Tag: openscad

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USB Panel Mount

USB Mount

I designed a small part to hold a panel mount USB cable. I started with the Phoenix Connector Mount I briefly mentioned before, and did some quick modifications to make it work with the USB cable.

USB Mount

I designed this thing in OpenSCAD though I did borrow a few elements from another recent model so that I could use 5/8″ #4 screws. The bottom where the screws go in is set to a height that allows the screws to go in just under 1/4″ which is enough to hold, but not enough to go through the material they’ll be screwed into. This is one of the things I love about making custom mounts and brackets, you can configure them to match the hardware you have available.

USB Mount

With many of the things that need (semi) precise placement of things, it takes two to three revisions to get it right. I actually used the second revision because I was in a hurry, but I’ve modified the file so version 3 will be just right next time. (I had the panel mount screw holes just a little too close together. Things flex enough that it works, but it could be better, and will be… next time.)

USB Mount

The first version actually warped quite a bit in printing. It’s a problem we seem to have occasionally with the old MakerBot. It’s always the front left corner of the print. I find that by shifting the print on the bed to the right just a bit often fixes the problem (at least for small prints.)

USB Mount

You can find this design on YouMagine and Thingiverse.

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3D Printed Shim

Shim

I needed a few shims to make something fit just right and I grabbed a piece of 3mm acrylic that was sitting on my desk, figuring I could easily cut it in the shop, but 3mm was just too thick. I could have tried to sand it down to the proper thickness, but at this point I would have had to cut three shims to the proper size, and get them all down to the correct thickness. (I didn’t want to use wood, as something would be sliding against the shim, and wood wasn’t the best choice.)

OpenSCAD

I took some measurements with digital calipers, launched OpenSCAD, typed in the dimensions, and had a 3D object ready to be 3D printed in just a few minutes. While I did have to wait for the 3D printer to heat up, and print the pieces, I could easily do other work while I was waiting for the prints. I didn’t spend time cutting and sanding things to get them the exact size.

Sometimes 3D printing is the right answer, and sometimes 3D printing doesn’t have to be revolutionary or solve big problems, sometimes it can solve the (little) problem you have, quickly and easily, and that’s enough.

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Because, 3D Printer…

Because when you’ve got a 3D printer… You might as well print things…

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

3D Printing

Also… OpenSCAD.

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Barcode Binary Card Reader

Sensors

I recently prototyped a device to read cards (physical cards with printing on them) for a project. I used five SparkFun Digital Line Sensor Breakout Boards attached to a 3D printed mount and wired up to an Arduino.

Card and Sensors

The cards have five blocks at the bottom, which are either black or white, representing 1 or 0. Using ones and zeroes allows us to create a binary encoding scheme, so with five positions we use 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 for the values and can represent any number from 1 to 31.

Sensor Mount

I started by grabbing the image of the sensors from the SparkFun product page and dropping them into Inkscape (sized appropriately) so I could design the barcode part of the card, and so I could design the mount for the sensors.

Sensor Mount

Once I had a 2D design in Inkscape I exported it as a DXF file and used the linear_extrude command in OpenSCAD to create a 3mm tall plate, and then added another plate. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast. I started the 3D printer while I got to work soldering…

Sensors

Sensors

Sensors all soldered up, mounted to the plate with 3mm screws, and wired to an Arduino via a breadboard. All of this is still prototyping stage. It doesn’t look pretty, but it worked and it was enough to test things out and do a demo.

Cards with Barcodes

Here’s an example of some card templates. Can you determine what number is being passed by reading it in binary? Since we’ve got 5 positions we can have 31 different cards… If you needed 63 cards, you would need 6 positions (and one more sensor.) 127 cards? That would be 7 positions and two more sensors. Any more than that and you might consider using the SparkFun Line Follower Array which has 8 sensors on a single board.

Card and Sensors

The total time to create this prototype was just a few hours from starting a design in Inkscape to 3D printing a piece, soldering up and mounting the sensors, and writing the code. (I also wrote a simple Processing application which read the serial output from the Arduino to display the card data on screen.)

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OpenSCAD Slowness…

Sparkplug

Typically when I model 3D object with OpenSCAD I tend to create things that are simple and functional, but I had to create a piece that had some extra decoration to it, and wow did it slow OpenSCAD to a crawl!

I know about the special variable $fn, but I didn’t know about $fa and $fs, so I’ll have to start using those as well to see if they can speed things up. (I usually use $fn to go between “low res” and “high res” when it comes to rendering.)

OpenSCAD probably isn’t the easiest modeling software to use (unless you like writing code) but I like the fact that it’s open source, gets updated fairly often, is parametric, has lots of great info on using it, and there are a ton of free libraries for doing interesting things.

I was using Rhino quite a bit earlier this year, and while the Mac OS X version is now ready, it’s $300 for a limited time, and $500 after that, and is somewhat crippled compared to the Windows version. It can do some amazing things, so I’m still contemplating a license for it… Or I may find something else (open source, perhaps?) that fits the bill.

(I’ll probably be posting more about 3D software in the near future.. Stay Tuned!)