some junk we like
Archive for the ‘tools’ Category.
My makerbot thing-o-matic has a problem with a drifting y axis, but only when a layer is complete. There’s lots of vague advice about how tight or loose the timing belt should be, but I’ve tried a dozen different tension guesses, and nothing seems to work without shifting the print mid-way through.
Now that I’m a dad, I’m starting to realize that I need to give my kids the cutting edge advantage like my dad did for me. For him, it was getting us an Apple ][+, at no small expense. It was a huge gamble, but my dad was right to take the risk. It paid off for my brother and I. It wasn’t just that my dad committed the family resources to an unproven technology, it was that he could see that this technology was the start of an important new path that his kids would have the option to travel down. The sooner we could start, the better. Who knew where the path would lead? Nobody.
For my kids, I think 3d printing is going to be one of the important tools of their lives. It uses the stepping stone that I was given and takes it further. Now not only can you visualize anything your mind can think of, but you can hold a copy of it in your hand. No doubt that 3d printing at home is in its infancy, much the same way that computers at home were when I was a kid. So, to me, 3d printing appears to be the most likely tool my kids can have to propel them into their future. In my opinion, a 3d printer in the home will foster: problem solving skills, imagination, healthy non-conformity, the concept of iteration, no fear of being wrong or failing, and hands on application of the scientific method.
So, I’m in research mode. Here are the links I can find to commercially available sub-$5000 hobbyist 3d printers. I’m mostly focusing on fused deposition modeling type printers. The other technologies I’ve seen for 3d printing are either experimental, lacking in resolution, lacking in base affordability, or the media is too specialized (and presumably expensive).
MakerBot Industries has one called the thingomatic. These guys have been at the heart of the maker/DIY front and honestly, they have a lot of momentum. Their machines are iterating very quickly, and they have a huge community rallying around their project. Their laser-cut plywood product is undoubtedly borne from the DIY mentality their product aims to foster. They have some super nice features like an automated build platform, and a new dual extruder head option. They’ve generated a lot of buzz about attracting $10M in investor funding, so it’s likely they will be able to afford support staff for the foreseeable future. Has Mac software available and/or printing from an SD card. Their wiki and build instructions are incredibly detailed. $1,299 kit, $2,500 assembled.
Reprap, represents the wild west of 3d printers. It sort of kicked off the DIY 3d printer revolution happening now. As such, it’s really focused on bootstrapping quickly with the least amount of time spent on worrying about what the machine looks like. (what the machine looks like?? Look what it’s DOING!) There’s no official source for parts. That’s kind of the point, though. It’s open source, so you need to find someone who will print our the parts for you (and you presumably pay them)
botmill surprise! a presumably reputable source for reprap based 3d printer design. No exterior enclosure, all wires exposed. This machine will undoubtedly appeal to the mad scientist crowd. $1,395.00 assembled. Pretty cheap, actually.
Ultimaker The videos I’ve seen of this thing are of it printing really really fast. Designed and sold out of the Netherlands. €1,194.00 base (kit)
UP! best consumer based enclosure design. The machine itself looks great. Sensible and clean. Definitely made to alleviate concerns about reliability and reputability. Looks like a real product. Compact. Comes with integrated software. Higher on the price scale. Has Mac software. You’d think they could price it under $2650+~$150 shipping. C’mon, China. What the hell. Alibaba says I can buy whole laser engravers for that price.
RapMan. Pretty. laser cut clear acrylic. Alibre sells software, so they probably will support the machines they sell for a while. With the revolution happening at the pace it is, your mileage may vary on how long they do support it. (5 years?)
