Category Archives: 3D Printing

Edge Lit with micro:bit

We’ve still had projects at Castlemakers this summer, even with the Covid shutdown hampering our hands-on education efforts. One that I’m excited/impressed with is a high school student built project that includes programming, electronics, 3D printing and using a laser cutter – all made with items at the Makerspace!

Programming the micro:bit to control the LED light strip using MakeCode, a block based programming language.

Ever since we gave every 6th grader in Putnam County a micro:bit last year, we’ve wanted to do more micro:bit projects to help youth and adults see the power of microprocessors and IoT devices. And to get a chance to expose and use some of the some different fabrication tools often found in a makerspace. This summer Hunter Miller made a really interesting project, an edge lit sign controlled by a micro:bit. It looks a bit like an emergency exit sign with a disco like effect and instead our logo on it.

The design and case was modified from something created at the Cambridge UK makerspace, who was looking to create something to experience the different makerspace tools. We used our 50W CO2 laser to cut and etch an insert for a 3D printed case that with led lighting on the edge makes our logo stand out. Hunter, who was looking for something else to do this summer, then cut a section of a 2m LED strip and after some soldering connected the wires directly to a micro:bit. Then he wrote a micro:bit program using MakeCode that makes the LED strip change color and intensity.

Color scrolling mode using addressable LED strip controlled by a micro:bit.

It’s on display right now in our front window on Franklin St. Stop by and take a look or come in and we’ll show you how it works – the different lighting modes may have you dancing!

Makers & Covid

Castlemakers window display of covid-19 projects on Franklin street.
Face shields and a 3D printed mask made at the makerspace.

Our blog posts have been running behind lately, but we’ve been busy the last few months. We’ll update with some older entries since like many folks we’ve had more ‘stay at home’ time with the COVID-19 mess that’s been going on.

Even though we’ve stopped having public events since mid-March, there have been things going on inside (using recommended guidelines). Our main 3D delta printer has never been worked so hard in such a short time since we got it 3 years ago.

The picture to the right has some examples of what’s been made there to help first responders and others with the COVID-19 battle. We can’t make things in large quantities, but we can fabricate and adjust quickly – plus worldwide the makerspace community has rapidly stepped up to help people where they can. Longer term existing manufacturers will and are already starting to fill the gap, but it sometimes helps to do locally what can be done until the gap is eliminated. We’ve got a special webpage with some local covid making projects in Putnam County and more details about how the face shields, face masks, and ear savers can be made.

Greencastle First Friday Events

With this month's Laua theme we had a palm tree & create-your-own Tiki head out front.
First Friday project to color/create a Tiki head out in front of Castlemakers.

Our downtown location gives us a great opportunity each month to participate in Main Street Greencastle’s First Friday. Each month we not only have ‘open shop’ to share what’s going on inside the Makerspace, but also try to have some themed making events that folks can see / participate in.

This month Main Street was promoting a luau theme – so making a carpet tube palm tree and some Tiki heads were naturals. The Moai head printed on our Rostock Max 3D printer inside was so big that it took nearly 11 hours to finish; although started at noon I’m fairly sure no one else saw the finished print Friday night.

Moai Head printed on delta 3D printer.
Moai head print that is over 35 cm (14″) tall.

Then there was the ukulele playing Lego Mindstorm robot that Jacob built for the event. Thanks to Putnam County 4H we’ve had some EV3 robotic kits on loan for a while, using them in our CoderDojo, projects like our PuttCode, and getting kids & adults interested in robotics.

Thanks to Jacob & the rest of the Hale family for helping out – not only the things they made but with running this great family oriented monthly event.

2019 Midwest RepRap Festival

MRRF2019-tables
A lot of folks don’t realize that world’s largest 3D printing meetup is held right here in Indiana. This year several of us went to the 2019 Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF) in Goshen Indiana – and it exceeded expectations. It was impressive in a number of different ways, from the 3D printing ‘names’ and prototypes that were there to the number of innovative ideas that people were trying and showing off. You could describe it as a Maker Faire just focused on 3D printing.

MRRF2019-spireThis is not a Midwestern or even just a USA event. I talked with firms from Britain, China, Czech Republic, Israel, and I’m sure other places I don’t remember. You could learn about products directly from the manufacturers present, then walk over a couple of aisles to someone that was using their parts in a 3D printer they had built.

