DIY 3D Printing: January 2013

Jan 24, 2013

21st century light bulb - lab glassware, LED diodes and 3d printed parts

Cool DIY project. Used laboratory glassware, LED lamps, 3d printed conectors ... low price ...

Project homepage:
http://chaozlabs.blogspot.com/2013/01/21st-century-light-bulb.html

Jan 20, 2013

3D printed vacuum tube socket

Jan 19, 2013

3D Printing and the Future of Shopping

Video of 3d printed gun magazines

There are government initiatives in USA to prohibit high capacity magazines after school shootings. Defence Distributed demonstrates 3d printed working magazines in real weapons.

Calibrating Lulzbot AO-101

Andrewupandabout on calibrating Lulzbot AO-101.

From video description:

Tips include proper nozzle removal, reducing extrusion filament issues as the human eye may not be able to see 75 micron layers coming out and filament flow can seize, and knowing that the "calibration print" is a super useful "hacking tool" for accomplishing all of this.

Looks like the video is down. Here is a different video:

Here is an old calibration folder at Lulzbot server:

http://download.lulzbot.com/AO-101/calibration/

Here is a link to Google Books AO-101 manual with calibration section:

https://books.google.hr/books?id=8oMnBgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA41&ots=JXnvh7XyRQ&dq=Calibrating%20Lulzbot%20AO-101&pg=PA42#v=onepage&q=Calibrating%20Lulzbot%20AO-101&f=false

3D Systems CubeX on CES 2013

Jan 14, 2013

Video of 3d printed music records by Wired

Jan 13, 2013

Ford embraces DIY 3d printing

Engineers at Ford are given Makerbots. Another milestone.

Jan 11, 2013

Unboxing and assembling LulzBot AO-101

Andrewupandabout has a new video out. Unboxing and building the LulzBot AO-101.

Signing 3d printed objects

Chris came up with innovative way to sign 3d printed objects.

Felicia Day and Leap 3d user interface

... I can see this technology interfacing with 3d design programs or even guiding your printer as it prints ... and if it captures fingers, could it be used as 3d scanner?

Jan 10, 2013

DIY friction plastic welder by Fran

Weld plastic with this DIY welder. It is some serious DIY magic.

http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html#welder

Jan 8, 2013

Hot glue gun extruder

3$ extruder! Flash of genius!

From the video description:

Hot Melt Glue Gun HMA (Hot Melt Adhesive) Extruder to make a 3D Printer. It is based on a $3 Walmart Low Temperature Mini Hot Glue Gun. The extruder is driven around by a 3 axis CNC router made from plans from http://solsylva.com/cnc/13x13x5.shtml . The whole thing is driven by an Arduino Uno with a custom set of Shields, a single stepper driver based on a ULN2803 and a parallel port adapter board to drive a 3 axis HobbyCNC stepper driver board. I am using the Teacup firmware that has been customized to driver the ULN2803 stepper driver for the extruder (E axis). All is orchestrated by Pronteface on the PC side with G-Code by Slic3r (converts STL 3D Model to G-Code for Pronterface).

Complete step-by-step guide:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Hot-Glue-Gun-Extruder-for-Your-CNC-Machine-or-3D-P/?ALLSTEPS

via http://www.homemadetools.net/glue-gun-fdm

Update: I was told in comments on Reddit that this is nothing new. Basically RepRap started its development with hot glue guns. There is much more information in "A history of RepRap development":

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22464622/A%20History%20of%20RepRap%20Development.pdf

Great work and cool DIY project anyway!