Tag: 3dprinting

Categories
Uncategorized

Bike Seat Light Adapter

Back in February I got a set of bike lights and the rear light mounted on the seat post perfectly, but I recently added a bike rack and bag which blocked the light from view. At first I attached the rear light (which is also a reflector) to the back of the bag, but it wasn’t ideal.

So looking at the options I thought mounting it to the back of the seat (on the saddle rails) made sense, but I needed an adapter, so I designed and printed one. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: This is why I like 3D printing. I’m not interested in printing little toys or trinkets, I am interested in solving problems.

I fired up OpenSCAD and designed a cylinder, split it in half, added holes/grooves to fit around the bars on the seat, and then added a hole for a bolt to go through to clamp it together.

One side of the bolt hole allows the head of the bolt to be recessed so it doesn’t stick out, and the other side allows for the hex nut to be held captive so you can tighten the screw with the nut held in place.

I remember back in 2012 when I asked Michael Curry if he got designs right the first time and the first print worked perfectly, and he said that most designs took about three attempts… I’m happy to say this one took just two! (Well, I could probably slightly improve things with a third attempt, but the second was close enough so I called it done.)

I did have to slightly cut down the bolt with a hacksaw to get it to not stick out too far. Again, a third print could have addressed that issue, but sometimes a hacksaw is the right solution to a problem.

Note: This post may contain Affiliate Links. Read More.

Categories
Uncategorized

Deftaudio MIDI Enclosure

I’ve mentioned Sky Creature before, as I’ve made a few things for them. So back in April I was chatting with Matt and he said he got a Deftaudio Teensy MIDI Breakout Board but would have to figure out an enclosure for it. I said something like “I make a lot of enclosures!” and he said “I’ll keep that in mind!” and then I totally forgot about it.

Matt did not forget about it though, and asked me to knock out an enclosure for it before they headed out on tour. He shipped me the assembled and programmed device and I designed and fabricated an enclosure for it. Oh, I also added circuitry so it could be powered by a standard guitar pedal power supply, which is a barrel jack with 9 volt tip negative. I threw in a power LED while I was at it. (The Deftaudio board is nicely designed and easy to add things to via a set of male pin headers on the board.)

I got this done it about a week. The funny thing is that I sent Matt a photo and he said “That’s a great looking render” and I said “Sir, that’s a photo… I’ve finished it!” but sadly I forgot he wanted easy access to the USB port for (re)programming. I had it so you could remove the bottom cover and get access but I ended up redoing the body of the enclosure to make it easier.

It was sort of last minute and a rush and I don’t know how elegant it is, but there’s a little swinging hatch that pivots on a 3mm screw with a cap nut cranked tight on the end of it. The other side of the hatch has a small screw to hold it in place…

The idea being that you remove one screws and flip the door around 180 degrees to plug in a Micro USB cable, program it, then remove the cable and replace the little door. I think it’ll work well!

I also sent Matt a bag of extra screws. The screw used for the door is the same size as used on the bottom to hold the cover in place, so a few extra seems like a good idea, I used plain old 3mm pan head screws for the top so those could also come out with a standard screwdriver. I typically use black button head screws because they look better, but I didn’t want to include a tiny hex key when a standard Philips screwdriver is probably easier to attain.

I also did a two color print for the top cover and the USB door. The door print didn’t turn out amazing (rush job, didn’t have time to print another) but I think the top looks really good!

Anyway, I really like doing these sorts of things, so if you have a project in mind let me know!

Categories
Uncategorized

Vertical Stick-On Lip Balm Holder

I made a Vertical Stick-On Lip Balm Holder because more than one person seemed to want their own… See, I keep a lip balm in the car, and in the summer I park outside, and it gets hot, and at least a few times I’d grab my lip balm and realize it got all melty and pooled to one side of the cylinder and that was definitely not cool…

So I quickly printed this thing. It’s a cuboid shape with a round hole in it. (There hole gets wider at the top to allow for easier insertion while driving. Anyway, I posted this and people were like “I want one!” or “I need one!” or “You should patent this!”.

