Todd Blatt

Officially Licensed Valve Portal Earrings

2017-09-27T16:17:00.001-04:00

A neat thing happened today. Valve, a popular videogame company(makers of Half-Life, Portal, DOTA, Counter Strike, and more) and Shapeways, a 3D printing service bureau that also lets you have a 3D-print-on-demand online storefront, reached and agreement where we can upload any design to Shapeways and share 10% royalties with Valve when sales are made. It's very exciting to me, and certainly the way licenses should go, in my opinion. It'll be neat to see if other storefront sites like Etsy take on this approach.

So, here you are, an officially licensed pair of Portal earrings, designed by me, up on Shapeways:

https://www.shapeways.com/product/Y5NSAK56S/portal-earrings-valve-approved

Stadium Seat Repair using 3D Printing for the Oriole Park at Camden Yards

2017-07-06T13:26:00.001-04:00

Here's a few parts I made for Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I headed down to the stadium today to test the fit, and it went perfectly. All 9000 padded seats between the dugouts behind home plate use two of these. It's a self adjusting bracket to hold the seats to the rest of the chair. Since each seat is angled differently to face the field, a simple bracket doesn't do the job. This bracket has a rotating ball in a socket to accommodate for any angle. I unfortunately don't get to sell them the entire 18,000 sets of parts that they use for the whole lot because these are just replacements for when the originals break, but it's still a nice order and pretty need to add them to my client list! The black one is the original, mine is the all white set. The company who made these originally got bought by a different stadium seating company, and they no longer offer these parts. They don't break too often, but when they do, the seat is unusable, so it's always good to have a few on hand.

My white 3d printed ones next to the black originals

These three parts are the original pieces.

This is the 3d printed nylon part. The central ball rotates freely to any angle.

You can see the metal bars that stick out from the arm rest.

The ball part fits right on the metal bar, and adjusts itself to the angle as needed.

I tested the screw hole placement in their repair shop on a newly refinished padded seat. They replace the vinyl on these all the time.

It works! Installed in section 30 row 29 seat 11

Here's a great article shapeways put up about it:
https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/34709-future-field-level-baseball-stadium-seats-hinges-3d-printing.html

Hope - Rogue One Death Star Plans Data Card

2016-12-29T23:49:00.002-05:00

I decided to flex my maker muscles and create this prop replica three different ways. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you should. This is the card that Princess Leia gives to R2-D2 in the very beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope that contains the plans to the Death Star. We finally get a close-up of it in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and it's one of those things I just had to have.

The first one I made is currently up for auction, and half of the total will be sent to Make A Wish Foundation in Carrie Fisher's memory.

Going from least expensive equipment required to most, I've documented the steps taken to create this replica. The first just uses a laser cutter, painters tape, sand paper, spray paint, and acrylic welder.

First, I sanded a sheet of white acrylic with 220 grit to get the paint to stick nicely. Then I covered a large area with blue painters tape, and laser-cut the profile, as well as several concentric circles.
I carefully removed the tape, leaving thin blue areas to mask off sections I didn't want the paint to get to

Spray-painted a nice coat with gold paint. The taped off area between the circles block the paint like a stencil.

Once the paint dried, I peeled off the tape.

I was careful not to scratch the paint when peeling out the thin areas.

I then cut a piece of black acrylic and used fast set acrylic welder to bond it to the bottom, for a finished piece! I made two this way, slightly modifying the base, and one without sanding the acrylic, so it's glossier.

The second method uses the laser cutter, a vinyl cutter, and acrylic welder.

We're using gold vinyl directly instead of using paint. I found measurements for the width of the slot that the R2 builders are using and adjusted the width of my prop for this method to fit in there. I also wasn't happy with the length and arc at the top so I modified those dimensions. FinallyI tweaked the black bar so you don't see any white on the side of the black part.

