Tag: diy

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3D Printed Mould and Deckle

NOTE: STL files are now available. Scroll to the bottom of this post.

Back in May 2023 I 3D printed a mould and deckle in an attempt to make my own paper. It worked, but was not optimal. I tried again, and wanted a slightly larger mould and deckle to make larger paper. It worked, but I didn’t love it since I had to print it in two parts and glue it together. Design is about iteration, right? I think I’ve got a good one now…

For this version I got the model just right. I did a number of test prints to make sure the wall thickness for the inside grid was correct, and I spent some time getting the magnet holes right. Yes, the magnets. Lots of mould and deckles are just two wooden frames you hold together in your hands, but I figured since I was designing my own I would add in magnets that would tightly hold the mould and the deckle together with a piece of metal screen between them.

So I added magnet holes in the four corners of each part and press-fit magnets into place. This time I made the pockets deeper so the magnets press in further down, which means they have really good holding strength when put together. You’ll notice the holes aren’t just holes, but have some little ridges, or “crush ribs” as well. The idea being that with 3D printed parts it can be difficult to get a perfect hole, so instead you just make the hole a little wider than needed, and add in some ribs so the magnet (or other round thing) just needs to slide against those, and if needed, can crush them a bit.

Hey, I guess I’m not the only one who likes the magic of magnets! Check out this video of Stephanie Hare and the mould and deckles she made with… magnets! (Or see them on her site.)

Of course you can always just glue the magnets in place. Since I’m now on my third fourth mould and deckle I wanted a way to remove them easily if I ever retire one and want those 8 magnets back.

I’ve mentioned before that you can do much much more than a simple square or rectangle, and you can 3D print a mould and deckle in any shape. I still want to experiment with that, as well as some other neat stuff. I like a plastic mould and deckle because (besides being easy) you don’t have to worry about warping like you do with wood, or having to use spar varnish or polyurethane to waterproof the wood. (I’ve talked about 3D printing versus using wood before.)

Oh, I should note one more thing. The reason I use window screen material is because I have a bunch of it from our old windows that we’ll never use for anything else. But, using a flexible screen material also makes it easy to remove the paper from the mould and deckle during the couching process by just pulling the screen off (after removing excess water with a sponge). (BTW, it’s pronounced ‘coo-ching’ not ‘cow-ching’.) I’ve found this a simple method of couching, though there are other methods and some special tools to assist with it if you want to explore other routes.

3D printing is a good fit for papermaking because it’s one of those things where you may need to build your own tools, and being able to rapidly iterate through ideas is handy. Okay, time to go make more paper!

Update! Files are now available.
Grab the STL files to print your own at Printables.com – Mould and Deckle.

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Provisional Press

Last year I bought a printing press kit from Provisional Press. I used to have access to a press when I worked at the museum, and I’ve also borrowed a press from a friend of mine in the past, but most of my “home made” prints have been done with a baren. (I even 3D printed one.) Can you do prints with a baren? Totally, but using a press does make things much easier and more consistent.

I got the base kit with no extras (more on that later) so that’s what you see in these photos. Once you do the assembly, which consists of gluing and screwing things together, you can add in the metal plate as the base. If you use letterpress the metal base comes in handy, and you can grab some galley magnets but honestly I’ll probably just make my own plates like I normally do.

It comes with two “galley high” blocks, which you use to square things up properly so the roller height is consistent across the press. There is a process involving adding tape under the inside rails before you screw them in place.

Here’s what the bottom looks like. You’ll see that some things are not jammed tightly together. Maybe because wood can expand and contract over time and based on temperature and humidity? I’m not sure…

Here you can see some (blue) tape sticking out a bit. You basically add strips of tape to get things level with the roller. It didn’t take long, but it’s one of those things you should take your time with and get right, since once you screw things together you probably don’t want to unscrew them.

The roller is a large piece of PVC or “Charlotte” pipe. I used a bit of acetone to remove the red “Charlotte” lettering on it. It’s still slightly visible though, which is fine.

My plates are typically made from 3mm (1/8″) Baltic Birch plywood. I have a pretty good supply of scrap due to the fact we use a ton of it at work and often get strips left over that are around 4″ tall by 24″ long. I tend to cut them into smaller pieces to fit in my laser cutter. Making 3″ x 5″ plates is quick and easy and I can probably make 50 more with the scrap I have on hand right now.

To get the plate to the right height I dropped in a piece of 3/4″ plywood I had lying around, with some old cereal box board and sheets of paper underneath to get just the right height. It works well and if I consistently use the same wood I shouldn’t have to adjust things too much.

