The two sisters!

Come to me!

First end!

66%

Controlling The MakerBot with eyes!

set ready and finish!

Today’s plan for world domination involved:
- Connecting OSCulattor with Pachube
- Tracking fish in the fish tank
- Cooking bioplastic sample experiments
- Twitter bot with processing and/or javascript
- Taking apart old keyboards
- Planning a realtime videowall for AZ Labs

Most of the goals were reached despite the usual setbacks.

Bioplastic is sick. It’s basically starch, water, glycerine and vinegar stired together and heated slowly to a pasty bubbly form that takes a day to strengthen up. Today we cooked a few variations of the standard recipe to make a few sample experiments with different ingredient ratio, cooking time and thickness, to compare the properties and possibly maybe probably figure out some interesting use for them in future projects. They take about a day to cure, so we have no conclusions just yet, but we’re all pretty sick of the smell of vinegar by now! Stay tuned for the follow up, coming to an hackerspace blog near you soon.

Fish are nice. We like fish. Filipe brought some with him and seems to be planning some cute tracking system installation. A crack in the main experiments tank hold him back a few hours while the silicone patch dried up, so it isn’t quite operational just yet, but we’re already working hard on the next evil step for world domination: devising a clever way to centralize and reuse his little fishies tracking values. And share them with the world while we’re at it. Who knows who might need a bowl fish tracking stream of values out there.

We took a little walk wandering about Montemor-o-Novo, quite a peaceful town as it turns out, we managed to find an open restaurant with some excellent traditional Portuguese food, which was nice. Meanwhile, back in the new tech world, our plans for tonight’s generic audio mischief jam got held back by the lack of a mix table, some lag with ninjam wireless and an allnighter live broadcast stream pumping out of Autechre‘s website.

plastic chair by Doc Labyrinth
aluminium foil by Doc Labyrinth

O objectivo do projecto 3D Sound System é construir um sistema de oito colunas amplificadas e um sistema de controlo (hardware e software).

Esta sessão vai permitir esclarecer dúvidas sobre o processo de fabricação e ver a MakerBot em funcionamento. Será também apresentado o serviço de impressão 3D da Audiência Zero que irá permitir à comunidade imprimir as suas próprias criações. A sessão é de entrada livre.

Para saber mais sobre a MakerBot e a impressão 3D aconselhamos que leiam o post que resume o que se passou no Workshop de Impressão 3D que organizamos recentemente.

No we didn´t launch a DIY open source space-station,.. just yet. What we did do is assemble 2 Cupcake CNC´s from Makerbot Industries. MakerBot Industries is a Brooklyn NY based company, founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach Hoeken. It´s a very young company indeed, and they must be one of the few companies based entirely on open source hardware. Now, what is the Makerbot Cupcake CNC ? It´s an open source 3D printer rapid prototyping machine. It´s a cute little machine that fits on your desktop and unlike a normal printer that only prints in 2d on flat paper, this one prints true physical objects in ABS plastic. It´s a robot that makes things ! How does this work ? You design your thing in 3d software, send it to the Makerbot Cupcake and some time later your thing exists for real, in real plastic, strong and durable !

A white and black role of 3 mm filament ABS plastic.

Some of you pro designers out there might say, well there is nothing new about this, rapid prototyping machines have been around for some time now, yes you are right, but until recently these type of machines where proprietary and very expensive with prices ranging from 20.000 € and upwards and certainly didn´t fit on your desktop. This was true until Dr Adrian Bowyer, a Senior Lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, founded and invented the RepRap Project. As it happens, Dr Adrian Bowyer is one of the seed investors of Makerbot Industries. DIY open source rapid prototyping for the masses was born. Now you can have your own machine for less then 700€, or even less if you recycle some motors from old printers and you´re handy enough to saw some plywood into a nice looking box. Being the geeks we are, we had to have one of those machines, so many times while working on projects we wished we could make a mounting bracket for this, or a support that could hold that, or that we could just have this cool figure we modeled in 3d software for real to show it off to our friends or offer as a gift to our beloved ones. The need was clearly there, and what better way to fulfill that need then inviting one of the founders and inventors of Makerbot, Mr. Zach Hoeken to host a 2 week workshop on building and using a Makerbot Cupcake CNC.