The brushed gold vinyl is still on its way to me, but I like the vinyl better than paint already. Plus it's easier to do so that'll keep the cost down. I messed up the placement of the vinyl on this prototype... It's too high. When I make more of them, I'll use registration marks to be sure to line things up correctly. As in the first step, two layers of black acrylic are welded to the bottom. The shape is a little bit different this time to hide the white edge inside the black acrylic.

This way was easier and provided a cleaner look. I think the new vinyl coming in just after New Years will look even better. It has a brushed gold look to it, which I think will look better.

The third way is a whole lot of steps. I routed out the copper PCB, transferred a vinyl sticker to the board to act as a mask, etched away all the exposed copped, remove the vinyl mask, nickel plated the copper, and then gold plated the nickel.

Gluing down the copper board to a base layer

Cutting out the shape of the board with the router

Cutting vinyl for etching mask

Use transfer tape to move the vinyl to the copper board (sorry it's not centered! Just a prototype)

Pouring homemade Cupric Acid etching solution to eat away the exposed copper. This is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the traditional Ferric Chloride method.

Waiting waiting waiting...

Refreshing the solution with more oxygen by adding some hydrogen peroxide

[[I'll update this eventually with the plating steps.]]

Final version went through a few revisions, but is made of aluminum as the card base, a white layer, and then copper plated with nickel for the trace lines and gold for the central circles. With the details that were view-able in the blue-ray, we got a lot more information.

I've got these final version ones up in my etsy shop if you'd like one.

CNC Routed Westworld Maze

2016-12-21T14:28:00.001-05:00

Breaking out the CNC skills for this one. The mysterious maze from Westworld:

Everyone loves a good sci-fi western. Between seasons, follow your heart and play with this mysterious maze to pass the time. This project is ready to go and just needs your support. I'm only making a very limited run of these.

I'll be carving these about 8" in diameter from top quality select kiln-dried pine and staining it dark. It's 3/4" thick and will come with three stainless steel ball bearings.

These will be engraved by a CNC router here in Baltimore at the Baltimore Node Makerspace. They're then hand-sanded smooth, and stained dark.

This is my fifth project here on kickstarter. I'm confident that I'll be able to get these into your hands before the end of February. It is a quick project with a fast turnaround time. I have everything I need to get started and just need your support.
Thanks for looking, and as always, please share this project with others.

New Kickstarter! Game of Thrones spoiler...

2016-05-25T15:00:00.002-04:00

My newest project, a "Hold The Door" Hodor memorial doorstop. I'm laser engraving blocks of wood and offering a limited quantity of them for sale through the campaign. It's already been funded over 400% (of only a $500 goal) and we're less than 24 hours in. I'm only having this up for a week, so it's a super quick one. Grab one while you can!

There's been some media coverage on Mashable, Telegraph.co.uk, and Mirror.co.uk as well as mentions on several other sites like Vanity Fair and The Independant. Thanks for supporting the campaign and sharing it!

DIY Prism Belaying Glasses for Just $5 and 10 Minutes

2016-01-10T15:02:00.000-05:00

My girlfriend and I recently got in to rock climbing. If you've never been before, basically there's a rope tied to the climbers harness which then runs up to the top of the wall, and then back down to a device attached to the second person's harness. The second person is called the belayer, and it is his or her job to hold the rope with the assistance of the belay device, catching the climber if they fall. They also have to keep their eyes on the climber as they go up the wall.

Keeping your head tilted back to keep your eyes on the climber can end up quite uncomfortable. Some clever folks have invented these devices that use prisms to reflect your vision upwards, but allowing you to keep your head straight forward, easing the stress on your neck. The problem is these glasses cost 80 to 100 bucks! It's more expensive than any single piece of climbing gear I've gotten so far.

My friend Nancy showed me these funky laptop/reading glasses that deflect your vision downward for use when laying on your back and reading in bed, or watching TV without sitting up. At the time I thought they were just funny things with no real use, but were neat to play with. Look in the window on the right in the right picture below and you can see how they "bend" your vision downward.