Hey, I made a print! You can see I added two pieces of soft felt as my “press blankets” which seemed to work well. The one upgrade I’ve already added is the 9″x17″ Grid Base which I should have grabbed when I ordered but for some reason did not. It makes it much easier to line things up and to clean things up.

About the assembly… It went well, but it did take some time. I think part of it was that since there was gluing involved I really wanted to get things right. The other issue (for me) is that the last few things I’ve built have been CNC machines, where getting things exact and precise is extremely important. This press is… a bit less so in that regard. It’s all wood, but you end up shimming things to get stuff aligned, and it just feels like there’s some wiggle room. Having built one I’m pretty sure I could build another in half the time.

I will recommend this: Watch all the videos and read everything completely before you start the assembly. Some of the parts do not match up exactly, which was confusing for a bit. The videos are not professionally produced, but hey, it’s a DIY kit, so that’s fine. Watch them all before starting. (And, read the FAQ!)

For the pins that keep the top roller from coming off, I did not glue them in place, as I wanted them to be removable in case I take the top roller part off for some reason. (Maybe for transport.) I just wrapped some tape around them to press fit into place. I did stain the side parts of the top roller section, and thought about staining more of the press, but you should do all that before assembly, and I didn’t want to spend the time doing that. I think it looks pretty good as it is. I mainly stained the side parts because they are 1/4″ laser cut pieces and I just wanted them to look a little nicer.

Oh, if you want to see a bunch of fun stuff from the Provisional Press crew, check out their Instagram account. Also, you can totally build your own! The plans for this press are open source.

I’ll probably do a follow-up post once I’ve got a bit more time into using it. So Stay Tuned!

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DIY DSN with Screenly OSE

DIY DSN Screenly OSE

DIY DSN Screenly OSE

One of the nice things about doing an annual event year after year is that you can come up with ideas and even if you can’t really execute them in time you’ll hopefully have another chance a year later. So it was for my Do It Yourself Distributed Signage Network. (DIY DSN for short.)

Back in 2017 when one of the volunteers was building out the WiFi network for Maker Faire Milwaukee I came up with the idea of using a bunch of Raspberry Pi computers connected to TVs and other screens to provide real-time updatable digital signs around the venue. I’d used Screenly OSE in the past for MMPIS and other things so it seemed like the perfect solution.

If you’ve never used (or heard of) Screenly Open Source Edition before it’s a piece of software that runs on a Raspberry Pi and allows you to use a web browser to upload content to it (images and videos) and also have it load pages from the Internet.

Screenly also allows you to schedule start and stop times for content, so it’s easy to have something display between 9am and 1pm on Saturday, then disappear. For events this means you can have “live” signage for speakers or workshops as they are happening, then disappear and be replaced by a schedule or something else when done.

We managed to scrounge up eight TVs (or computer monitors with HDMI/DVI inputs) of various sizes along with eight Raspberry Pi boards. A few of the Pi boards did not have built-in WiFi so a cheap USB WiFi dongle was used to get them online. Each Pi got added to the WiFi network, got a unique IP address, and then a name so we knew where it was in the venue. Some were in front of stages, or at specific entrances, etc. Then it was a matter of creating targeted content. Most of the content was 1920×1080 graphics. (There’s a whole bunch below!)

Thanking sponsors is a great thing to do… You can schedule slides to show up for X number of seconds as well as during specific days/times or all the time.

You want to show what happens in a specific place on Saturday only on Saturday and not on Sunday? Easy!

You want to show what happens in a specific place on Sunday only on Sunday and not on Saturday? Easy!

If you can design a PowerPoint or Keynote slide, you can probably figured out how to export it to a graphic image file suitable for loading into Screenly.

Yeah, thank those sponsors! You can have a different slide for each sponsorship level, and use logos or text or whatever your sponsorship commitment promises. (Also, let your sponsors know that they’ll also be recognized on digital signage at the event!)

Presenting Sponsor? They can have their own slide! Maybe it’s on the screen for 20 seconds instead of 10 seconds… Easy to do.

We’ve done this twice now, and while it was a bit of a scramble pulling together eight Raspberry Pi boards (and WiFi dongles for some of them), eight screens (TVs 27″ or larger work best), eight TV stands or table or whatever you’ll use to put them in places, eight HDMI cables, eight SD cards, eight power supplies, etc… If it’s for an event you might be able to borrow all the hardware you need, and since the software is open source it’s mainly a matter of learning how to use it and getting familiar with it. I’d recommend getting it up and running before your event starts just so you aren’t jumping in blind trying to figure it out while also running an event. :)

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Laser Cutter Exhaust

laser-cutter-exhaust

Someone on the Milwaukee Makerspace mailing list posted an email with the subject line Laser cutter expert, so I could not ignore it. The person was specifically asking about exhaust systems. Above is a photo of what I built for the 40 watt laser cutter in my basement, and below is most of my reply.

laser-stock-exhaust

The exhaust from my laser cutter is a 4″ diameter vent hose, which I connect to a 6″ hose with an adapter I got from Home Depot. (In this photo you can sort of see the white plastic piece that attaches to the back of the laser cutter. It has a small and inadequate fan that came with it.)

laser-inline-fan

The vent hose coming out the back of the laser cutter connects to an inline fan that is mounted to the ceiling…

laser-exhaust-coupler

The output of the inline fan goes to another step down adapter and then a quick connector that twists to lock into place.

