MOSI Mini Maker Faire

I went to the Mini Maker Faire at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry today.
It was great. Not on the scale of US events (hence mini) but there was some interesting stuff:


A huge model railway. They wisely kept the model railway enthusiasts isolated from everyone else by keeping them in the power hall. No idea what gauge it was but it was bigger than OO:

The majority of the exhibits were in the 1830's warehouse:
This guy had a Atmega based audio synthesiser. Just plug in a MIDI keyboard and go. The analogue filters could be patched with leads Korg style:

This stand had a pair of metal chimes that were played by a solenoid powered hammer. The hammerwas moved to the appropriate note by a stepper motor:

This lady inspired my son with a collection of model spaceships made from bottles and other bits. We bought her book:

More wacky audio:

This 13 year old kid had made all the models here:

Nophead and Mary + Wes at the mendel90 stand:

Lifesize Operation!:

Crazy golf with Minecraft inspired finale:

Audio generation and art mixed. This set up seemed to be designed to make as much noise as possible with as much redundant (i.e. glued together with no power applied) circuitry as possible. The kids loved it:

It was a great, free day out. MOSI is a great place to take the kids at any time. But we really enjoyed the Faire. Can't wait for the next one.

Domination Tube

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I've just finished designing a PCB for a Milestag Domination Tube.

My son has asked for a King of the Hill game and this is the only solution that I know of.

I've mixed SMD and through hole components for no reason other than I have the through hole parts in stock. It's a small board at just 40mm x 24mm. I probably could have made this PCB at home, but for the time it takes me, I've started getting all my PCBs done at ITead Studio. It is much less effort for me, and the finish is much better than I can achieve.

Mendel90 Hot End

I've just finished making a new hot end for a new extruder: It is based on one of nophead's designs and has a few interesting features:

There is a grub screw to prevent the brass nozzle from working loose.

The brass nozzle is screwed into both the peek and an 8mm internal PTFE liner. The nozzle thread has been coated with high temperature silicone to improve the seal.

At the other end there is a 4mm high, M9 threaded brass plate with a slot to push down on the PTFE liner to prevent it moving.

Haven't had chance to try it yet.

Child's Play

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My 9 year old son Josh was asked to create a board game which incorporated maths as part of a school project. He devised a game where players used pre-allocated cash reserves to buy weapons, which could the be used against 'the bad guys'. Of course, he suggested that the pieces might come from my 3D printer...... First I insisted that he drew the pieces that he wanted:


Here are the coin emblems:

After scanning, adding values with CoCreate's font function and vectorising(?) with AlgoLab we got this:

And after printing:

We did the same for the weapons:

CAD:

3D Print:

And the player pieces:

The CAD and a baseplate, with the initials for the game name 'Castle Quest'

After printing and gluing and painting:

And the game in all its glory, you may recognise the castles......

Mendel 90 Extruder Nozzle

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I have mentioned previously that I've experienced some problems with the hot end of my Wade extruder. Some time ago it failed completely and I was unable to restore it. It has failed me with both black and white ABS. I decided to try making my own. As I was unable to print anything, nophead kindly printed me the ABS parts of his Mendel90 extruder. I still needed to make the actual hot end though. nophead had a proven design available so I used that. I bought some 16mm peek rod, hexagonal brass bar and PTFE rod from ebay. I started by drilling the 0.5mm extrusion hole in the brass. To do this I used a small centre drill to make an indentation in the face of the bar to ensure the drill stayed central. I then used a 0.5mm tungsten carbide drill in a small chuck to bore the hole:

The drilled the hole about 3mm deep and managed to do it without breaking the rather expensive drill bits, in this picture the 0.5mm hole is visible in the centre of the small depression made by the centre drill:

I then turned down a section of the brass bar to 6mm to allow me to put a thread on it:

Then I used an angled tool to turn the tip to a point:

Here it is in the vice:

The piece was then parted from the bar and reversed in the chuck to allow me to drill a 3.2mm hole almost to the tip for the filament, and to turn the other section down to 6mm. I then used a split M6 die held pushed against the piece by the tail stock chuck. This ensures that the die is held at 90 degrees to the piece:

I turned down the peek bar to 12mm, and drilled an 8mm hole to within 5mm of one end. I then put an 8mm PTFE liner drilled with a 3.2mm hole along its length inside. The peek and PTFE were then tapped M6 to allow the brass nozzle to be screwed into both the peek and PTFE. With the nozzle screwed into the peek and PTFE, it is held in place with a 3mm grub screw. Here it is fitted to the extruder body:

Trying it out

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Steve at Operation Lasertag invited me to come along to a laser tag Activity Day where he planned to use the Milestag rocket launcher I had designed for him. It was a fantastic day out. My son Josh and I had a great time with a good variety of game style played during the day. The launcher was configured to have twice the damage, and twice the health of a standard gun, but with a single shot and 3.5Second reload time. The kids loved it. Here are a few pics:

Me fancying myself as Rambo:

Dave

Me chivalrously hiding behind a tree


The rocket launcher in use:

Rocket Launcher Complete

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I've finally completed the RepRap, Milestag rocket launcher build. I stuck a sight on top and took some pics. Going to pass it on to Steve now for painting and the installation of the Milestag electronics.