I ordered a set from China from Amazon for $5 and figured I'd be able to modify them to work for climbing. Turns out I was right and it just took a couple minutes!

Here's how to do it:

You'll need a few things to get started.
A flat screwdriver or something small and flat to pry with. I used a lockpick I had laying around.
You'll also need some glue. I used gap-filling gel control locktite.
You'll also need a rotary tool like a Dremel. I used the cutting wheel on my Foredom flex-shaft tool.
And finally, get yourself a cheap one of these for $5.08 shipped or $15 if you want them quicker.

I've ordered a $15 pair and this $5 pair. The $5 ones seem to be the exact same as the $15 ones, so might as well go with the cheapest you can find if you don't mind waiting an extra week or two.

Pry apart the little rectangles inside the frames. They're just press-fit in place and pop out pretty easily with the right tool.

Once you pop the rectangles out, the prisms can slide out smoothly.

Now for the tricky part. You've got to cut or saw the triangular shield piece off while leaving some material behind. Without removing it, you won't be able to see upwards through it, so it has to be removed, but you need to leave some of it in place to reattach the prisms.

Use a saw or rotary tool to cut the shield part off, leaving triangles, one on each side of each opening, four triangles total. Remove the top black piece and discard.

Use a drop of glue on each triangle to secure the prism in place.

Position the prisms in place, upside down from how they previously were.

Conversion complete!

Charm City Maps Kickstarter

2015-08-17T10:57:00.001-04:00

My friend Cody from DyeLlama and I have been working on this project for a while now and are ready to share it with you. We're using pretty new awesome manufacturing techniques to make these maps here in Baltimore. The leather maps are laser engraved using the 80watt laser at the Baltimore Node. The canvas is dyed using UV reactive dye exposed to sunlight through a transparency.

The map illustration itself was pieced together from original illustrations as well as two pieces from the public domain, the illustration of lord Baltimore's ship and the original seal of Maryland. We found them in some Maryland archives online. The other illustrations of of cool things from around town, like Poe's grave, the shot tower, science center, fed hill cannon, a slice of pizza in little Italy, Chessie, and a rat or two. Lots of landmarks in the downtown area and a bit beyond. It's not everything in Baltimore, because they just wouldn't fit because of the scale, but we included a lot and will have even more. There's a bunch of pics up on the campaign site now, the video is great, so please check it out and share it on social media, and back it if you can.

Ricochet Robot Deluxe

2015-07-22T18:42:00.000-04:00

I didn't blog about this when I created it but it looks cool so I figured I'd share the pictures. I gifted this to my friend Jenny. It's a pretty neat competitive puzzle game. I just used birch plywood, cut it at the node, stained it, and hand painted the symbols. The raised walls are important to the gameplay, and the off-the-shelf version of the game just has printed graphics instead of a physical wall. The pieces are 3D prined and are the Make: robot. I downloaded their .stl file here and you can download my mishmash of source files I created for the game here. It's poorly documented but should provide a great starting point for anyone interested in making their own.

Han Solo in Carbonite's Going Away Party

2015-04-20T22:31:00.002-04:00

Han Solo's going away party! Tuesday April 22nd, 7:30pm.

Unfortunately, the 1:1 replica of Han Solo in Carbonite isn't going to be coming along with us to the new Baltimore Node location. It was a commissioned project anyway and I didn't want to move it and then move it again, so I decided to finish it up and get it read to ship it off to my customer in Alabama later this week. Don't worry though; I'll be building another one once we get into the new space.

I decided to run an event where people can come and learn what I learned fromthis project. I'll talk about everything I can remember and show pictures and let you ask questions. I'll discuss laser cutting, CNC routing, silicon molding, resin casting, 3d printing, 3d model packing optimization, microcontroller programming, sculpting with bondo, and much more. I'll be discussing the project on April 21st, and you can see the completed sculpture then.

Please bring some food to share if you want, or $5 for pizza. RSVP on meetup

The end of free-range parts. Time to get them into cages!

