Melzi holder and new wiring

In the last couple of posts I described how I put a z-probe onto Squirty the RepRap. Adding the z-probe meant new wires. These wires ended up jumbled all over the place and occasionally got caught on the z-axis threaded rods, causing all manner of chaos to break out. The z-probe also requires a lot […]

Fire the LAZOR!

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to get access to a work-in-progress laser cutter (aka the LAZOR). I didn’t have time to do any cutting, but was able to try out the workflow by engraving a piece of box cardboard with the same svg file I used for the Cameo based name card project. I have […]

Z-probe V2: Autoleveling

Following on from the previous post I redesigned the z-probe holder to position the microswitch closer to the nozzle. I also forked the latest version of the Marlin firmware to correct some problems I was having with the leveling behaviour. The video below shows that the autoleveling seems to be working, but I need to […]

Z-probe V1: The Gom Jabbar

By far the most frustrating part of 3D printing with Squirty the RepRap has always been the strange dance you have to do to get the Z distance correct. I use a strip of paper and carefully pull it back and forth underneath the nozzle while trying to bring it close enough to the bed […]

Creating Shells with OpenSCAD

Antony Monjauze had a question about whether OpenSCAD could be used to create a shell from an imported stl. At first I thought this wouldn’t be possible. It seems like to create a shell you would need to know something about the geometry of the stl you were importing, and OpenSCAD can’t tell you anything […]

Teachings from the Butler

This is a follow on from post from Hacking the Butler, which described an entry for the Singapore IoT Hackathon that I helped with. That post described the prototype we produced, this post will talk about what I learned from the experience.

Hacking the Butler

My first hackathon was in April. It was fantastic experience. We came up with a cool product (1st Runner up!) and I also got to learn a lot, not just technical skills but also about how to approach product development and working in a technical team. I’m going to write two posts about the hackathon. […]

Custom Cut Name Cards

In this post I’ll describe how to make custom cut name cards for contact details. The Wife and I just moved from Singapore to the US where we are meeting lots of interesting people, so unusually for this blog the project served a practical purpose.

Web Controlled BeerBot

At the Singapore Hour of Code event I got a great tip from Melvin on how to set up a web control page for the BeerBot. In this post I’ll describe the first working version, which you can see in the video below (apologies for the robotic monotone on the voiceover).

Ducted Fan Part II and Octoprint

Last month I posted about installing a ducted fan on Squirty. After installing the fan I read issue 42 of MAKE magazine and became excited about two ideas to try for testing out the ducted fan. As is often the case, I got a bit distracted trying out these ideas so it’s taken me a […]