Modding - Page 5

As traditional mail is becoming a less needed service, Royal Mail has stepped up in a bid to stay ahead of the 'rat race' - offering consumers the ability to 3D print and ship various objects from their local offices.

Paired up with 3D-printing company iMakr, Royal Mail using their services to install brand new printers in their New Cavendish Street delivery office in London, set to enable both custom designs and pre-made product designs to be ordered by consumers. These products can be ordered online by any end-user and have them shipped directly to their address or picked up directly from the office.

Mike Newnham is Royal Mail's Chief Customer Officer, sharing his thoughts on this business advancement he commented: "3D printing is an emerging technology that has many applications and offers an innovative way to create unique or personalized objects. It can be prohibitively expensive for consumers or small businesses to invest in a 3D printer, so we are launching a pilot to gauge interest in 3D printing".

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-based startup Rohinni has an interesting project to share with the world: LightPaper. LightPaper is something the startup took to their Twitter account to tease, writing: "We print light".

The goal of the startup is to be the leading lighting application for, well, everything. LightPaper is the world's thinnest LED lighting, which can be applied to, stuck on, and placed onto virtually any surface. LightPaper, if you've already guessed, is super-thin, and is made by mixing ink and tiny LEDs together, and then printing out a mixture onto a conductive layer.

This layer is then "sealed between two additional layers. The tiny diodes are about the size of a red blood cell. When a current runs through the paper, the tiny, randomly-dispersed diodes will light up", reports 3ders.org. OLED is currently one of the thinner technologies out there, but LightPaper is set to break that record. LightPaper is being aimed at the automotive industry, where it could allow for better tail lights, or super-impressive looking branding.

Since the introduction of the Arduino, we have seen a wealth of self-dispensing, self-mixing, and self-concocting barbots hit the scene, but never have we seen one quite so refined as the new Barobot. The Barobot is a cocktail slinging robot that is aimed at making your socializing events more about socializing than about mixing drinks.

Recently launched on Kickstarter, the Barobot is a $1600 (self assembly) to $2500 (fully assembled) alcoholic drink mixing machine that utilizes a 7-inch android screen, and some custom electronics to mix the perfect cocktail every time, without the need for a bartender. The team behind Barobot is looking to raise $151,500 to mass produce the Barobot and make it a retail success.

The Barobot is capable of holding 12 bottles of your favorite spirits, and can perfectly dispense the correct proportions for any drink in its library, making for a more accurate drink with less wasted boose. "Mixing drinks at home parties might prove a challenge if you are not a trained bartender with professional equipment. It requires remembering many recipes and accurate measures which could be disastrous if you forget, more importantly, it distracts you from interacting with your guests. Barobot takes care of your bar tending needs allowing you to focus on your friends," Barobot said in its Kickstarter Campaign.

Printrbot has long been known for creating and selling affordable 3D Printer kits that enable almost anyone to begin 3D printing in their home, but that changed at this week's MakerCon in San Francisco. Earlier this week the company unveiled its first CNC Router that is targeted at beginner CNC users. The new Printerbot CNC Router is capable of machining wood, plastic and aluminum, albeit at different speeds.

The machine features a Wi-Fi enabled Raspberry Pi that runs a web-based control software suite enabling users to connect to the device wirelessly. The control board is based on the TinyG board, and movement is accomplished via NEMA 23 stepper motors. A Makita Router is utilized as the tool head, and the entire thing looks to be able to accept stock up to 24-inches square. No word on pricing has been released, but I have reached out to Printrbot for more information.

Yesterday, Arduino announced the launch of its latest edition to its user-friendly development boards. The new Arduino Zero is a powerful 32-bit version of the Arduino Uno, and is designed to empower creative individuals with the power to create something truly amazing. The board features an Atmel SAMD21 MCU which is comprised of a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ Core.

The new Arduino Zero is based on a 3.3v standards, has 14 digital I/O pins of which 12 are PWM and 2 are reserved for UART. Analog I/O is handled by 5 pins featuring 12bits ADC and 1 pin with 10bits DAC. Flash memory is set at 256KB, SRAM at 32KB, and up to 16KB of EEPROM is available via emulation. Unlike its AVR siblings, the Arduino Zero is clocked at 48MHz.