2014-10-01T17:03:00.001-04:00

Shapeways is changing their pricing for SLS nylon parts and the metal parts too. A big change is that each part inside a model now has its own $1.50 startup fee. If you group them all together and put 'em in a box, then they count as one part, saving you that hefty cost. The example I'm using is the 30-pack of tiny nipples used as detail pieces for Han Solo in Carbonite side panels.

Before the price change, these cost me $7.18 and I was selling them for $13. That same file will now cost $62.37 after October 7th, and even more of a gap for polished parts. Something needed to be done if I want to continue offering these parts at a reasonable price.

After I put everything inside a cage, I was able to bring the cost back down to a fair number. It was $7 before and now it's about $11. The more time you spend optimizing the layout of your parts, and the tighter together you can get them, the more money you'll save. Making them hollow isn't the #1 most important thing anymore. A lot of factors contribute to the cost, so optimizing all of them will give you the best result.

Not all parts go up in price; some actually go down. Realize that shapeways used to charge $1.40 per cc of material you used, and now they're only charging $0.28. That's a big drop. They're also charging for 'air' at 21 cents per cc, but that's just to reflect the work they need to do for that part. This means that many objects which are not so wispy and wiry, and instead are tighter and denser actually go down in price. Check out a simple solid sphere for example. Hollowing it out would only save you $0.07 per cc, whereas before it'd save you the full $1.40. This means that under the new pricing structure, this particular shape would go down in price from $12.95 to $7.07. Not bad. I wonder now though how well shapeways will compare to other 3d printing service bureaus.

In the video I showed example of lowering prices by putting things in cages. You can also lower the price by linkin things together. The above earrings show that the system only charges you for objects which are actually separated. The linked rhombic dodecahedron earrings (available in my store here) are successfully detected as two parts, not 6 like you might expect. Same goes with the Claw earrings, which aren't even solidly connected by a closed loop.

You can also link objects together with a 3d printed string so that they'll be detected as one part. It does a very good job of this on my tests so far. This is like putting beads on a necklace.

If your parts are spaced out far away from each other, it'll cost a lot since you're using a lot of space inside the machine. The photo to the left shows the bounding box of the parts. It's the overall rectangular box that fits around all parts in a model.

The overall bounding box isn't exactly the same as the machine space. If you have a big enough hole inside your part, (40x40x40mm) then shapeways won't charge you for that as machine space since they'll fit someone else's part inside of yours.

By the way, have you seen my kickstarter campaign? It's currently live at www.uplocket.com

My new Kickstarter! UpLocket; digitally connected jewelry

2014-09-21T08:24:00.001-04:00

Check out the campaign!

Share it and back it if you can. Thanks!

Ben Franklinstein is done! Give yourselves a hand.

2014-09-15T19:24:00.001-04:00

If you helped me with this project, give yourselves a hand! In fact, why not head over to e-NABLE at http://enablingthefuture.org/ and print out a hand for someone who needs one! They're hosting an event here in Baltimore on Sunday the 28th, and are looking for about 150 more 3D printed hands for the people who need them.

It took about a month, including the scanning, slicing, uploading, distributing, checking in pieces, tracking down missing ones for reprints, and the final assembly. I'll be giving a talk about the process and the platform on Thursday this week at Ignite Baltimore. Thanks to all of you who helped by printing pieces, to Marty McGuire who helped glue and did website admin, Direct Dimensions for the scan, and Tinkerine Studios who sponsored some of the shipping costs. If you've got a printer or know someone who does, head over to WeTheBuilders and sign up for alerts for our next project!

Here's the build video:

More photos:

Distributed Ben Franklin from WeTheBuilders.com

2014-08-04T16:17:00.000-04:00

Today we launched our second crowdsourced 3d printed sculpture at www.wethebuilders.com.

