Don’t waste old Amazon cardboard boxes! I used my CO2 laser to build parametric boxes with variables for height, width, and depth to recreate this finger jointed Minecraft creeper!
These are the parametric boxes. The head is 8x8x8, the body is 12x8x4 and the feet are 8x6x4
I absolutely LOVE my Class 4 CO2 Laser cutter/engraver. But it definitely needs some improvements. I’ve added custom lighting, camera, and analog milliamp reader to it and needed a control panel to manage everything. I designed this as an inset panel that controls the AC lines (which are connected to a new UPS).
My 3d printer always prints a little larger. My designs need about 0.5-1mm tolerance for fittings so I printed out this flat plate to test the panel mounted switches and hole placements.
Emma made me this beautiful ceramic heart for Valentines Day! I decided to make a lightbox style frame to hang it on the wall using slots and glue to keep everything secure.
I designed the frame in Fusion360. It was built with 3 different materials and thicknesses: plexiglass, MDF, and supportboard for the back. This is my first multi-part laser piece.
These settings work for me for 1/4 dry MDF. 60watts, 10mm/s, 40-50% power, 2 passes (roughly 13 milliamps). It’s just enough to see the burn through the bottom and pop the pieces out of MDF.
Pieces fit together perfectly. My laser hasn’t been calibrated yet so the cuts were slightly at an angle but for such small connections, it wasn’t an issue.
I added the piece to the frame. The light blue/white heart didn’t show to well with the white background.
And here is the final product! Might engrave something on the bottom right later just for fun, but for now it looks amazing.
In order to save counter space, I designed a rack in Fusion 360 to cut out 1/4 inch MDF rack. The rack is designed to be mounted to the side of a cabinet, and use double sided mounting tape (along with some physics) to securely hold the bottles in place.
Yi Home cameras are inexpensive, but you can’t use them outdoors. I built this 2 piece window mount (with SVG sticker for those who have a Cricut). This project was an exercise using Fusion 360 and threads, as well as practicing assembling components which is much like assembling parts in SolidWorks.
In order for the Yi Home IR (night) lights to work, the camera must be completely touching the glass of the window you’re mounting it do. Since mounting tape comes in different thicknesses, I decided to make this 2 pieces with threads so that the depth could be adjusted.
Mount the base to a clean window with your choice of double sided mounting tape, insert the camera into the other piece, screw in the camera until you feel it press up against the glass. If you leave a gap, you will see the reflection of the infrared lights.
Here is the final 2 piece product mounted to the window. It works great! The threads are really tight, and had to do some light sanding and screw and unscrew many many times to wear down the edge a bit.
Not sure why, but I wanted to create my own street light. It features LEDs, an Arduino controller with WiFi and notifications, resin-cast lenses from silicon molds, 3D printed parts, as well as some store bought piping.
I eye-balled the design after staring at pictures of street lights. I noticed that they are different everywhere. Some have fully round covers, others are cut out like I have. Some have small backs, some large. Some are black with yellow outlines, some don’t. The pro is that I just need to design something close, the con is that there’s no single classic design.
The above files were all designed in Solidworks. They are meant to be assembled using M2 bolts/nuts to give it the industrial look. I didn’t design the pole/stand yet because I wanted to get a feel for the size first before deciding on the pole height and thickness.
I was really unhappy with the “transparent” PLA that i used to print the lenses. There were 2 versions I printed in attempting to get it clear. They were a big fail, but I ended up using it to make a silicone mold which I use to cast resin which worked out much better!
Of course my existing silicone compound had expired. I didn’t even know they have expiration dates. You can see it’s nearly full, only used it once for a test. Had to buy compound as these have about a 1 year shelf life, or a few months if you open the bottle.
I used a glue gun and foam board to put together a tiny box for the mold. I also glued the lens the bottom to prevent it from shifting.
The mold takes about 12 hours to cure. There was absolutely no smell, and the compounds were easy to clean, unlike 2 part epoxy resin.
I normally color resin with a few drops of food coloring, but usually you can use acrylic paint. I bought some resin coloring just for kicks and the green came out perfect. The red however was way to opaque and I resorted back to food coloring to get a more translucent resin.
Green and yellow came out perfect the first time. Red took me 3 times to get right. I don’t have a degassing chamber so there are tiny bubbles, I think it will help with diffusing the LEDs under. We shall see!
ESP8266 is a 3.3v controller. 8212b is a 5v signal. Here I am doing a quick prototype test to see if the signalling works… spoiler alert, it didn’t. Adafruit’s NeoPixel library didn’t like it.
I used 5v neopixels (8212b) to form an array of lights, 10 LEDs for each street light. I mounted card stock under it to help with the color and adhesion.
Using 5v Arduino Nano I was able to get good signalling to the 8212b neopixels. However, this needs WiFi so I switched to a beloved ESP8266 3.3V microcontroller. I could not get the signal to work correctly using Adafruit’s NeoPixel library. Instead I had to switch over to FastLED.
I used my trusty Rigol to try to diagnose the difference between the signal libraries. At the end of the day, I don’t have time to debug the Adafruit library and running with FastLED. Also look how clean the signal is! those series resistors really help with bounce!
I spend hours and hours on my bike. I needed an aerodynamic custom phone mount designed specifically for my phone/bike setup. This is my first multi-part assembly in Solidworks. So satisfying!
Before I begin, let’s stop and take a look at this beautiful bike. It’s not as high end as some of the $15k+ bikes out there, but it’s gotten me through many Ironman races.
I measured the diameter of my aero bars and also the distance between the stem where it would be mounted. I decided on a 3 part assembly to make it easier to print. The pieces of the assembly where designed to be held together with M2 screws/bolts.
Always used variable names in Solidworks, but also give them meaningful names so you don’t end up using the wrong measurement for the mount gap width here to account for the stem.
After re-printing the design, I pushed in the hex nuts into the slots I designed and screwed bottom mount together. The 3D printer needs a good amount of tolerance for a good fit. I used 2mm for these M2 screws but the fitting was too tight.
Why create a bathroom sign in your own home? Why not! This project was super fun because I got to play with heat guns, resin, and multi-colored prints!
The most interesting thing about this build was the resin coating. There are a few things to learn here. First, resin is nasty, smelly, and sticky so wear gloves. Also, 2 part resin mixed together ends up with tons of bubbles. You remove them by pouring the resin from really high up, but also using a heat gun or torch to pop the bubbles. This only works if the layer is thin — if you are pouring a thick layer of resin, then you need a degassing chamber to vacuum all the bubbles out.
The second interesting thing about this is the dual color extrusion. I do not have a dual color print so I had to modify the G-Code to “pause” the print at the right height so I could swap out the green filament for white. This is done with Cura3D.
Every project is cooler with LEDs. I made this neo-pixel and Arduino powered helmet with both battery or 5V plug in power.
I custom designed in OpenScad this front of the cannon with LEDs
The back was designed to have holes exactly the size to mount LEDs in. The pieces were printed with “translucent” PLA to diffuse the light.
I found a mini helmet online and printed a small scale version of it.
This is the assembled first print. There was so much sanding that I had to do. I learned a lot about how to fill holes and smooth out the lines in the print. The support material that was broken off left so much work to be done.
Especially around the yellow lightbar the print was really rough. The post prep on this part was intense.
Did about 5 sessions of filling and sanding with bondo before I got it to a point where it was nice and round. Here’s me holding the canon. It has a handle inside. Still need to build the electronics.