Bits from Bytes 3DTouch lots of options for number of print heads. mo’ printheads, mo’ problems. It may be the most capable from an aspect of possibilities, but the workflow must be significant to munge multicolor GCode. Maybe not.. It’s probably right on the edge of being past the scope of being a machine for the home.
buildyourcnc’s white ant I have the buildyourcnc.com blacktoe 2×4 cnc machine and it’s great. Their white ant 3d printer is still in active development, and given the flexible nature of their design ethos, this could be cool. The downside here is that you can’t buy everything you need right from them. You have to pick up some of the required parts from MakerBot. Which is kind of a drag. What I think we owners of blacktoe and blue chick machines are waiting for is some word about why an extruder print head for our existing machines is impossible. I guess I could image why. I’d gladly replace my 3 axis control board with a 4 or 5 axis board if I could interchangeably use a router or a 3d printhead. GLADLY. Use the motion control table and hardware I already have for multiple tool heads? Yes, remind me why I can’t have this? A ridiculously large 2′ x 4′ FDM 3d printer. It’s probably impossible because its a ridiculous idea.
So, for me, time to make a verdict… and that task is pretty easy. MakerBot has the juice right now. I love how they’re dedicated to the movement and driving innovation. They have lots of instructions and a huge community. And funding, so more brains getting paid to focus on it means good things for the future.
If price is a sensitivity for you, buildyourcnc’s white ant would be a good choice, with botmill coming in a close second. If I was in the Netherlands, I’d probably go for the Ultimaker. UP! sure looks nice, but I can’t fathom why it’s so expensive. Cut the price in half and then it’s a horse race.
I just got my Alesis IODock for iPad. It solves some serious live performance problems for me!! Here they are:
1. Playing my iPad live is awesome, but keeping it powered up is a decision between power and midi data. Previously, I would plug in the camera connection kit for midi or a power plug. No more. The IODock has power to keep my iPad charging while in use, and a square style USB port.
2. Speaking of midi… Previously I’d have to connect a midi out usb device from my computer to a midisport UNO connected by the camera connection kit to the ipad. Giant hassles! Now with the IODock, I just go directly from the computer to the dock. No midi devices whatsoever between the computer and the iPad. Sweet!!
3. Flexible outputs… Since there are quarter inch output jacks and a headphone jack, I can use whichever I need to. Sometimes playing live, I can experience the iPad being too quiet… The headphone jack on the IODock gets *crazy* loud. So I have options for different mixing environments.
4. Looks professional. Always helps. Ima cover up this giant Alesis logo post haste, guys. (Sorry Alesis.) But the case looks good, the tilt is nice. A definite plus.
And I guess there are a bunch of other things that are in this box, but the items above cover the price of admission for me! Well done Alesis. This seems like it’s going to be a great product.
-steve
sCCweet (cheesily said: “shweet”) for the Korg iMS-20 is a MaxMSP compiled application for mac os x that connects to your iMS-20 app through your existing MIDI connection (figure that out ahead of time). It randomizes the parameters of the iMS-20 at an adjustable rate so you can explore different combinations of settings that you might otherwise never run into on your own. It’s pretty random. There aren’t a lot of controls. 
Think of it as a spelunking tool for this synth. Enjoy!
I got an arduino ethernet shield for xmas, so I wanted to check out if I could get it talking to quartz composer… and… I did! woot.
Trial, meet error:
I’ve been working for about 6 months on finding a suitable silicone rubber material to use when making the keys for my beatseqr project. I started on this journey right after I’d set up my blacktoe cnc router. I knew I wanted a clear rubbery material to put in between the LED Tact switches on my circuit board for the user to push. This is a pretty well understood paradigm, so I figured there had to be a low-volume, relatively low-cost way to at least do some research into the feasibility of being able to do this. Of course you never know everything you need to know when you just start stabbing wildly at solving a problem that doesn’t have an obvious solution. So, below is a small sampling of the attempts I’ve made.
When I started, I thought I knew what I needed. A clear silicone rubber. Right? Should be easy to find. I didn’t really know what exactly to look for, but then I saw that TAP had one! I drove on down to one of my local TAP stores and was a little sticker shocked at the price. Oh well, one credit card swipe later, I was ready to test it out. The product is really simple to use. It’s a 1:1 mix ratio, so you pour parts A and B in equal amounts, mix it all up, and start pouring it into your mold. It’s super runny before it cures so it pours easily.
