Tag: diy

Categories
Uncategorized

MKE3DP – 3D Printer Fans Unite!

MKE3DP

As you may know, I finished my RepRap recently. But here’s the thing, you never really finish a RepRap. It’s a beast in need of endless tweaking. So yeah, it’s a never-ending project (if you want it to be) and I’m okay with that. I mean, once you get to the point that it works, you can start using it to upgrade itself. How many tools can do that!?

Of course you can actually make useful things, functional things, or just pretty things. There’s a lot a 3D Printer can do. I’ve only been at it for less than a year and I’ve still got a lot to learn.

So anyway, yeah, I’m really enjoying this 3D Printing stuff… so I figured, why not share it with others? So join us for the first Milwaukee 3D Printing Meetup! We’ll be meeting on Sunday, July 1st, 2012 at 1:00pm. We won’t be at our space because we’ve partnered with our friends at UWM for this one! Show up at UWM’s Kenilworth Square East Building, 3rd Floor; Room 368 on 1925 E. Kenilworth Place.

If you’ve got a 3D Printer, bring it, or just show up and learn about them. If things go well and there’s interest, maybe we’ll turn it into a regularly scheduled meeting.

(More info? It’s also on the Milwaukee Makerspace site and you can RSVP on Facebook if you want to see who else will be there.)

Categories
Uncategorized

iPhone Tripod Mount

iPhone Tripod Mount

Since the camera on the iPhone 4S is so good, more than one person has thought about mounting the iPhone on a tripod.

In fact, some guys did a Kickstarter campaign and got over $137,417 for the idea! And a bunch of other people designed things you could make on your 3D Printer to do the job.

The Glif

The problem with the Glif and most of these other phone holders is that they are designed to work with an uncased iPhone, and I tend to leave mine in the case all the time. I use an OtterBox case (It’s this one.) It’s grippy and rubbery, and since I wanted a tripod mount that would work with the case, I made my own. (Here’s a post that mentions an early version.)

iPhone Tripod Mount

This mount would probably work with almost any phone that uses a rubbery case, since it uses the grip of the rubber to its advantage to stay in place. You just gently tighten the wing nuts to hold the phone in place. There are nuts under the top piece of wood to prevent you from over-tightening.

iPhone Tripod Mount

Yeah, it’s basically two pieces of wood, two bolts, a few washers, nuts, and wing nuts. I may consider printing some knobs like I did here to replace the wing nuts. (And yeah, you’ll notice it’s the same screw method I used for my DIY Mouthpiece Puller.)

iPhone Tripod Mount

The bottom piece of wood has two small pilot holes to accommodate the two buttons on the side of the iPhone, so the buttons do not get depressed when in the mount.

iPhone Tripod Mount

The other tricky thing is how I mount the tripod plate to the bottom. I ended up getting a nut coupler, and then drilling a hole into the bottom piece of wood, and pretty much hammering in the nut coupler. It was too long so I had to hack saw it off to be flush with the bottom. Not pretty, but it does work.

Now that I’ve got this done, I should probably go back and do those test shots comparing the iPhone 4S camera to other cameras. :)

Categories
Uncategorized

DIY Cell Phone

Laser-cut plywood and veneer case

How much do I love this DIY cell phone? Quite a bit! I’m not trading in my iPhone for this (yet) but I love the idea of being able to order parts from SparkFun and Adafruit and dropping in a SIM card and having a mobile phone for under $200.

I can also imagine that such hardware could be incorporated into various projects where voice or text communication could come in handy. I know that some folks attach phones to balloons or incorporate them into other remote monitoring systems… so what if you could extend this simple DIY phone hardware to be exactly what you want to fit your project?

I also love many of the other projects I’ve seen from the High-Low Tech group at MIT. (If only I could have met some of the people involved with the group while I was at MIT last month!)