Folks spent most of the day gluing this massive 3D printed light up alien.
Folks spent most of the day gluing this massive 3D printed light up alien.

And the really exciting part was being able to network with all of the interesting people and the things they brought. From a school built/designed concrete printer to a home-built printer designed to print outdoor 4-5’ tall artistic spires (which lit up from internal LEDs), innovation was everywhere with tables of folks showing off what they had made. Filament mixers to create multicolor prints? Stopped counting, too many. Continuous 3D printing on a belt? There & being open-sourced. Even someone rebuilding 3D printers & shipping them to underdeveloped countries.

It was actually hard to get around, between the massive crowd and number of Youtubers that were there making segments for their online channels. Sure many printers & prints were complex and daunting. But there were also tons of simple ideas like an enclosed 3D printer case using a food dehydrator to keep things warm & humidity low.

3D printed R/C car racing was held next to the "Livestock Potty Area" at the 4H Fairgrounds.
3D printed R/C car racing was held next to the “Livestock Potty Area” at the 4H Fairgrounds.

Definitely won’t miss next year & started planning our table for the annual event. We’re discussing 3D printed R/C cars for the race & perhaps Rob will bring out one of his 3D printer designs for next year…

Photogrammetry and 3D Printing

roman lamp made using photogrammetry
Image of a Roman lamp unearthed this summer in Italy created from photos & then 3D printed.

Castlemakers offered our first class on photogrammetry, or using photographs to create 3D objects, in October. But the more interesting story to me was how we got there. It began just before our Intro to 3D Printing class last spring, when a couple of folks wanted to learn about 3D printing so they could hopefully print things from an archeological dig in Italy in the summer. While I had experimented some with earlier software, this was mostly new territory.

Italian dig site near Umbria being printed. Pillars are the flooring in a Roman bath house.
Italian dig site near Umbria being printed. Pillars are the flooring in a Roman bath house.

But Rebecca, one of the students in the class, took it to another level. She was able to get a copy of a professional program, Agisoft, then take pictures at a Roman dig site in Italy this last summer. Using the program, she generated 3D images of artifacts they found and even took photos of the excavation at the site (a Roman bath house) which she was able to turn into a 3D image. When she got back in August, in a little over a week she was able to 3D print not only artifacts but also make a model of the dig site using the 3D printers at Castlemakers.

As we prepared for the Castlemakers class to show others how to do it, we discovered what may be an even better solution – a program called 3D Zephyr. We decided to cover both, especially since 3D Zephyr has a way of extracting photos from video to make the 3D image – a pretty amazing feature! The experiments will continue with local landmarks and we’ll be doing the class again this spring.

It’s Not Rocket Science

First stage of the model rocket that Nick launched in the fall of 2016.
First stage of the model rocket that Nick launched in the fall of 2016.

If you walked by the Makerspace this summer and looked in the window, you may have noticed a very large model rocket. It was the first stage of a creation that Nick Adams, who taught our ‘build a model rocket’ class, built last year and launched. Several people have stuck their head in since it left and asked us where the rocket went. The short answer is he prepping it for an even higher/faster launch this Labor Day weekend in Kansas.

Earlier this year Nick asked if we could make something that would plug the air intake holes, the kind of project we love! When you go supersonic a flat surfaces creates even more turbulence, so for his upcoming flight he wanted a more streamlined version. Plugging 4 intake holes on the side of the rocket would help.

Different versions of the intake plugs.
Different versions of the intake plugs.

We initially fabricated a plug out of foam, using a hot wire cutter at the Makerspace, then scanned the piece so it could be 3D printed. Creating the styrofoam piece was easy, scanning… well the Makerbot Replicator we have wasn’t quite up to the task initially. Learned that covering the foam with masking tape helps (the foam color and irregular surface created problems), but it was still less than a satisfactory design.

Nick's QCC rockets assembled, the one on the left has black intake plugs installed.
Nick’s QCC rockets assembled, the one on the left has black intake plugs installed.