Once I had tested it out, I realized that there was a critical third qualifying attribute to the silicone that would ultimately win the day: hardness. Smooth-on has an excellent FAQ posted about this topic. It explains everything you need to know and has a printable visual aid. Ok, so with that new knowledge, I can see that this TAP silicone has a Shore hardness of A8, which explains why it feels like floppy gelatin. I’m going for a push button with some give, without being squishy. So this silicone was not going to work. (It did, however, come back later as an excellent mold making material, its intended use anyway.)
So while we were showing Beatseqr at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2010, I was able to locate the Smooth-on booth and discovered a couple of clear silicone rubbers that were MUCH firmer than the silicone I’d tried. Sorta clear 40, and Dragonskin 30. (Note that those product pages contain more than one shore hardness in the same product line!) I figured I’d go with the firmest one they sold, so I located a local dealer and bought a quart sized trial kit of Sorta clear 40. As you can see from the photo above, the optical properties are excellent with this product. However, after running a couple of test castings with this product, I discovered a fourth critical qualifying property that I’d need to consider: viscosity.
Sorta clear 40 is an excellent material. I really like it. It does, however, trap air bubbles… permanently, if you don’t do something about it. That something you can do is called “degassing”. Degassing essentially means that you use a vacuum chamber to forcibly remove trapped gasses, usually air, but sometimes other gasses depending on what you’re working with. Well, I didn’t have a degassing vacuum chamber, and the ones that I found when searching for them seemed to cost multiple hundreds of dollars on the low end, and thousands on the high end. Definitely not within my budget for this test.
I found an article explaining how to build one, so I did that. I’ll save the explanation for another post, but I managed to cut the price down from $800 down to about US$250. I’ve always been interested in different materials, and I knew I could use this degassing chamber for other stuff later, so I justified the cost and assembled the parts.
The viscosity of sorta clear 40 is pretty high, meaning, it does not pour like water. More like honey. Or taffy. The way you combine the 10:1 mix ratio parts is to open the canister of the part A liquid and scoop out 10 parts into a cup on a scale, and then add drops of part B to the mix until you reach the 10:1 ratio. I say “scoop” because the part A liquid is barely a liquid. If you hold the container upside down, it does not pour out. It’s perfectly happy to stay there without pouring at all. When you mix parts A and B together, it does become a somewhat pourable liquid, but before you get there, you have to stir stir stir for 3 minutes to get it fully mixed. Then the material has a bazillion air bubbles in it. So off to the degassing chamber it goes for several minutes, all while the “pot life” is ticking away. Pot life, meaning that you have a certain number of minutes after you combine the parts before they start to cure and solidify, so you need to work pretty quickly to get everything done once you start the process. So, out of the degassing chamber, and into the casting mold, quick!
above, you can see the worst case scenario of rushing to get the silicone into the casting mold, and not being thorough about making sure all of the cavities are filled and big air bubbles are out. Not only does this produce an unusable finished product, it wastes time and money. 
Above is a test I ran to mix, degas, pour, and then degas in the mold. It sorta worked. Small bubbles were reduced significantly, but big bubbles formed and by the time the silicone started setting up, they were trapped forever.
Above is another test I ran in a similar fashion. I got pretty good clarity by working faster and leaving more time for the silicone to sit in an uncured state in the mold, but while working feverishly to make sure all big bubbles were eliminated, I overworked the material past the pot life, and so the back of the flange is mottled and uneven. This might be usable, but seems like waaaay too much work to get it right every time.
Originally, the first beatseqrs had acrylic bar stock cut into rectangular shapes and hand sanded to be used as the button interface. The look and feel was pretty good, but the amount of work it took was too much for any kind of mass production, so I thought I’d try a casting acrylic to get the same/similar results without having to do so much hand work finishing. For all of the silicone castings, I am using machinable wax as the negative casting mold. Casting soft rubbery materials into a hard mold is fine, but… you can’t do that for rigid materials. So I made a “master positive” casting out of the TAP silicone, and then a silicone negative from that master positive. Actually, i did two. the first time, I didn’t adequately spray down the master positive with release, and silicone loves being cast on top of silicone, so I adequately destroyed the first silicone negative mold that I needed to do it again. The second silicone negative worked fine, and I was able to do the above casting in the casting acrylic I found at Michael’s.