"The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel the creativity of the maker community," said Massimo Banzi, Arduino co-founder and CEO. "The flexible feature set enables endless project opportunities for devices and acts as a great educational tool for learning about 32-bit application development."

Every DIYer in the world has at one point or another owned a cordless drill. Since their inception, cordless drills have made life much easier, but they have also resulted in many more stripped screw heads and "oversunken" screws. Black+Decker has just released a new cordless drill / driver with some innovative technology designed to prevent both of these forever.

The new Autosense Drill has been designed to automatically stop when a screw has become flush with the working surface. In the past, the utilization of a clutch system also prevented this, but it relied heavily on the operator knowing the perfect clutch setting for the type of screw and wood that was being used. The new Autosense drill is intuitive and all the user needs to do is select drive mode. This will tell the drill to begin sensing the required torque levels needed and when a rise in torque is sensed, the drill slows down and stops just as the head of the screw reaches the surface of the wood.

In the event that the screw needs to be sunken a little below the surface, the operator can simply pull the trigger again, and the Autosense Drill / Driver will sink the screw further into the wood 1/4 turn at a time. The new Black+Decker Autosense Drill / Driver is set to retail at $80 and will release to the public in Early June. I hope to get my hands-on one before then and will post a full review if I do.

As the maker and DIY movement continues to grow, so does the availability of less expensive, high-precision CNC machines. We have seen this trend already prove itself in the 3D printer market, and today desktop machining is cheaper than ever thanks to a company called Carbide 3D who launched its first Kickstarter campaign last week. The new Nomad 883 CNC Mill is designed be as easy to use as a 3D Printer, and will fit on most desktop surfaces, or to fit on top of any workbench in your shop.

"We designed the machine from the ground up to address the complaints we've heard about CNC machines - from designing our own spindle to adding automation like tool length probing and custom fixtures to simplify common job setups," said Grzesek, co-founder of Carbide 3D. "We think this is the next step in the recent Digital Manufacturing trend started by low-cost 3D printers."

Carbide 3D says that the Nomad 883 is designed to fill in the gap between huge milling machines that cost upwards of $100,000 and the more affordable desktop 3D Printers which range between $300 and $3000. The CNC Milling Machine is built with a rigid aluminum frame, and is capable of milling parts from wood, plastic, metal, foam, and wax thanks to its custom designed, brush-less spindle head. Getting your hands-on one of these awesome milling machines is as easy as a $1500 pledge on Kickstarter.

Over the past seven years or so, I have been around my fair share of 3D Printers and robots, and while all of them have been extremely cool, the ones that still fascinate me the most are the delta bots. Delta bots use vertical shafts to articulate a trio of arms to position a head anywhere on a circular platform below, more efficiently than a standard linear X,Y and Z Cartesian robot. Today a new multifunction delta bot hit the internet and I just had to share it with everyone.

The ZEGO is a multifunctional delta bot that is capable of not only 3D printing, but can be used to do a wealth of other task thanks to its easy change tool-head. The ZEGO can function as a plotter that draws in pen, pencil, or marker, or even hold a pen-style hobby cutter if one felt like modifying a few things. ZEGO also offers additional tool-heads that allow for CNC wood burning, engraving and PCB milling, and even pick & place PCB population. A pledge of $549 is all it takes to get a ZEGO classic kit, but if you really want all of the tool heads, you will need to shell out $2,499.

Airwolf 3D has just announced the launch of its first hot-end for 3D printers that allows customers to print in engineering-grade materials such as polycarbonate, Bridge Nylon and Nylon 645. The new JRx Hot-End is patent pending and not only allows users to print in the hotter temperature range of Nylon and PC, but also retains printing capabilities in the ABS and PLA ranges as well.

