neat to sell little 3D tags as part of the Red Nose Day event. Which means I have to print them. Una, my lovely 3D printer has been misbehaving a bit of late, prints have not been adhering to the print bed very well and their undersides have been a bit rough.

Last night at C4DI I was talking to Robert and he reckoned the way to get perfect prints was to print with no adhesive on the bed and whack the printing bed temperature up to 70 degrees (which is actually rather hot for my tastes).

Anyhoo, I tried it today and it works a treat. The PLA sticks to the clean glass surface and then when everything cools down the prints just pop off the print bed with no problems. And each print has a lovely glassy smooth finish on the bottom.

I'm kind of annoyed that I didn't try this earlier. Why would I have a heated bed on the printer if I didn't actually make it properly warm? Anyhoo, I'm now turning out lovely tags. They'll be on sale next week.

3D Printed Red Nose Day Tags

Tags Ready for printing

Red Nose Day is a UK charitable appeal. I do Lectures in Rhyme for it and all kinds of silly fun stuff. If you want to sponsor me for the next one you can do so here:

http://my.rednoseday.com/sponsor/robmiles

Last time we had a Red Nose Day I had some RFID tags that I used as the basis of a raffle. The holder of the winning tag won a rather nice Gadgeteer kit.

This year I thought I'd try something different. I thought I'd 3D print some tags and sell those instead. Each tag is completely unique thanks to a Python program that I've written that creates a combination of square and round layers of different sizes on the top of each one. Above you can see how this works. Each tag has five layers on top, of which two are square, the rest round. The square layers are rotated a random amount too so that there is plenty of variation.

I'm going to print only one of each tag design, except for the winners, where I'll print a "golden" tag as well.  We'll draw out the golden tag at the lecture on Friday 13th and find the winner. 

Printed tags. I'm going to do lots of different colours.

I'm quite intrigued by the idea of using software to produce 3D printed objects which are unique. This lets me explore the field in a good cause. 

The tags will go on sale later this week at a two pounds each. You can do what you like with them, they'll come with a keyring attachment, but you could use them as unique earrings if you were so inclined. And the more you buy, the more chance you have of winning our top secret big prize.

Note: Sharp eyed readers might have noticed that some of the red tags above have more than two square layers. These are test ones that I produced while tweaking the code. 

I Want a Microsoft Band

Microsoft have just released their Band, a smartwatch/fitness device that looks really nice. They are selling very well apparently, which means that I might have problems getting one when I head out to Seattle for the MVP Summit. And I really want one.

Now, I fully realise that the pursuit of gadgets is ultimately fruitless as they lead an ephemeral life, doomed to be superseded by the next iteration and driven by a marketing beat. You could argue that people who try to validate their existence by surrounding themselves with the latest technology are perhaps only proving their ultimate shallowness. And in the end the accumulation of material goods is ultimately futile (for a full discourse on this matter listen to the wonderful "Mountains'O''Things" by Tracy Chapman).  

But I still want one. 

If anyone finds themselves in a position to get me one (medium size should fit I reckon as I'm, half way up the strap on my Pebble) I will do the following for them, in addition to paying for the device:

• supply them with a printed, autographed copy of the latest C# Yellow Book
• write a poem for them (I am a published poet) on any subject they nominate
• provide them with a unique Windows Phone Controlled Wedding Light,  in case they have a daughter getting married in the near future who needs table decorations. I'll custom build it with a choice of base colour and ship it to you anywhere in the world. 

Like I said, I may be shallow and gadget obsessed, but I really want one of those bands.

3D Selfies to Celebrate Kinect V2 Release

To celebrate the release of Version 2.0 of the Kinect for Windows 2 SDK I printed a couple of selfies of me using my Carbonizer program and changing the filament half way through the print to get a dual colour effect. I'm quite pleased how they came out. I wish I'd kept my head still during the scan so that my features show up a bit better. Then again....

With the latest release of the software we can now put Kinect for Windows apps in Microsoft Store. I might see about a formal release of the Carbonizer program. Microsoft have also announced a new $50 adapter that lets you use your Xbox Kinect with your PC, which is nice. You can find out more here. 

Rather Useful Seminar on Creating 3D Objects from Software

Fun was had at the Rather Useful Seminar today. We were looking at the way that we can create objects using software. We started of with a vertex (a posh name for a position in 3D space), combined three of them to make a triangle and then stuck a whole bunch of triangles together to make a mesh that describes a solid shape. Above you can see what happens when I use cos and sine waves to fiddle with the height of the surface. 

Then we went into Python inside FreeCad and I create a 3D model of the weather forecast which I did last year as well. 

The point I wanted to make is that all of this is software, none of it is magic, and if you want to write programs that make solids You can find the slides here.

Carbonite Open Day

I did a couple of Open Day talks today. Two good audiences, (see above). I took the Kinect 2 Sensor and the 3D printer along to Lecture Theatre A as well, so I was able to show how it all worked and even imortalise a few visitors in Carbonite.