The way it works is that people who own a 3d printer can log in and download one 4" chunk of a sculpture, 3d print it, and mail it back to Baltimore where they're all getting glued together. George was made earleir this year and has travelled allover the US to different shows and landmarks. Our next project which just launched today is Distributed Benjamin Franklin is our second supersized crowdsourced 3D print. Earlier this year, a new site, WeTheBuilders.com was launched by me and a team of 5 other makers at the ArtBytes Hackathon in Baltimore. With the help of 70 makers and their personal 3d printers worldwide, all 110 pieces were 3D printed and mailed to Maryland where they were all glued together to create the one-meter-tall sculpture called George Crowdsourcington.

George has been traveling all over the country to over a dozen events. He debuted at the NY 3D Print Show, went to Inside 3D Printing Conference in New Yrok, did a residency at the Adafruit office in Manhattan, traveled to South-by-Southwest, Direct Dimensions, The Baltimore Node Hackerspace, several mini-Maker Faires, 3D/DC, Public Knowledge's HQ, ConFabulation Symposium and 3D Printed Art Gallery at Prince George's Community College, the US Science and Engineering Festival in DC, and even visited the Capitol Building and the National Mall. Next month he'll be at the Silver Spring Maker Faire and World Maker Faire in NY.The hope is that with your help we'll be able to print all 198 pieces needed to bring Distributed Ben Franklin together in time for the Silver Spring and World Maker Faires. The parts are available at www.wethebuilders.com and anyone with a 3d printer is free to get started! The project just launched on Monday, August 4th and we're hoping to get all the parts shipped to Baltimore by September 1st, in time for us glue. The model of Ben was sliced up into pieces using netfabb. Any piece which was totally inside the sculpture and a perfect cube was removed, since there's no need for us to 3D print that.

Tinkerine Studios (the makers of the DittoPro 3D printer) sponsored both the George Crowdsourcington and Distributed Ben Franklin projects by reimbursing shipping costs for makers who participate by 3D printing and mailing in their parts. www.tinkerine.com

Direct Dimensions of Owings Mills, MD did the 3d scanning for us. www.dirdim.com

We The Builders is a fun free project to be a part of. It's great to use your 3D printed to create something awesome with other makers from all over the world. You can find all the details and get started over at WeTheBuilders.com

laser cut circuit experiment

2014-04-20T18:26:00.001-04:00

Bought a copper clad circuit board from radio shack

I spraypainted it black.

Then I drew the shapes I wanted in autocad, and prepared the file for the laser cutter. I did a test in the corner first. The laser blasts away the black spraypaint, exposing the copper

mixed 2 parts hcl with 1 part h2o2, which forms a copper eating solution.

The liquid turns green as it eats away the copper

After lasercutting, A small amount of residue was still on the board, and caused it to not etch away in the solution, so I rubbed a tiny amount of acetone to wash off the residue, but it smudged the mask so the results were subpar. I had no idea acetone was that effective on paint. It smudged instantly, but I thought I'd be able to quickly rub and wipe.

acetone washes away the remaining paint

second attempt:

Better, but still not good enough. Using the rubbing alcohol to clean up the residue was a big improvement over the acetone swipe. I'm looking for straight lines, 90º corners, and round circles. I'm not sure if maybe I'm not letting the paint dry enough, or maybe this method isn't accurate enough for what I'm doing.

3D Modeling in high speed

2014-03-30T10:03:00.004-04:00

My friend Ryan Kittleson likes to post videos of him doing modeling in Sculptris and they're always fun to watch. I decided to try it on a project I did yesterday. It's about 3-4 hours of work in AutoCAD, playing back at 7x speed. Let me know what you think!

George Crowdsourcington - WeTheBuilders.com

2014-02-02T13:31:00.004-05:00

Baltimore Node members Marty McGuire, Amy Hurst and myself, along with the help of Dave Fine (future node member though he hasn't agreed yet,) Matt Griffin (community manager at adafruit,) and Ryan Kittleson (awesome digital sculptor,) all worked on a cool project last weekend at the ArtBytes II hackathon at the Walters Art Museum. We've laid the foundation but now we need your help! We're not asking for money... just 3D print time. It's a crowdsourced 3d printing project which will be featured at the NY 3D Print Show next weekend.