"Printing polycarbonate is the holy grail for prosumer 3D printers," stated Erick Wolf, president and founder of Airwolf 3D. "Personally, however, I think printing nylon is going to explode because it is incredibly strong and has almost unlimited applications. You can even dye different layers to get multi-colored products. Bridge nylon, for example, has been reformulated to meet the growing demand for the material. At 270 degrees Celsius (518 degrees Fahrenheit) we find the layer-to-layer adhesion is superb and the prints stick uniformly to our heated bed. When dealing with nylon at lower temperatures there tends to be trial and error to achieve ideal layer strength. That won't happen with our new JRx hot end."

Airwolf 3D says that it utilizes Teflon and a proprietary thermal barrier to prevent thermal creep from happening between the heater element and the PTFE liner. This allows the hot-end to reach temperatures as high as 270C and printing of Nylon and Polycarbonate. Airwolf 3D says that the JRx hotend is featured in 2 models with compatibility for the AW3D Xl and 5.5 3D printers for $195, while the JRx for the AW3D HD will cost consumers $295.

Many of you reading this will know my fondness for the popular BeagleBone Black development board, and how much I love new accessories for it. Today I caught wind of a new Kickstarter campaign that is looking to bring high-quality analogue and Bluetooth audio to the BeagleBone and BeagleBone Black development boards. The all new SoundsCape is a "cape" add-on board for the BeagleBone system that allows users to add an analogue and Bluetooth audio solution to their projects easily, and from a single board.

The SoundsCape is being developed by Simple Media Networks, and is designed for developers using the BeagleBone for systems that need an easy solution for high quality audio performance and/or Bluetooth connectivity in their project. The SoundsCape is also for Makers who like hacking Audio platforms, or anyone who would like to wirelessly stream internet radio to their wireless speakers.

Discrete electronic components such as resistors, capacitors and even larger IC's are shrinking down smaller every year, and that makes it harder for the average home maker or hobbyist to create their own DIY circuit boards. The difficulty comes in melting the solder paste that is used to affix the components to the PCB's circuitry. Why something as simple as a hotplate can do this, certain pad configurations and joint specifications require the "Reflow" process to be done in stages of varying temperature. In the past toaster ovens have been used for this and manually controlled, but that process was time consuming.

Reflowster is a new product which has just went live on Kickstarter that aims at making the toaster oven reflow method much more accurate while automating the temperature ramping process. Reflowster is basically a smart-outlet that is controlled by an Arduino-compatible microcontroller that utilizes a thermocouple temperature probe to turn the power to the toaster oven on and off to regulate the temperature. This allows the user to create custom temperature ramp profiles based on the instructions provided by various solder paste manufacturers. $100 is all it takes to get your own Reflowster which will begin shipping at the end of the year.

3D printing enthusiast world wide have at some point used Netfabb's cloud service to repair .STL files that were not solid meshes and not manifold. Over the last few years the service's popularity has grew can that has caused the service to slow down quite a bit. On Friday Netfabb announced that it has partnered up with Microsoft to host the cloud service on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform.

The new service is called Microsoft Model Repair, and uses Netfabb technology at its core to provide a more powerful and efficient mesh repairer that can scale as its popularity continues to grow. Instead of each model being issued a separate download key like before, Microsoft Model Repair uses your Microsoft Account credentials to securely store your fixed files. This greatly cuts down on the time it takes to get the file back to you after repair too, and users will notice a increase in speed with most repairs taking just seconds.

"We are extremely happy to announce the latest product of our partnership with Microsoft to enable seamless 3D Printing for the mass market. Our cloud service on cloud.netfabb.com has been serving the community for years with an easy to use and automatic solution to prepare all their files for 3D Printing," Netfabb said in a release... "We would further like to emphasize, that - in contrary to most other services on the web - neither Microsoft nor netfabb claims any copyright on your uploaded models or other connected content. We are a strong believer in the idea that this service shall take the pain out of 3D Printing, and we are extremely grateful about Microsoft sharing this vision."

Its been more than two years since the first Raspberry Pi was shipped, and today the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a new way to get your Pi on. The new Raspberry Pi Compute Module is based on the SO-DIMM form factor that is popular with DDR2 and DDR3 RAM in many modern laptops, but do not confuse that as being compatible with the SO-DIMM port on your laptop because it is not. The Raspberry Pi foundation says that this new form factor is designed to help makers embed their Raspberry Pi projects into final products.