Ok, BUT … when I went to do the acrylic casting, I discovered the downside to this material immediately. It basically smelled like a chemical factory took a crap, exploded, and died. And it stayed like that for upwards of 3 weeks. I asked a guy from Smooth-on about that and he said it sounded like it was a polyester casting material. Ok, so as pretty as it looks, I will definitely avoid using that again. The jury’s still out on rigid keys… Smooth-on has a material I may run some tests with, but maybe later if some customers dislike the silicone keys. So far, that hasn’t happened too much.
I had these silicone negative molds, and started looking around my garage. I noticed how nice and translucent hot melt glue sticks are. After I realized that silicone would more than withstand the heat, I did a test and got some interesting results. Maybe this is a good fast casting material in some cases. It’s relatively cheap and easy to work with. But… really… not what I was going for.
Enter the dragon. Smooth-on Dragonskin 30, to be precise. While at World Maker Faire 2010 in NYC, I got a great recommendation to try dragonskin 30. It seemed to have the right properties for this need:
1. translucent. Not transparent like sortaclear 40, but early tests indicate that LED light transmission is pretty good, which is what I want.
2. shore hardness A30, which is pretty firm. Not quite as much as sortaclear 40, but firm enough.
3. 1:1 mix ratio, so easy peasy mixing.
4. low viscosity, easy pouring. Less trapped air bubbles, should be easier to degas.
5. good working time and self leveling. Here, take another look:
The flange is super smooth. That lets it sit perfectly flat on the LED Tact buttons so they they’re all seated evenly. There are some air bubbles trapped in the casting, but that’s because I didn’t bother degassing the early tests. I’m confident that if I need to get more clarity in the final castings, degassing will go well because this silicone is so much less viscous than sortaclear 40.
Full castings in the mold cavities. Awesome. Minimal hand-working to get it to that state. Since the material pours much more easily, it doesn’t need much coercion to fill all the nooks. I declare a winner! Dragonskin 30.
There are a few loose ends to tie up on this story, so maybe when I complete all of the research I want to do on this process, I’ll post up the results. I’m hopeful my market for beatseqr is just starting, and I’ll need to keep refining my products to meet demand. If that happens, I will have more to post.
UPDATE … it occurred to me that you might be interested in see what the casting mold looked like (or, one similar to the current one I’m using) and how the casting mold looks when it’s filled, and how the casting looks as it’s coming out of the mold, so here you go!
UPDATE 2: just a reminder to never leave your CNC program running unattended. I stepped away for one minute right at the end of this run, and KABLAM… ruined casting mold. I was lucky it was just wax!
alrighty, then.. so I’m starting to get my bearings with how all the software works to run jobs through the blacktoe CNC router. I switched from cambam over to sheetcam and now I’m getting really good results. There’s still a certain amount of strangeness, probably all my fault, so I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t. Here’s a video I did to show how the blacktoe does with machinable wax:
The end result is a mold to use for casting translucent silicone into for use in my beatseqr project, as a replacement for the hand-cut-and-sanded acrylic buttons that I’m currently using. You never know how an experiment will really go until it’s over, and now that this experiment is over, I’ve learned a lot and will make a bunch of adjustments:
1. change the silicone product from tap plastics platinum cure translucent (way too wobbly for this application) to smooth-on sorta clear 40. I saw this product at the Maker Faire this past weekend and really liked the firm quality of the cured product. I think it will be a really good candidate. Smooth-on dragon skin 30 was my second-best candidate.
2. cut a new button mold using the techniques I’ve learned by doing this one.
3. adjust the height of the button to be not as tall as this test.
4. adjust the flashing surrounding the buttons to be not nearly as tall. I had it set to be 0.1″ tall, and that’s probably 0.08″ too much. all I need is for it to basically be thick enough to keep all of the buttons together, and that’s it.
5. think about how to diffuse the LED light going into the button… this new silicone is water-clear… so … I’ll need a way to adjust that quality so it looks good. maybe just a sheet of paper under the silicone flashing… we’ll see how that goes.
So… progress continues. I’ll post the result of the next prototype when it’s done.