Anyone with a printer and a few spare printing hours can help us out by logging in, grabbing a piece and printing it out. The work is made up of 110 pieces which can fit on a home printer, will get mailed to us here and assembled into one giant replica of the george washington bust which direct dimensions scanned at the museum last Thursday. Tinkerine Studio ahs offerent to reimburse people for their USPS first class shipping costs, so feel free to print a few pieces and mail them in!

Once complete we'll bring it to the NY 3D Print Show on Feb 13th where it will be displayed as the featured piece at the show, along with your name on a plaque thanking you for helping. Tell everyone you know who has a printer, and spread the word! Pleae get your parts delivered to me by Feb 10th.

www.wethebuilders.com

To the Walters, and Beyond!

2014-01-22T23:09:00.003-05:00

This weekend at the Walters Art Gallery, there's the second Artbytes hackathon. Last year lots of teams focused on way-finding, APIs and QR codes or something. I'm not sure. I just 3D scanned stuff and made mashups. This year I hope to do something a bit more significant and a big more ambitious.

There are a lot of people already helping but it'd be awesome if you could too. The plan is to 3D scan the George Washington sculpture which they recently removed from the monument, digitally slice him up into pieces and print him back out full size with the help of printers everywhere. What's crazy about this sculpture is that it's of George when he was a bit younger than he looks on the dollar bill, plus he's got a roman haircut and is wearing a toga. Here's a pic I copied from the Baltimore Sun and alink to their article on it's moving from the monument down to the Walters..

I snapped these photos this morning. This is what he looks like, where he sits just up the stairs when you enter the museum through the Charles St. entrance.

Direct Dimensions will be doing the scanning with high-end scanners, the Faro Arm and the Artec. I'll be bringing three Tinkerine Studio Ltd. ‪printers: two Ditto+ machines and a Litto to print out what we can on site at the museum. We'll also be distributing the files online. Marty said he's going to help build a platform for crowd-sourcing a large print like this, and I'll be feeding him the files for the site. The plan is to have people like you print them out and mail them to us so we can rebuild it rather quickly. If you want to help print out parts and tell your friends who you know who have printers to do the same! Of course anyone who prints a piece will get their name listed online and on a plaque saying that they helped out. The plan is that you're able to check out a part, print it mail it to us, and we'll assemble the whole thing. Please send 'em to:

Crowdsourced George Washington
c/o Direct Dimensions
10310 S. Dolfield Road
Owings Mills, MD. 21117

Here's a little article about George, and his very long journey. They moved him from the monument... to the Walters which is like 100 feet. Let's work together and get him a bit farther than that... to the Internets! (or to Owings Mills if you want to get technical about it...)

Lots of awesome folks will be coming to town, like the awesome sculptor Ryan Kittleson who makes all the 3d printed memes, and Matt Griffin from Adafruit. One of the judges is Sid Meier, the cat who made civilization, so that's pretty cool too. Hope to see you there (please RSVP... it's free) this weekend! Starts Friday at 6pm, .

First Sense Scan

2013-11-17T12:33:00.000-05:00

This morning I walked two blocks from my apartment over to the park by the Walter's Art Museum in Baltimore, in the shadow of the Washington Monument. There are many large statues in this area, and for smaller ones, one at each 'corner' of the circle that goes around the monument. Metal letters spelling out the words "War, Peace, Order and Force" are below each. I brought the Sense and my laptop out to scan one of them.

In the Sense scanning software, you have options right when you open the software. It asks you if you're scanning a person or an object, and then it asks you how big the object is... small medium or large. I scanned the War sculpture and the next scan using the object and large settings.

I think I made a mistake and didn't have color on when I exported the file, and I loaded a new scan so all I've got are the exported .ply and .stl scans. When I opened the .ply in Meshlab, there was no color data, so I'm assuming I had a setting wrong when I exported. While scanning I know that color was on.