I’ve also got an AC Variable Voltage Converter which allows me to run the blower at lower speeds if desired. (I sometimes dial down for paper, thinner material, etc. to reduce suction and noise.)

laser-exhaust-mounting

I then have a basement window that I replaced with a piece of wood on the outside and pink foam on the inside which has a hole in it (covered with a laser cut screen) on the outside, and on the inside the quick connect that I connect up when I use the laser cutter.

This just gets all the fumes out of the tiny room the laser cutter is in. It doesn’t scrub the air. I am not cutting for hours at a time. My main goal was to not have my spouse come home and say “why does the whole house smell like melted plastic!?” and I think I’ve achieved that goal.

Here’s the list of all the components I could remember:

Oh, and if you want to see a real laser cutter exhaust system, or at least the details of building one over many years, check out lasercutterventingsystem on the Milwaukee Makerspace wiki.

Update: I did add a HEPA Air Purifier to this setup about six months later, just to help with any residual smells in the air.

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DIY Roof Rack

roof-rack-05

I’ve come to love my Honda Element more than any previous car I’ve owned. The fact that I can pull out the back seats and use it to haul all sorts of things is awesome, but sometimes things still don’t fit, and need to go on the roof. The one advantage my Honda CR-V had was a roof rack, but luckily the Element was designed with a roof rack option in mind, and a DIY version is pretty simple.

template-01

This forum post got me started in the right direction, and gave me a template to use. There were also a few useful YouTube videos on DIY roof racks that helped a bit…

template-02

I used the PDF template to create my own template in Inkscape and then printed it on paper, which I found to be less than ideal in getting the holes precisely lined up, so I did what I often do…

template-03

I turned to 3D printing. I took the SVG file and exported it to a DXF that I could pull into OpenSCAD and extruded into a 2.5D shape. From there I printed a nice (solid) template that I could use to drill the holes for the pieces that would hold up the rack.

roof-rack-03

The parts that hold up the rack are some scrap pieces of HDPE plastic, which is very solid and resistant to wear from the elements. The template worked great (with a drill press) for making the needed holes. There’s a 6mm bolt that holds everything in place. Yeah, I ended up just using one bolt instead of three on each piece, so in the end the template didn’t matter as much.

I didn’t use stainless steel bolts, so I expect they may rust out, and I might replace them. The main reason was I bought a bunch of bolts from Bolt Depot in various lengths because I didn’t know which I would use. Now that I know the length I should probably replace them. I also used Aluminum washers which are left over from using a hole saw to drill out button holes from guitar pedal enclosures. (Long story!)

roof-rack-01

The rack itself was just some square steel tube I got from Speedy Metals. It’s 1-1/4″ SQ x 1.084″ ID x .083″ Wall, BTW. (I ended up painting the tube black with an enamel paint, which was supposed to stand up to the elements but has done a terrible job and the metal has rusted quite a bit since these photos were taken.) I’ve been told grill paint or marine paint might work better. At this point I’d need to pull everything apart and sand off the rust if I want to make things look better. (Which means I probably won’t.) The other nice thing about getting the square tube from Speedy Metals was that I was able to just have them cut them to length, so I didn’t need to cut the metal precisely.

roof-rack-04

The other piece for the roof rack are the end pieces. Yes, they are green instead of orange or black, but that’s due to the filament I had loaded into the 3D printer at the time…

tube-end-01

Amazingly enough, they are printed in PLA and have held up quite well through one winter and one summer. They didn’t melt in the summer or get destroyed by the cold and wetness of winter.

tube-end-02

They are not held in place as securely as I’d like, and are easy to remove, but they’ve stayed in place without falling out for over a year now. I should really print some replacements in another color… though it does make it easy to spot my car when other orange Elements are nearby.

So how does it work? Well, it’s a roof rack, and it works fine. If anything, I’d consider raising it a bit higher, and to be honest, I think I use it a lot more frequently when I need to tie down the back window when hauling things that stick out the back, which is good enough for me. In total the cost with the square tube, hardware, and paint, was probably around $30, which is a lot cheaper than a roof rack purchased.