Welp, I decided on which CNC rig to go with. I wanted to keep my options open for the future, so I decided to go with a bigger rig than I had originally planned on committing to. I decided that I could commit several continuous days in a row to assembly, setting up a major section of my garage, and purchasing a couple-few extra things to accommodate the buildyourcnc.com Blacktoe 2×4.
Here’s the timelapse of the build:
Here’s the first run:
And here’s the first real job I ran with it:
Woohoo! Very happy!
After inquiring around about prices for lasers, I’m coming to the realization that maybe what I need isn’t a laser but a CNC rig. Â I’m lucky to live near enough to Techshop that making the occasional drive up there is doable, but not a sustainable ongoing possibility with my family time needs. Â So take a look at the research I’ve done into who the top contenders for desktop CNC could be for an almost total n00b to the sport.
Alright, so I know the G-code exists and that most every interesting machine that I want to work with understands how to work with that, so now it’s up to me to complete the equation. This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, and by no means am I an expert on the topic, but based on what I could digest from their websites, this is what I took away from it all. Â When I priced things to be as ready to run as possible starting with no previous equipment, here’s the ballpark figures:
| machine | x | y | z | priced ready to run |
notes | link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DIY! | ? | ? | ? | $100 to $1,000 |
while the price may be right, the time and skill involved just don’t make this an attractive option for me right now. Don’t let my schedule and skill stop YOU though. | click here |
| Lumenlab MicRo | 10″ | 12″ | 2.75″ | ~$2,143 + software |
I’ve known this company since I made my LCD projector, so it was interesting to see them move into this arena. Honestly, though, details are sparse. Their blog about the build is just weird. Make a formal demo video, guys. | click here |
| Probotix FireBall V90 | 12″ | 18″ | 3″ | $1,174 + router + software |
This inexpensive unit won an award at the Maker Faire Austin, so that seems to bode well. There seem to be a lot of parts that you can add on, which seems to indicate that it’s not as turnkey as I’m looking for. If you already have steppers and are looking for a solid new gantry bed, maybe this would work well for you. That’s just not me yet. | click here |
| Buildyourcnc.com’s bluechick cnc | 12″ | 24″ | ? | $1,465 + router + software |
If you have more time than money, this unit seems like a *stellar* system to check out. The fit and finish isn’t the point here, it’s inexpensive and customizable. | click here |
| Buildyourcnc.com’s blacktoe cnc | 24″ | 48″ (!) | 5 7/8″ (!!) | $2,300 + tools + software |
Holy crap, look at that. Bad. Ass. I don’t know where else you’ll find that big of a CNC rig for that price. Now, it requires a lot of assembly, but their extensive library of videos on that topic should help. I’ve been studying this machine all week and I’m drooling over how nice it seems. It can accommodate a real router, not just a trim router. It’s huge. And cheap. | click here |
| Next Wave Automation’s Shark cnc | 13″ | 24″ | 4.5″ | $2,800 all inclusive |
This unit comes in a bit more expensive than the others, but three things I like about it. 1. it ships ready to run with software, 2. assembly apparently consists of 12 bolts, period. 3. Rockler sells it, so that probably means it’s a high quality tool. | click here |
| Next Wave Automation’s Shark Pro cnc | 24″ | 24″ | 4.25″ | $3,800 all inclusive |
This unit is the bigger version of the above unit. the extra $1,000 gets you almost twice the width and apparently “more power”. It also ships with software and presumably is the same 12 bolt assembly. The reviews I read for the smaller unit were all positive with one person saying “I just wish I’d gotten the bigger one” which makes me just wonder if I’d end up there too. If you’re in for $2,800 … I dunno. maybe. | click here |
| Craftsman Compucarve Woodcraft CarveWright |
12 feet! | 14.5″ | 5″ | $1,500 to $1,900 |
These are somewhat intriguing. I’m a little skeptical of the feed table, but maybe it’s ok. I dunno. I just… don’t know. These do have some built-in functions like cross cut, rip, and jointing. And a proprietary, but nice, quick tool change technology. Reviews seem mixed. Update: No G-Code import of any kind, and no plans to add that. So it’s a closed system with their own bits and software. Definitely a carving-centric hobby machine. | click here |
These prices assume you already have a computer… duh. And they don’t really take the cost of software into consideration, which is probably ok because there are a lot of software packages out there so I’ve heard. They do different things and cost different amounts of money… so it’s hard to factor it in easily. The other thing I haven’t factored in here is speed. And because I’m inexperienced, I don’t really know how to gauge that, other than to see that the Blacktoe is fast as hell. Ok, so I get that these machines all have an “inch per minute” speed rating… I would suspect it would also depend on 1. your router, 2. your gcode, and 3. the material you’re milling… so given those parameters, what does “high speed traverse” mean? Just how fast the machine does what it needs to do when it’s not doing a cutting maneuver? That’s my best guess.