Overall using the scanner feels a lot like the other PrimeSense scanners, but the software is really what sets it apart. It's simple and straightforward, no need to jump between software packages to go from scan data to printable object. When I scan with my Asus Xtion Pro, I needed to originally struggle with the ReconstructMe settings to get it to initialize, save using the command prompt, load the file into Meshmixer and clean up the scan there manually. I like doing it manually with meshmixer, and don't mind the command prompt, but the average consumer wouldn't use a device where all those steps are needed. Doing it with the Sense software was a breeze. Of course, that's why this costs $399 and not ~$150 like the others. The software is certainly the biggest added value to this scanner over the Kinect or Asus.

I bumped in to Yair at Dooby's (where I'm currently typing this up) and did a quick 15 second scan. I got it right this time and was able to export the color data. I didn't go back and tell it that I was scanning a smaller thing, nor did I switch the setting to 'person.' Sorry Yair, now 3d systems thinks you're an object and not a person.

I liked the feedback it gave me while I was scanning, though it was frustrating at times. It helps guide you to make sure the scanner is the right distance away from the object. It suggests 15". While I was scanning the War sculpture, It would sometimes switch from "Too Close" to "Too Far" as I passed by parts of the sculpture which protruded more, like the horse's head. I did find that it would keep scanning even if it was telling you that you were too close or two far. Being too close made the scan go very slowly, and being too far would sometimes make you lose tracking. It does a nice overlay to help guide you to line up the scan with the sculpture if you lose tracking, and usually can find itself and resume.

Overall this is a great device and excellent software execution by 3D Systems. I'm glad they let us save out the .stl and .ply files and that they're not locked in to the system. You can download the War sculpture here.

My Hobby

2013-10-17T01:30:00.000-04:00

http://xkcd.com/1278/
Shapeways link

I attended NY Comic Con, so making this post is the Least I Could Do

2013-10-14T23:23:00.001-04:00

Empire City Garrison

I got to attend comic con with the Empire City Garrison of the 501st Legion. I'm a member of the group and we go to events dressed as Star Wars characters and raise money for charity. This event was cool because we did Blast-a-Trooper, where kids would get shots at us using automatic, semi-automatic, and pump-action nerf guns. They loved it, and we raised over $1000 this weekend just doing that. Hallmark made a large donation for us to be at their booth, and another group donated $7000 worth of books for us to be at their booth for a while too. As an organization as a whole, we raised over $11 million in 2011 and $14 million in 2012.

Lar deSouza

Another cool thing I got to do was get the artist of one of my favorite web comics to draw a sketch of me, and he recorded a video of the process while he was wearing my Google Glass. Lar deSouza works for Blind Ferret Entertainment as the artist on several comics, including Least I Could Do. I came up with the idea for have him do a first person video of him making a sketch, and he decided to do it of me, which was pretty cool! It's a pretty awesome sketch of me and he did it in only two minutes. Click on the video to check it out!

RFID badge check-in/check-out

There were a lot of people at comic con, but it did seem like less than last year. I think this is because the event organizers did a cool thing with the badges. Each badge had an RFID chip, and you had to scan it both to get in to comic con, and to leave. If you forgot to check out when you left, then your badge would still be in the 'checked-in' state, and if you tried to re-enter, you would be denied access. This prevents the typical cheat of two people entering the convention with their badges, and then one of them leaving with both badges to give one to a friend waiting outside. With the RFID check-out built in to the badge, the badge in his pocket would not work for the third person waiting outside since it would still be checked-in. It's a pretty neat way to prevent multiple uses of the same pass, while still allowing re-entry for paying guests. Here is a video of me walking down the hallway from the main area over to Artist's Alley:

3d Printing at Saint Patrick's School and Gearrings Update

2013-10-03T14:47:00.000-04:00

After meeting many many people at the Silver Spring Mini Maker Faire last Sunday (which was awesome), I was invited to come speak at the Saint Patrick's School in Rockville.