Categories
Uncategorized

Vivitar Foot Repair

Vivitar

So I got this Vivitar 285 flash last year, and it’s been working great, except for one thing… the little plastic foot is no match for the weight of this thing. Eventually, it broke. Argh… To be expected though.

I found a replacement metal foot on ebay for $6.99, and I watched some YouTube video that explained replacing it. Here’s the thing though… after I watched a damn advertisement, and then a 9 minute video showing how to do the replacement, I decided that I’d help people of the future by presenting the same info in a good old no-nonsense way, with words and pictures!

Broken Foot

So here is our broken foot. Thin, old, cheap plastic. No good! Grab a tiny screwdriver and remove the foot. Don’t lose the screws, they are tiny! (Also, you will need them later!)

Remove Foot

Here is the broken one still attached, next to the new one. On the original unit, there are 4 wires. Two of them (white and green) go to the test button. You don’t need these! You just need the black and red wires. The button on the new one will work just fine with only the black and red attached.

New Foot

The black and red wires are short, so don’t cut them, you need to desolder them. If you don’t have a good soldering iron, and some soldering wick and a solder sucker, find someone who does. (Maybe your local hackerspace?) I did cut the white and green ones, and put a tiny amount of tape over the ends, just to be totally safe.

Soldered

Solder the black and red wires in place securely. It appears I put the black on in the center. I’m not sure that it matters, but YMMV and I make no guarantees. (See where I put the screws? Right where they belong, because they are so damn small I was afraid of losing them!) Also, don’t put the foot on backwards, as that would be stupid. (Disclaimer: I’m not even sure you can put it on backwards. I just like disclaimers.)

New Foot

With the soldering done, put the foot in place, put the screws in, and put the batteries back in (you did take them out before you started, right!?) and test it!

OK, there’s your short guide to replacing the hotshoe foot for a Vivitar 285 camera flash. Hopefully you read this in less time than it took me to watch that 9 minute long YouTube video.

(And yeah, the fact that this is a post about photography that has terrible photos is not lost on me. Apologies…)

Categories
Uncategorized

CNC Control Panel Progress

It’s a known problem that I take on too many projects, and that tends to make some of them drag out longer than they should… has it really been more than a month since I started this one?

Yes it has. In my UI Mockup/Diagram Apps post, I was working on a control panel for the CNC Router we have at the Milwaukee Makerspace.

First Attempt

The image above was my first attempt to hack something together. I wanted to do a layout with paper to get a good idea of the physical size of things. As you may notice, the buttons are big, and make the whole thing fairly large. Larger than I wanted. So through a few posts I connected with a fellow maker in Madison who offered me some smaller buttons…

Control Panel

Once I had the smaller buttons, I sat down with some paper and the calipers, and started measuring things, and making the new layout. These were, like the previous attempt, just some rough sketches on paper. Once my paper sketches were done, I moved on to Inkscape, and made the digital version of my control panel.

Paper Mockups

I then went back to paper, by printing out my files, to get a feel for the size and spacing of everything. I didn’t go as far as mocking up an actual 3D model, though it would have been easy with some foamcore or matte board, but it’s one more step to take if needed.

Cut Panel

And as long as I was at the makerspace for some laser-related shenanigans, I figured I’d cut a test of the control panel using acrylic. (I’d like the final done in wood, but I had some scrap clear acrylic on hand, and it’s easier/faster to cut than wood.)

As is often the case, I screwed up one bit of the file, and the lower-left cut is too large. The two holes on the right are waiting for buttons I don’t have yet. Right, make that: buttons I didn’t have yet. More buttons showed up, but they are slightly smaller, so I’ll meed to re-size things again before the next cut. Back to the old drawing application, as they say.

And hey, I better finish this project soon, because there’s talk of adding a 4th and 5th axis to the router! I don’t really mind though, because so far I’ve really enjoyed the process, and I’ve learned a lot along the way, so even if this thing is outdated by the time I finish it, I’ll just start on an upgrade. :)