The new Raspberry Pi compute module features a Broadcom BCM2835 chip with 512MB RAM with an on board 4GB eMMC Flash memory for booting the OS. The overall footprint of the device is 65mm x 30mm and its 200 pin edge connector allows the full i/o and other pins from the BCM 2835 chip to be utilized instead of just 19 I/O like the original Raspberry Pi.

Accompanying the Raspberry Pi Compute Module is the new Raspberry Pi Compute Motherboard that features a 200-pin SO-DIMM module socket that enables you to connect the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. This board features 45 GPIO Pins, as well as CAN buss connectors, SPI and I2C connectors. Placement for an optional JTAG header is on the board as is a Micro USB power port and a separate Micro USB data port. A USB 2.0 host is featured and an HDMI port handles the video and audio out duties. Additionally two DSI Display Connectors, and two CSI Camera Connectors are featured as well.

XYZ Printing has just unveiled two new 3D Printers to its da Vinci line of affordable 3D Printers. The new da Vinci 2.0 Duo, and da Vinci 2.1 Duo Plus bring several new features to the popular da Vinci 3D Printer. The new da Vinci 2.0 Duo and 2.1 Duo Plus are dual-nozzle 3D printers that are capable of printing in 2 colors at once, with the da Vinci 2.1 Duo Plus functioning as a completely stand-alone unit.

The da Vinci 2.1 Duo Plus features Wi-Fi connectivity, and allows remote access and printing through a remote app, and allows users to monitor the print via a built-in camera. An easy to use touch-screen panel is also present for added functionality. The new da Vinci 2.1 Duo Plus is capable of printing in two colors at once just like its counterpart, the da Vinci 2.0. The 5-inch touchscreen LCD panel runs a version of Android, and allows users to select models to print that have been placed on a USB thumb drive as well.

"da Vinci 2.1 Duo Plus provides a quality, hassle-free 3D printing experience for new and experienced users so that everyone from the average consumer to small business owners and hobbyists can easily print in 3D from the comfort of their own home," said Simon Shen, the chairman of XYZprinting, Inc. "Our free one year warranty and easy-to-use mobile apps show our commitment to building a superior printing experience. With the da Vinci product line, we are shaking up the industry by providing consumers with a cost-effective way to access high quality 3D printing technology."

Wearable electronics are the hottest thing in tech right now and with things like fitness trackers, smartwatches, and head mounted displays being released every week, it was only a matter of time before the DIY community joined the party. Today, MbientLab has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for its new MetaWear development and production platform that is designed to make DIY wearables easy, cheap, and fun!

MetaWear is designed around a small ARM processor and Bluetooth LE platform that is small enough to fit in arm bands, watches, headbands and more. MbientLab has optimized Metawear for cost and shrunken the Bill of Materials, so that use can take its design and move straight into production with your finished product. The entire development board is about the same size of a US quarter and is CE and FCC certified by TCB lab in California, meaning that no additional paperwork needs to be filled out.

Additionally, MetaWear has been designed with smartphone and mobile device integration in mind. This allows the end-user, product designer, or every day maker to quickly and easily integrate custom built apps that interface with the board. MbientLab has created a custom developer friendly API that easily allows integration into iOS and Android platforms, and use smartphones and tablets to control sensors, peripheral or feed back data to the device.

It's been more than a year in the making, but Alessandro Ranellucci has finally released Slic3r 1.0 to the masses. For those not in the know, Slic3r is the default-slicing program that most 3D Printing enthusiast, such as myself, use to slice the 3D models we wish to print into manageable layers. Slicer also handles the hard-work of plotting the tool-path head, injecting control coding, and spitting it all out into machine-readable GCode. While there are other slicing programs out there, Slic3r is by far the most popular and feature rich.

Today Slic3r 1.0 stable has been released and it brings with it, a myriad of new features as well as support for a host of new printers and tool-heads. As always, Slic3r 1.0 is fully open source, and free to download, modify and distribute as you see fit, making it fully Libre / Open Source compliant. A lot has changed in Slicer 1.0 so I fully recommend that you read the user manual before jumping straight into use.