I hope you all enjoyed the day and had a safe journey back. 

OpenJSCAD for 3D Modelling

Peter put me onto this one. We are both fellow travelers along the 3D printing/design road, although we have taken slightly different routes. Peter likes OpenSCAD, and I tend to write Python programs inside FreeCAD. I think we've both followed a programming path because we tend to prefer writing programs to grappling with complicated graphical design packages.

Anyhoo, one of the major reasons that I prefer Python to write my designs is that as Python is a programming language it supports variables. You can use it to do things like print the weather forecast in 3D. But I must admit that the environment that I have to work in is pretty horrid, whereas the OpenSCAD one is quite nice. But in OpenSCAD all the values are fixed, so you can't do programming type things very easily. This is fine for parameterized drawings, but less good if you want your design program to figure things out for itself.

The good news is that there is now a new version of OpenSCAD out there. OpenJSCAD is a JavaScript based implementation of the platform with added variables. This also means that you can do all your designing inside your browser, no need to install any complicated programs. 

This is a very enticing proposition, and may well tempt me away from FreeCAD in the future. 

Day of the Ultimaker Heated Bed Upgrade

Two owls with very shiny bottoms

Less and less of Una, my Ultimaker 3D printer is how she was delivered. Since I first built her a couple of years ago I've replaced the print head, filament feed, power supply fans, print head fans and the drive pulleys. Great fun. Like Lego but with rather more chance of burning your fingers. 

Anyhoo, I've just completed my latest upgrade and added a heated bed. This is actually a rather exciting development as it means I can print large items without them curling up at the edges as they cool.

I ordered the kit a while back and it arrived last week. So this morning I covered the floor with bits (there were a lot of bits) and got to work. Unfortunately a couple of things were missing from my kit (I think I must be pretty much unique in this - nobody else seems to have complained). I was short of the cable that links the new heated bed board with the controller, and a replacement micro-switch that makes contact with the new platform. 

Fortunately I'm a resourceful kind of chap. I found a cable with the connector that fitted and extended that to fit. Then I discovered that by sticking a USB plug cap on the back of the print bed I could make it engage with the old microswitch and so I was in business. 

Building the new bed and fitting it, along with making my own custom bits, took around the whole day. But I really like doing things like this. At the end of all the effort I now have what looks to me like exactly the same print bed as the Ultimaker 2. It is much, much nicer than the old print bed (which I didn't construct very well anyway).

As part of the upgrade you get a replacement stepper motor and drive thread which is much more positive than the original one. And the new bed is made of rigid metal, rather than the somewhat heavier and more "flappy" wooden one. 

I've done some large-ish prints with it and there is now no warping at all. Plus, by printing on glass I can get a lovely smooth surface on the printed items. 

The upgrade is a tad expensive, at around 250 pounds once you've paid for carriage, but I think that if you have an Ultimaker it is something you really should consider. 

First Year Welcome Party - With added Carbonite

We had our First Year welcome party today. In the olden days we used to have cheese and wine. We don't do that any more. Nowadays we have Occulus Rift powered racing, 10 player Xbox mayhem, Wii U, Digital Scalectrix, Xbox One and Rocksmith Guitars. Plus we will also embed you in carbonite, just like Han Solo at the end of Star Wars, courtesy of our Kinect 2 sensor and Ultimaker printers. 

We had quite a few customers for the 3D scanning. In fact we have a whole bunch of models to print off later in the week.

We had two seats set up for racing, with force feedback steering wheel, and Occulus Rift for the view. Great fun.

Thanks to Platform Expos for the use of their console setup.

Rachael came along with her big camera and took some video. The party did get very busy, we had to get some extra tables out when the time came for the quiz. To my eternal shame I didn't get pictures of the winning teams posing with their Nerf gun prizes. Oh well, maybe next year.

I was testing a new version of the TagOMatic to handle the drinks and it seemed to work OK, apart from a few "rogue" tags that seem to have found their way into the system. I'll be using the TagOMatic as the basis of an Arduino talk in the first of the new season of Rather Useful Seminars next week. 

I've put some more pictures up on Flickr, you can find them here. 

Ultimaker Heated Bed Now Available

Ha. Within a couple of days of me changing over to the BuildTak print surface Ultimaker have announced a Heated Bed kit for my printer. Oh well. There may be some second hand printer parts going up for sale soon.

I've always wanted a heated bed for my printer. Una, my Ultimaker 1, does a lovely job on very small objects, but on larger ones there is always some warping as the printed object cools and contracts, lifting the corners and turning any rectangular object into a cushion. 

A heated bed solves that. It also gives you a smooth glass surface to print on so that you get lovely shiny prints. The upgrade replaces the entire print assembly, which is also cheering for me as I made a bit of a botched job of making the original, giving Una a rather lopsided appearance. The new bed should put that right and so I've ordered one.