Lol, today when I was checking news at my custom Youtube.com homepage I’ve found video from CES about Makerbot from one of our Czech techzines Živě.cz. And it was soo much fun that I’ve almost pissed myself from laught I’ll try to translate it, at least the funniest beginning.
This, what in fact looks like wooden kit, is actually a wooden kit and its kit for making things. You’ll get box of bricks and you can build your own kit. …
… interesting thing is, that it’s not a complete product but it is actually kit, you’ll get box of pieces and you have to assemble it by yourself. …
No word about 3D printer, no word about open source, just lame repeating We are so much doooomed here in Czech Republic …
Building heated print beds is very popular these days, so I want to publish our 2 months findings. You should first read Look ma, no Warping, Nopheads Hot metal and serendipity, Zaggos Canned Heat and Zaggos Raftless. Now we have Heated Print Bed MK2, first design wasn’t as durable as we wanted (sandwich consist of 2pieces of acrylic) and the heat wasn’t spread evenly. (More …)
Since we have RepMan (kind of RepRap) 3D printer I was thinking about printing large objets. Of course you start with small things like minimug. But as you start learning how to get good small prints you’ll try something bigger and you will probably see large warping. It’s caused by different temperatures in the object. Professional machines uses heated print chamber to avoid this, but we can’t of course build heated champer since the printer is made from plastic or plexyglass. Great compromise is to build heated print bed. I was inspired by Zaggos work in Pleasant Hardware. But he has MakerBot which has only 10×10cm print bed. RepMan has 4times bigger. I wanted to build my print bed as quick as possible so I used ressistive wire which I have for a while, then some plexyglass and epoxy glue. It build like burger, in three layers 1)Plexyglass 2) ressistive wire + epoxy glue 3) plexyglass. After you do make this you should put it on the straight place, put something heavy and straight on it and leave it for few hours.
Don’t ask me to exact ressistance of the wire etc. I dont know it You just should make sure that whole print bed rig consumes about 45-55 Watts (you can use more for quicker heating, but you can melt the plexy, so be carefull) for this size, for Makerbot should be enough 25-30 Watts.
I’ve added (dont forget to drill and sand the place for sensor and cable in bottom piece of plexy) temperature sensor which is done by my brother, so I know if it’s warm enough. BTW even plexyglass expands when it’s heated, I’ve had to place some spacers between print bed and lower support plexy contruction. You know, it’s a prototype, but it works
I’ve tried to print when the bed was about 70°C, its quite enough. But higher temperature could be better, I’ll test it later.
Here you can se the video from my first printing of “x-carriage-lower_1off” Mendel part.
(Originally posted on 5th of September 2008) It’s still not even a week since I bought a new iPhone 3G and during this time my brother and I did a lot of cool stuff. The iPhone with its accelerometer and multitouch display is ideal for making gadgets. When I got it home, we started thinking about some cool demos which we could make. Incidentally we found an old R/C car model Have you ever seen anything like this? I hadn’t Did you ever think that an iPhone could do this? Enjoy!
Update (31st of July 2009)
iPhone Hacks
Hack was very popular, biggest success is one chapter in iPhone Hacks book (O’reilly). It’s great experience and I want to say thanks to Damien Stolarz and Brian Jepson.
Many people asked me about source code, here it is. Documentation and howto are in iPhone Hacks book.
OS 3.0 for iPhone brings some new opportunities, including some bluetooth stuff. But unfortunatelly not SPP, so WIFI is still only chance to send something out from iPhone :-/
Video
iPhone controlled R/C car from Josef Průša on Vimeo. Same video on YouTube.com .
Controlling is very easy with the iPhone 3G. It has five buttons, four of them you can use for traditional „driving“ and when you press the last one, it unlocks the accelerometer control in the same way as in many driving games available on AppStore. Realization of this project did not take a long time, only one afternoon. Technically it is realized in a hell-bent way, but obviously it’s functional. Schematically: iPhone (OSCemote) → WiFi → PC → Max/Msp → Serial port → Arduino → Original controller. If you have some other cool ideas, leave it in comments. We can surely realize it .
OSCemote
OSCemote is application which sends data from iPhone to PC. It does it thru WIFI using OpenSoundControl protocol. You can buy it in AppStore ore try free lite version (unfortunately without accelerometer support ) By the way, some big and complex audio softwares are compatible with OSC standard. For example, Traktor 3 by Native Instruments can sync tempo over OSC. You can download test patch here. For functionality you have to download Max 5 runtime.
OSCemote
Max/Msp
On PC connected to network is running Max patch, which catches data from iPhone, converts it into simpler form and send it thru serial port to Arduino.
Max/Msp is generally used for audiovisual instalations, but also can do crazy things like this project .
Max/MSP 5 patch
Arduino
Arduino is simple development kit with
microprocessor. Arduino process data from Max and next simulate switching on
real R/C controller using transistors.
Arduino controlling original remote
PS
If you like our idea, please Dig it!! or link it from your blog
It might look useless to use Traktor on two or more PCs, eh MACs , but only at first look. In certain conditions it’s very helpful or even necessary. For example, me and my brother. We often have common gigs, and both of us has his own MacBook. It was pretty annoying to sync our music every time you modified even one little tag or beatgrid. I hated it We kept most of the time actual collection only on one MacBook, totally impractical if you want to prepare your playlist for next gig …
Few moths ago my brother and I’ve made iPhone controlled R/C car. It starts my thinking about real usage. First attempt was this video on youtube. I’m very bussy these days but I’ve found some time to make something more complex.
It’s a long time ago since I’ve bought MSI Wind netbook. I’m not using it very much, because I’ve bought new MacBook, but it doesn’t mater. have two batteries for Wind, one small original 3-cell and one extra large, extra cheap 9-cell from eBay. The smaller one isn’t used too much, because it can power netbook only for 2 hours (bigger one 6 and more ) . I’m very curious and I have Monome 128 and I hate it’s big ugly 12V power adapter, battery can be good choice, so I decided to open it. Spoiler: Battery remains usable even in netbook!! Video and howto after break!! If you like this idea, send link to this article to your favorite notebook manufacturer, maybe we can change actual state!!
Před nějakou dobou jsem si koupil MSI Wind, co naplat, že od doby co mám MacBooka leží doma v koutě. Nicméně, pro Winda mám dvě baterie, jednu originální (3 článková) a jednu extra cheap z eBay (9 článková), tu menší moc nepoužívám, protože na ní netbůček jede necelé dvě hodiny. No a jakožto velice zvídavý člověk jsem se zajímal co se tak v té baterce nachází. Navíc mám doma Monome 128, které má ohromě hnusný a neskladný adaptér na 12V a tak už jsem nějakou dobu přemýšlel o nějaké alternativě. Baterka je ideální volba. Podotýkám, že zůstala plně funkční i pro použití v netbooku! Bez jakéhokoliv samovolného vybijení atp.
Updates from prusajr 
I’ll try to translate it, at least the funniest beginning. 
You just should make sure that whole print bed rig consumes about 45-55 Watts (you can use more for quicker heating, but you can melt the plexy, so be carefull) for this size, for Makerbot should be enough 25-30 Watts.
Have you ever seen anything like this? I hadn’t 
) By the way, some big and complex audio softwares are compatible with OSC standard. For example, Traktor 3 by Native Instruments can sync tempo over OSC. You can download test patch 