Well I’m not gonna patent it, as that seems like a lot of work. I don’t event want to sell them, as I prefer to just give them to people if possible. And it is possible. In fact, I made a bunch of them to give away.

So yeah, I printed a bunch, added a little informational sheet, and dropped them into Gallery 69, the Free Little Art Gallery in front of my house. If you’re local and want one, just come and grab one. They probably cost about one US dollar if I include the cost of the plastic, the tape, and some of the electricity to run the printer. If you really want to pay for it I’ve included a Venmo username to send money to. (And when you pay for one that means I can make more to give away because that’s how I do things.)

There’s a few people who wanted the file, so you can grab that and print your own… and I supposed I could mail some out to people if you don’t have a friend with a 3D printer, but honestly finding a printer and printing one locally is probably better than mailing them out since postage would probably add a few more bucks to what should be less than a dollar.

You can get the STL file from Printables.com – Vertical Stick-On Lip Balm Holder though you’ll have to provide your on double-sided tape!

Categories
Uncategorized

Fan Repair (Again)

Remember when I made a shelf for my fan? What I forgot to mention is that I repaired that fan back in June of 2020. I should note that I’ve had this fan for at least 20 years and honestly I’m sort of surprised it’s still going. The repair in 2020 involved replacing the oscillating motor which I was able to determine was a “OEM TYJ50-8A19 Universal Microwave Turntable Motor 4 / 4.8 RPM”. I found one on eBay for less than $10 USD and replacing it was pretty straightforward.

And it worked great! For a while… and then the fan stopped oscillating properly again, and I just sort of let it sit like that for a long time. I prefer fans that oscillate but if they don’t I can live with it…

Well, I got sick of living with it so I popped it open again and discovered the gear was missing a tooth. I used the OpenSCAD Gear Library with Customizer to create a new gear that matched the old one and put it in place and it is oscillating again. Huzzah!

I figured if the gear wears out again I can just print a new one. I used PLA but if needed I could do ASA or ABS or whatever else I have on hand. Also, it occasionally “clicks” when oscillating so the repairs might not be completely done, so this is probably not the end of the stupid fan story. Sorry!

Categories
Uncategorized

Properly Sorting Bambu Lab SD Card Files

For some production printers I want to be able to walk up to the printer and use the control pad to start a print. The P1S doesn’t have the most beautiful easy to use control, but it does work.

I’ve basically got about ten different parts that we regularly print, with variations. For instance, you can print one of each part, or run a print that is 8 hours long, or 4 hours, or 2, etc. This allows us to run jobs that match up with the work day easily so we can start a longer job before we leave at 5pm. (There are some 8+ hour jobs that can run overnight as well.)

The issue is, the sorting order of the files on the SD cards shown on the display is by date modified, which works in some cases, but I’ve got files named like so: A001, A002, A005… B001, B002, B004, etc. So here’s what I did.

I have a folder with all the GCODE files in it, which I will copy to the SD card once they’re ready. I sort them in the Finder in reverse alphabetical order, then select them all and drop them into a terminal where I’ve typed the word touch

The touch command sets the last modified time to right now, and with the list of files in reverse order for the command it means the A files will be “newer” than the B files, which will be newer than the C files, etc.

So once we run the touch command all the dates will change, and you can sort the files by last modified and it will also sort them alphabetically due to the file dates.

So that’s what works for me. It allows me to walk up to the printer and easily scroll through the list in alphabetical order. Now, if I change one file and add a new version it will screw this up, so you have to repeat the process. As I mentioned though, these are production files, so once they are good to run they probably won’t change. If they do, I just do the fix again.

And yes, I know you can manage all prints from a computer, a mobile device, and even some control pads, but at some point I will hand off the printing to someone else, and having really clear instructions about what buttons to press and what files to choose should make things very simple.

Note! If you do this on macOS don’t forget to run dot_clean to remove all the dot underscore files.