At the Saint Patrick's School, I was lead to a classroom where I set up. The Young Inventors group had their inaugural meeting yesterday, where I spoke and demoed 3d printing and other forms of fabrication to an after-school class of about 50, 5th-8th graders.

They learned more than they would ever want to know about Han Solo in Carbonite, as well as a lot about different 3d scanning programs, modeling programs, and methods of 3d printing. About 35% of them already did 3d modeling in the form of Minecraft. Those kids were especially excited to learn about other ways of 3d modeling and other solid primitives. I explained Boolean operations while showing what they look like in AutoCAD, and showed them many things I've made. Good times.

My gearrings from my last post have arrived. They work for the most part. The part printed fine, and everything moves cleanly. The issue I was concerned about was that the gears might shift and not engage the next gear. I couldn't make it tighter and still abide by Shapeways tolerance for printing in their FUD material. I didn't consider that while i had my bases covered for the shifting, that the gap i left in between the gear and the shaft might be used by the gear to tilt at an angle. For this reason the gears sometimes get jammed. If i make the gears thicker it will make it so the gears can't tilt as much. That'll be in the next revision. I also intend to cheat the tolerances and make it tighter than I'm supposed to. That will also help with the distance the gears are allowed to move. For now, this is what we've got... gearrings which mostly work.

Gear Earrings

2013-09-27T12:27:00.000-04:00

They're obviously called Gearrings. Earlier this week, I sent the .stl file to Shapeways for printing in their fine ultra detail material.

Using a gear generator, there's an option for slop, which is the spacing between gear teeth. I set that to a little bit more than the clearance needed for a gap for FUD material, and set the shaft spacing to be the distance that I wanted these gears to be apart. I exported dxfs from the generator program and imported them in to AutoCAD. I extruded the shapes, and unioned together the appropriate gears, and made sure the distance along the shaft was far enough apart so they wouldn't fuse together during printing. Spinning the gear shown in red should make the brown gear spin about 6 times faster. We'll see if it works!

The Fauxbricator by MockerBot

2013-08-16T16:21:00.003-04:00

The theme for Burning Man this year is Cargo Cult, which is an amazing story and I suggest you check it out. Basically there were these island natives and during the war they saw military getting supply drops from airplanes, so they started building their own fake runways in hopes that planes would land there and they'd get supplies too. The Wikipedia article is worth the read.

I've designed the MockerBot Fauxbricator at the Baltimore Node Hackerspace last night and used the laser cutter to cut it all out today at the UMBC PaD Lab. Thanks Amy!

It's not 100% complete yet. and I want to add a few things. The platform can be moved up and down, the fo'struder can move left and right and back and forth. There's even a tube to carry the fo'liment. You can grab the WIP laser cut files here.

It's designed for the 1/4" wood board that i picked up at home depot this morning. I didn't use the typical birch and wend for the darker wood. You'll also need to grab two 4' 1/2" dowels and some tubing.

Ice Carving in Detroit

2013-08-14T17:29:00.000-04:00

I had a lot of fun when I went to Detroit for Maker Faire. I stayed with a fellow named Jeff who is a professional ice carver and a man of many talents. He let me try it out. Here's the video I shot through Glass of me starting out the ice sculpture.

Of course I had to let the pro finish it up, but he still let me take a bunch of pics and videos while standing nearby. The trick is to just cut away anything that doesn't look like a lion.

Tucked away in the freezer for safe keeping.

3d model from NY to Chicago

2013-08-01T20:41:00.000-04:00

When I worked at MakerBot, I was part of the team that went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and participated in the 3d scanning hackathon. One of the more popular pieces was the Bust of a Female Deity scanned by Dave Neff. I downloaded the model, opened it in Meshmixer, and did some cool modifications as a demo for the Joe Carr and the team here. We printed out the model here at the 3d printing store in Chicago, The 3D Printer Experience. Here's the result:

You can download it here on Thingiverse or order one from Shapeways.