TB-406 Insoluables Tailings Tank

This is a project that's actually tied into my day-job.

One of my projects at work is to replace a steel tank at a mining facility. I worked with one of our staff designers on the tank drawings, and the project manager, who had seen my printer during the "Bring Your Kids To Work Day" commissioned me to print it.

The designer was able to export the model from AutoDesk as a .stl. I printed a prototype as a solid model, but did not really like how it turned out. Several of the connections were too small, and the top layers didn't print well on top of the 10% infill I specified.

I printed the final version in two parts. I used TinkerCAD to separate the roof plate from the rest of the vessel, and printed the main body with 0% infill and 0 top layers. I spent a couple hours editing the model of the top plate to make everything thick enough to print, mostly by changing I beams into solid rectangles.

Overall, I think it turned out pretty well:

My Project Manager was very pleased!

Incidentally, this is a 25.4:1 scale model of the real tank. That's because the original model was in inches, and my printing software defaults to millimeters!

For size context:

Raspberry Pi Cases

I've been customizing some raspberry pi cases for my home automation hobby, and they have gotten some nice feedback on Reddit and Thingiverse.

I started with someone else's design, then started removing features I didn't want:

Then I moved on to adding logos that I wanted. I found another design, and started hacking away at it. First up was an OpenHAB logo. It took a couple tries to get something I liked.

Once I had that model sorted, it was fairly easy to swap out logos, and I quickly added designs for HomeSeer:

And for HomeAssistant:

You can check out my designs on Thingiverse, if you like.

Human Nudt15 (MTH2) Protein Model

My sister-in-law discovered the structure of this protein during her research. I printed it out for her.

We were able to work together to follow this walk-through on converting the protein model into something I could print.

The protein is actually two halves that work together. I first printed a prototype of the whole thing in one piece:

Then I printed the two halves separately to see how well they fit together outside of a virtual model:

At that point, I knew they would fit together, and I knew roughly how big I needed to print them to get all the detail in with my printer's resolution.

However, I wanted to go fancy: I wanted the two pieces to magnetically snap together.

I modified the 3D file to have a gap for a magnet, then inserted the magnet at the last layer with the gap open, while the printer was still in operation:

The magnet was solidly in place in the final product. You can see another magnet hanging from the finished part here:

I then did the same procedure with the mating half:

Et Voila, they mated nicely!

But I wanted to go fancier still. I printed these in ABS so I could use Acetone Vapor Smoothing to really give these models a glossy sheen.

I bought an old slow cooker at my local Goodwill, and subjected both models to hot acetone vapor for about 10 minutes.

They came out looking pretty slick!

Eggbot for Easter

I made an Eggbot to decorate Easter Eggs!

The first eggbot I saw was the one made by the fine folks at EvilMadScientist.com. It shares a lot of design principles with 3D printers, and I wanted to make one ever since I saw it. This year, I finally remembered to get started in time.

I found a design I liked on Thingiverse, and ordered the control board from EvilMadScientist.com for $50. I had all the other parts already, although I later got some better springs and bearings.

Overall, it worked great, and was quite a hit!

Oh Yeah: We're having another boy later this year!

LED Accent Lamp

I have had this project in the back of my mind for a couple months, ever since seeing something similar pop up for $200. I picked up the electronics from China a while ago, but my ideas for the lamp body kept getting more and more complex. I finally decided to just knock this out over the weekend as a proof-of-concept.

I picked up a seven-foot length of trim with the cross-section I needed, and painted it white:

I then added three five-foot strips of RGB+WW (Red Green Blue + Warm White) LED strips and wired each strip to its own controller:

I shoved all the electronics in a section of vinyl drain pipe:

And then put the lamp in the corner.

Total cost was around $60.

There are a couple things I would do differently for a second version: the adhesive on the LED strips is pretty bad. I tacked the top and bottom of each strip in place with superglue, which is probably the only reason the LED strips have not fallen down already. Also, if I did this again, I would buy proper connectors for the LED strips rather than relying on my suspect soldering skills. Finally, using three controllers rather than one added $25 to the bill of materials, without adding a whole lot of functionality.

One interesting point: by setting one strip each to Red, Blue and Green, the light looks white, except at the edges.

But overall, I am very pleased without this project turned out!