Zach explaining how the Plastruder MK4 works.

We were very lucky in finding just the right place to hold the workshop the “Faculdade Arquitectura – UTL” in Lisbon, a central location and thus easily accessible to participants coming from all over Portugal, we even had the visit of a proud Makerbot owner from Spain. Besides it´s ideal location, we had great support from the local Professors who participated in the workshop, it was great to witness their motivation and dedication to the project.

Working hard assembling the Makerbots.

Thanks to Mr. Zach´s patient guidance and extreme knowledge, it took us only 8 hours to build the 2 machines. Zach divided us into 2 groups per machine, the machine consists of 2 main parts , the casing that holds the 3 moving axis X Y and Z and the electronics to drive them, the other main part is the extruder aka the “Plastruder MK4“, this is the bit that will pull the 3mm ABS filament and heat it up to 220 °C, this guy is the ‘printhead’ for your Makerbot, It has a beefy motor. This is also the same extruder that you would use for a RepRap machine and was developed by Makerbot Industries as a part of the RepRap project. As if by magic the groups worked in syncro mode, so that when the individual parts where ready, it was just a matter of assembling them into nice looking and ready to print Makerbot Cupcakes. A few more hours where dedicated to test and calibrate all the elements to make sure they worked well and printed nice, it was so cool to see the machines up and running and to feel the excitement and awe of the greatest magic trick ever ^^

The 2 Makerbots ready.

Now what ? Get printing of-course !
Getting a virtual 3d model ready to be printed for real is not as easy as hitting print in your text editor, but it´s not rocket science either, there are a some things to know and a few tricks to learn, luckily our workshop host Zach knew it all and had quite a few tricks up his sleeve which he generously shared with us, It didn´t take long before we all had something ready to print. Before you can send your 3d model to the Makerbots, you have to export it from your favorite 3d app as a .STL file, if your fav 3d app doesn´t export .STL , no worries, Blender to the rescue! Blender is a splendid open source 3d application that can read most 3d file formats out there, for sure you´ll find a file format that´s compatible with Blender, once in Blender it´s a breeze to export your 3d model in the right format. Besides exporting in the .STL format, Blender is handy for a few more things, you can easily get rid of any doubled vertices, check for Manifold mesh errors, and reduce your polygon count (decimate) to improve printing speed.

One of the Makerbots printing in black ABS.

Some of the participants where advanced 3d artists, and some never had touched 3d software before, but the truth is that we all managed to achieve some amazing results, and we were all very impressed by the quality that those little machines where able to produce. Not all prints came out perfectly at the first go, and here and there some operator errors where made, that resulted in having to unmount the Plastruder to clean it´s little teeth, which by the way is done in less then 10 minutes, unemployment due to technical fault just gives you enough time to get a coffee, only if the coffee machine is just around the corner.

For me personally this has been one of the best workshops i´ve participated in, all participants where highly motivated and eager to learn and share, the ambience was all about sharing and caring, how could it not be when you´r discovering the amazing world of Makerbotness, and you have a great host like Zach to hold your hand   Thank you.

Please head over to Zach´s post to see some great examples of what has been printed during the workshop.

Keep an eye out on the blogs from the AZ-Labs (AltLab, xDA, LCD) for more news on upcoming Makerbot adventures, including more workshops and how to get access to our Machines to print your stuff.

Recording of the performance:

A diferença entre estes dois tipos de papel e os experimentados anteriormente foi enorme. Gostamos especialmente do papel da Staples porque fez uma transferência muito boa e saiu com facilidade (foto que se segue). O da HP tem a vantagem de ser bem mais económico e de sair totalmente sem esforço. Voltaremos a tentar a transferência com ele até porque temos 250 folhas!

Terminada a transferência com uma percentagem muito baixa de erros, passamos ao processo de remoção do cobre. A pressa obrigou a um método de relativa violência o que resultou na morte de algumas linhas mais frágeis. Da próxima ter-se-à mais cuidado. Porque a foto não nos faz justiça, decidimos optar por uma imagem solene do processo.

O próximo passo são os furos e a soldagem, para tal vamos adquirir uma Dremel que nos vai possibilitar furos até 0.4 mm.