Then one of our younger makers, Ephraim, helped by creating by creating a quick model in Autodesk’s Inventor. That design came closer, but we missed measuring a few key dimensions like the chamfer where the plug goes into the rocket. We finally ended up redrawing with Fusion 360, which turned out to be the best solution. Although the program has a steep learning curve, it allowed us to make several more design changes quickly & easily to get the 4 pieces printed out last month.

This weekend Nick’s letting Castlemakers take the rocket to show off at Makevention in Bloomington, Indiana – an annual celebration of making things. Located at the Monroe County Convention Center, it’s open to the public and a great event! Stop by and see the assembled 12.5 foot tall rocket and also stay tuned to Nick’s YouTube channel. I’m sure he’ll have a video of the launch posted not long after the launch on August 30th!

Castlemakers July Class

Chris and his brother add the battery leads to their LED Chaser (think Cylon moving eyes).
Chris and Cameron add the battery leads to their LED Chaser (think Cylon moving eyes).

One of our main goals as a non-profit is providing educational opportunities to the community. Like our Learning to Solder class in May and our upcoming Introduction to 3D Printing Design July 8th (2-4 pm at the makerspace).

In May participants built an LED Chaser (or Larson Scanner), to get first hand experience soldering electronic components, LEDs, and an integrated circuit on a circuit board. Thanks to George Edenfield of Putnam County Auxiliary Communications (local Amateur Radio group) for leading the class.

For the Intro to 3D Printing Design class, we did a prototype class last December when we had kids design & print holiday ornaments. Everyone had fun and we learned that too many people trying to print 3D parts at once can take a long time! We’ve added 2 more 3D printers in the makerspace, more laptops, and changed to a quickly printing basic design that offers more learning.

Demo ring for our upcoming class, other orientations will be used also!
Demo ring for our class,  but decoration can be reoriented…

In the upcoming class (for both old and young) you’ll be designing a custom ring to fit your finger and adding an adornment on top. It’s a great way to learn the basics in Tinkercad and prints in 4-5 minutes per ring depending how elaborate you get. Special thanks to the Maker Lab at Chicago Public Library for the idea – like almost all makerspaces they willingly exchange information and share ideas to help the maker movement!

3D Printer Owners Meetup

It’s been a very busy week at the makerspace, even though a lot of our equipment is still coming in/being decided. Besides the Castlemaker Kids meeting & open shop nights, the 3D printer build continues and there was a lot of activity there for our Putt Putnam County miniature golf build.

3D Printer Owners share their experiences.
3D Printer Owners share their experiences.

We also had our first 3D Printer Owner’s (3DPO) Meetup a monthly meeting to get 3D printer owners to share their successes, failures, and experiences with each other. Anyone that’s done 3D printing  quickly realizes it can be a complex undertaking. Like many things in life, product manufacturers tout things as simple to do but really are quite challenging to master & do well. This group’s 3D printing experience is with Fused Filament Fabrication, although one attendee has a beta Stereolithography 3D printer kit.

3dpo-firstmtg-img_0869
Jacob shows off the leatherman belt holder his son designed and printed, while Bojan reaches for his smartphone DLSR camera mount/control that was a Kickstarter campaign.

What an interesting group of people and first meeting at the makerspace! We started with background/experiences and then discussed future meeting topics.  Six people attended (and 2 regrets) which represented a broad range of printers and experiences.  No one had the same 3D printer/manufacturer, although one person did have 2 models from one firm. Reasons for a printer were even more diverse – ranging from artistic endeavors, “building a prototype for my Kickstarter campaign” (which he brought to show us), gift, curiosity/interest, and of course wanting to make things. We even had someone there who sells 3D printer parts on eBay & is designing his own RepRap printer!

Future topic ideas included software used to slice 3D models and control the printer, designing printable parts, and the physical hardware used. But most of the interest was troubleshooting prints. So for our next meeting everyone will bring in a ‘bad’ print to share to get comments from everyone else.

Becoming a community innovation resource for technology has been a long term goal for Castlemakers, last week we took another important step towards that.

3D Printer Manufacturer Visit

Rostock Max V3 like what we picked up printing a continuous cross-section fractal print. About 11 hours in, it's a really cool print we'll be trying!
We picked up a Rostock Max V3 like this, which is 11 hours into a continuous cross-section fractal print (cool print!).