Slic3r 1.0 boast the following new features as well as many more.

The Raspberry Pi is one of those micro-computer development boards that I often wonder how we ever lived without, and in recent months, the add-on board market for the Raspberry Pi has exploded with several high-quality boards that do everything from add Add Arduino Support, to increasing Audio capabilities.

Today I stumbled across a new add-on board for the Raspberry Pi that adds in HDMI input functionality that has the ability to let users stream HD video footage straight from their camcorder to the Pi and on to the Internet with very little effort. This new add-on board allows users to connect any HDMI video source and sent it straight to the Raspberry Pi. This could come in handy for those who use the Raspberry Pi as a media center and would allow Blu-ray playback or allow streaming directly to the internet.

This add-on board allows users to easily capture video from the following devices

Anyone who follows my articles here at TweakTown knows that I am a sucker for new Arduino-compatible development kits, and I especially like the micro-sized boards that are easily hidden inside projects. As such, a new Kickstarter campaign has caught my eyer and I just had to share it with everyone.

The MicroView is a "Chip-Sized" arduino-compatible that features a built-in OLED display, and is sized perfectly for bread boarding, or use in many different projects. Unlike many of the Arduino-compatibles that pop up on KickStarter every month, MicroView includes a purpose designed course that walks users through building 11 different circuits, making the MicroView an ideal development kit to use in a classroom environment.

A pledge of just $45 gets you a single Micro-View with OLED Display, while $55 lands you the MicroView plus USB Programmer. $95 lands you the MicroView, USB Programmer, Learning Kit, and a Cross-Platform Interactive Course. For educators, a pledge of $1350 will land you 15 of the Learning Kits and Teaching Materials. At just $55 for the MicroView and Programmer, I think I just might add one of these to my ever expanding collection of development boards.

At some point, I am sure that most of us have fantasized about being the stereotypical mad scientist who spends his days in a lab filled with chemical experiments and electricity arcing from one source to the other. While most of us will never make it to this point in our scientific endeavors, we can have a cool device that sends arcs of electricity shooting from one electrode to another, and have it play music at the same time.

A new Kickstarter campaign from ExcelPhysics is offering kits that let backers build their own speakers that emanate sound by using nothing but the plasma generated when electricity arcs from one electrode to another. "A plasma speaker plays music just like your normal speaker but it uses an arc of electrical plasma running at 30,000 volts," the company said on its Kickstarter page. "Most people aren't aware that plasma arcs can be modulated to generate sounds so your friends will be in for a surprise when you explain to them that the plasma arc IS the speaker! Your typical speaker uses an electromagnet to vibrate small drums, but a plasma speaker uses an electrical arc to ionize and compress the air around it to play music, all with no moving parts!"

The Plasma Speaker works by plugging in an audio source such as your smartphone, laptop, or radio. The audio input is converted into a pulse that causes an arc of high-votage electricity to jump from one electrode to another, and the audio is reproduced as sound waves emanating from the plasma. This is definitely one Kickstarter I am backing, and you should too. Head over to the source link below for more information.

Electronic education kits were one of the highlights of my youth, and I spent many hours attaching resistors, wires and other components together via those little shiny springs. Today with microcontroller boards such as the Arduino being as cheap as they are, educational electronic kits have taken on a whole new look, and ease of use. The Portable Dual Arduino Micro XPlorerBoard is one of those new easy to use educational electronic boards.

Featuring support for two Arduino Micro boards, the XPlorerBoard makes life easy by eliminating loose parts, and adding in very handy features such as a 3V and 5V logic level converter, on-board power supply, and a full compliment of analog and digital sensors. Since the XPlorerBoard was designed for education, the entire board is coated in an anti-static coating and all of the leads on the bottom are protected as well.

The entire board along with accessories fits neatly into a standard binder as well, making the board portable and easy to carry to class or your favorite MakerSpace. The XPlorerBoard is being offered through a KickStarter campaign right now and appears to be one of the best value educational development kits on the market at the moment. Best of all, the XPlorerBoard is a product of Savanna, Georgia, and not too far from my home town!