So, those are the current contenders. Did I miss anything substantial? Leave a comment and let’s get it on the chart.
Hey there, it’s Steve Cooley from Haptic Synapses and Beatseqr.com.
Here’s a trick that I’ve been playing around with using quartz composer to generate curve data and send it out to osculator, and then from there you can send it out as midi cc to whatever music app you want that will accept that data to control various things. It’s pretty neat, and there’s a lot of room for exploration here. As required by the Rules of Ideas Being Spread On the Internet, we have to have a silly name for this, so let’s call this a “quartzillator”.
Load up quartz composer. I think even 10.4 had the OSC sender patch, so it should work that far back. 10.5, 10.6, and presumably every version after should be able to do this.
In a blank composition, place an “interpolation” patch and an “OSC Sender” patch. The options of these patches are ok at the default, just find out what port quartz composer is going to be using to send the OSC data out on so you can tell Osculator to listen on that port. Add a new float OSC argument with whatever name you want.. I called mine “/oscillator”.
listen to the port sent from QC in osculator and set it up as MIDI CC
Connect the interpolation patch’s Result output port to the OSC argument’s input port. Quartz Composer is now sending curve data out on that udp port with that argument.
Connecting the interpolation patch to the OSC send patch
Launch Osculator and set the OSC Input Port to whatever the output port number was in the OSC Sender patch in quartz composer.  The argument that you made (in my case “/oscillator”) in QC should show up automagically. Set the event type to be a “MIDI CC” output and set the value to be zero (for now.. there may be some conflicts on some numbers you choose.. most seem to be ok).
listen to the port sent from QC in osculator and set it up as MIDI CC
Ok, so if everything is working correctly, you should be able to go to your music app of choice that will accept MIDI CC messages, and assign the new “quartzillator” to whatever parameter you like. Here’s a video of the effect in Propellerhead Reason… again, this should work in logic, live, reason, VSTs with midi learn, AU’s… pretty much anywhere that will accept midi cc.
ENJOY! Happy exploring!
I do love Omnigraffle. I do not love the … apparent default (?)… behavior of having your whole diagram fly into a new arrangement when you connect things together. This is called automatic layout. Here’s how to Make It Stop Doing That. Command-3, uncheck the “automatic layout” box.
Ahh, much better. Much Better. PHEW.
I write code for a living. Primarily PHP, but increasingly HTML, CSS, XML, JSON, Objective-C/Cocoa, Processing, and Arduino code. Over the last 8 years, I’ve been going back and forth using several editors. It seems kind of silly to think that I could have used 5 or 6 different programs to edit text, but there are good reasons why. So here’s an incomplete list of things that caused me to use, stop using, and maybe restart using these GUI programs:
Which is awesome.
 

Technorati Tags: arduino, bbedit, coda, komodo edit, processing.org, textmate, xcode
Hey, check out my fine art blog to see my new arduino project box. Here’s a little preview video:
arduino project box construction timelapse from stevecooley on Vimeo.
Technorati Tags: arduino, stevecooley
There are a few websites out there that do screenshots of URLs based on how specific versions of browsers render pages… Here are two that I’ve found that are free.
This one does a huge list of browsers, with a somewhat significant waiting period for your results.
This one does just IE (5.5, 6, 7, 8b), but it does it fast.
Technorati Tags: browser, render