Yesterday we made a trip to SeeMeCNC in Goshen, Indiana to get a large format Rostock 3D printer kit from the manufacturer. SeeMeCNC began as Blackpoint Engineering 20 years ago, but got into the open source 3D printing world early on and began making 3D printers as SeeMeCNC in 2011, their primary business today. Their main product line is a series of 3D printers based on the delta robot design, versus the more traditional Cartesian design in most RepRap style printers that uses XYZ coordinates.

Nathan, their master machinist, programs a CNC machine that is making parts for extruder.
Nathan, their master machinist, programs a CNC machine that is making parts for their extruder/hot end.

SeeMeCNC embraces the open source design movement. Their design information (both hardware and software) is readily available and the active user community helps to improve it. They also make the parts right here in Indiana. Once you see all the equipment jammed into their facility, you realize this is not a firm that buys different parts and boxes them up; they actually design and make their own parts to have parts designed for each product and to have better quality control.

Their largest injection molder, there are two smaller Niigata machines that get used. SeeMeCNC makes their own dies for the molded parts.
Their largest injection molder, there are two smaller Niigata machines that also get used. SeeMeCNC makes their dies for the molded parts inhouse.

We currently have a member loaned Printrbot Metal Simple that is an awesome compact printer, but wanted something for the makerspace that offered a little larger build area. A delta robot design is a different design that most of our participants have seen (except for Travis who sells 3D printer parts).  We chose the Rostock Max V3 printer, which has a build area of 275mm dia. by 400mm tall (10.8”x15.7”). The SeeMeCNC Rostock line is well proven; the new version adds an accelerometer probe on the hot end plus significant fan and heater improvements. They’re transitioning over from the V2 due to simplified parts and reduced assembly time.

A really big delta robot printer at the NYC World Maker Faire. Yes, the street clock in the distance was 3D printed.
A really big delta robot printer at the NYC World Maker Faire. Yes, the street clock in the distance was 3D printed!

Thanks to JJ in engineering who gave us a great tour. We’ll be putting the unit together over the next week or two (if we can wait that long!). Join us or come to one of the open shop nights on our events page – we’ll be glad to show it off!

Steve "parts daddy" shows off a newly assembled Rostock Max V3 on his desk.
Steve “PartDaddy” shows off a newly assembled Rostock Max V3 on his desk.

Teaching With 3D printing

The whistlers share their designs and prints. The train whistle in the foreground didn't turn out as planned, something every engineer has experience!
The ‘whistlers’ (Ben & Carlie) share their designs and prints. The train whistle in the foreground didn’t turn out as planned, something every engineer has experienced!

A high school Principles of Engineering class I visited last week is providing a great example using a 3D printer to teach the engineering design process and critical thinking.

Mr. Shields at Greencastle High School inherited a 3D printer when he took over a new class this winter. I had contacted him to see if he or his students were interested in a community 3D printing competition that Castlemakers is putting together. He was able to take the basic idea we had and turn it into valuable classroom experience for the students. Plus provide a pilot test for a future community 3D printing event!

Another student demonstrates his 3D printed frog, which resonates sounding like a 'ribbet' when a stick is rubbed on it's back.
Craig demonstrates his 3D printed güiro, a frog which resonates ‘ribbet’ when a stick is rubbed on its back.

The challenge was to 3D print a functioning device that would make noise or music. They had to walk through a seven step design process, print the part, and then write a report that included evaluation of their prototype by others.

The projects they made were impressive with whistles, a drum, ribbiting frog, and of course musical instruments. While all of them were good, perhaps the most impressive sounding was a musical instrument that 2 students collaborated on – Mattia designing and making a mouthpiece while Dalton did a horn. You can hear the mouthpiece/horn in this video.

Justin B assembles his banjo/ukulele. One of his tuning keys broke but of course another can be printed!
Justin H. assembles his banjo/ukulele. One of his tuning keys broke but of course another can be printed!

Piaget would be proud of the constructivist learning going on Mr. Shields’ classroom. It really shows how hands on learning and the maker movement can improve learning in the classroom. IU School of Education is embracing the movement, opening a new a makerspace(The MILL) last fall in the Wendell Wright Education building just for teachers. Not all learning goes on in a classroom however, and people need tools/equipment and a place to practice – one of the reasons that Castlemakers feels Putnam County needs a makerspace.