E antes de terminar, referir que testamos um verniz para prevenir a oxidação da placa. Na Aquário não encontramos o SOLDERLAC, por isso veio um equivalente da Kontakt Chemie que funcionou lindamente.

Faseamos as experiências de forma a tirar várias conclusões e evitar o desperdício excessivo de material. Assim, começamos por experimentar vários processos de lavagem do cobre das PCBʼs, usando apenas um marcador de acetato para as marcações e testando o método da passagem com a esponja embebida em solução.

Os testes foram resultando cada vez melhor. A diferença esteve no meio usado para limpar a pcb e na força aplicada na esponja a fazer ao aplicar a solução. No primeiro teste usamos simplesmente detergente da loiça, o resultado não foi muito positivo em especial nos cantos onde os dedos estiveram mais em contacto. Nas restantes tentativas foi usado diluente na segunda e acetona na terceira.

Parece que a acetona funciona melhor, mas o resultados foram muito idênticos, daí que iremos pelo que for mais barato de obter.

O uso da esponja passou a ser apenas um ligeiro movimento circular e para trás e para diante sem fazer demasiada força. Assim nota-se que o teste 3 tem o cobre menos desgastado.

Após estes testes foi experimentada a técnica de passar um esquema impresso a laser. Mais uma vez procuramos seguir os tutoriais mencionados. O primeiro desafio está em encontrar o papel certo. O objectivo é usar um papel que absorva muito pouco toner e que mantenha uma boa definição das linhas.

Começamos por usar o papel Staples Photo Supreme de 270g/m2. Este papel começou por dar alguns problemas pois encravava a impressora. No entanto à terceira tentativa conseguimos a impressão. É um papel muito grosso e a absorção do toner foi mínima. Ao passar o dedo levemente sobre as linhas sentíamos um relevo superior muito nítido.

De seguida usamos papel Epson Mate de 190g/m2. Este papel, também ele fotográfico, absorveu muito mais tinta e o relevo deixou de ser notável. Usamos ainda o papel Xerox Copy de 80g/m2 que absorveu de novo bastante bem a tinta sem relevo aparente.

O processo que se segui-o foi similar para os três casos. Começamos por aplicar o toner na PCB usando um ferro de engomar. A folha impressa foi colocada com o toner virado para baixo ( em contacto com o cobre ). Aplicou-se ainda algum papel extra por cima para evitar um contacto quase directo do ferro com a placa. As tempos andaram entre os 3 e os 5 min.

A transferência do toner ocorreu nos três casos sem grande diferença aparente, o que é surpreendente no caso dos papeis mais absorventes.

A maior diferença notou-se no passo seguinte, que foi de colocar a placa com o papel ainda colado em água quente para se proceder à descolagem do papel deixando apenas as faixas de toner.

Após alguns minutos de molho, as camadas de papel iam sendo raspadas gentilmente com o dedo. Ao encontrar zonas demasiado secas a placa voltava para a água. O grande problema é que o papel fotográfico parece deixar uma espécie de goma/cola juntamente com as faixas de toner. Essa película parece ser o suficiente para que o desgaste do cobre durante a aplicação da solução não ocorra de forma eficiente. Por isso, o papel que deu o melhor resultado foi o Xerox Copy, pois não deixa nenhum resíduo extra.

Como se pode ver, na primeira imagem, existe uma camada de cobre entre as linhas, resultante da goma. Na segunda, as linhas encontram-se bem separadas.

Tentamos ainda fazer a transferencia de todo o circuito para uma placa muito maior, com cerca de 13x9cm. O resultado foi muito inferior ao esperado. Julgamos que se deveu ao facto da dissipação de calor ser maior devido à placa ter muito mais superfície de metal e do ferro de engomar não conseguir um contacto total.

Isto resultou numa passagem de toner muitas vezes inexistente ou frágil. Ficou ainda muitas fibras de papel agarradas ás faixas. Acabamos por limpar a placa e não aplicar a solução. Descobrimos também que a acetona é muito eficaz para remover o toner da placa (ao contrário do diluente que não o remove ).

the fish:

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the UnderWaterTertulia:

The Sound of Under Water Tertulia:

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Jumping to the unknow: