…code, cg, electronics, 3d printing…

I recently had some orders for my 2-color “Print Oahu” 3d print.  Here’s the unfinished results, ready for the customer:

If you’d like one for yourself, let me know!

I recently realized I’ve had my Makerbot Replicator 1 for nearly three years now, and never once put a new extruder nozzle on it.  Oh, I’ve removed and cleaned\unjammed the current one many times, and over the years the filament has been extruding slightly… crooked as it comes out of the nozzle.

Turning to the Makerbot Users Google Group, I asked what people used as a replacement source.  AVN Swiss commented they sell them on ebay, and I’m a big fan of buying American, so I thought I’d give them a shot.  Shipment showed up promptly.

Full disclosure:  They did ship me some extra nozzles.

They look great, especially compared next to the old crusty guy:

Easily installed into the heater-block:

Extrusion is nice and straight.  It’s bending to the right simply because it’s pooling on the build platform.

First layer of 20mm calibration cube is flat and even:

Final result is smoother than this shiny black PLA makes it look.  Stopped the print to show off the layers.

Overall I definitely recommend them as a buy: Worked as expected, promptly shipped, and made in America.  What more can you ask of an extruder nozzle?

My son and I recently tackled the “Adafruit Trinket NeoPixel LED Longboard” project: Seemed like it would be a good cross between 3d-printing, electronics, and skateboards.  After running through it though, I found a number of problems with the instructions which I submitted here (if you’re going to do this project, be sure to read them).  Unfortunately at the time of this authoring they haven’t updated their project page to address the problems.

In a nutshell, this is what you need to look out for:

• Need to order two Neopixel LED strips, not one.
• There are problems with the wiring instructions, based on missing data.
• Unless you have ninjaflex or nylon, you may want to entirely skip printing/assembling the front ring enclosures:  I printed mine in solid PLA, and they vibrated apart after the first ride (snapping the internal wiring in the process).
• If you do print the rings, you really do need to use “wire wrap” to do all the wiring:  Larger gauge wire just won’t fit based on the printed models.  The problem I have with this is although you only need a small amount of wire wrap for the project, it’s best if everything is color coded, and buying wire-wrap in multiple colors actually gets a bit expensive.  I ended up using just two colors, and having to label all the wires (which pretty-much makes it impossible to fix if they snap after everything is assembled).

Overall it was a fun project, just seriously hindered by the confusing instructions, based on other issues I list in the above link.

Here’s the end result before the rings fell apart (and I removed them).  Note the metal bracket over the electronics enclosure and front of the  skateboard:  One jumped curb and you’ll have some smashed equipment without it.