Tag Archives: maker

Sep 02

Monoprice Maker Ultimate or how 3 point leveling made 3D printing fun again

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Hey All,

TL;DR: IMHO 3 point bed leveling is so much better than 4 point bed leveling and auto bed leveling.

So the PiPlay Portable Kickstarter has ended, and we have been doing tons of fulfillment these past few weeks.  One of the add-ons was originally a laser cut case, but realistically, it didn’t work well.

My friend Nick from P3DCreations was able to design us an awesome 3D printable case at the last minute, and the demand for it was high.  Higher than I could reasonably print on my current printers.  3D printing is a lot slower than laser cutting, so I needed to add a new printer to my “print farm”.

Enter the Monoprice Maker Ultimate

The Monoprice Maker Ultimate is a rebrand of the Wanhao D6 (or Duplicator 6) which itself is a mix of an Ultimaker and a Zortrax M200.  I have been printing with it non stop for the past 2 weeks and it has been a workhorse.  I love this printer.  It has made 3D printing fun for me again.  Pro Tip: Wait for it to go on sale, as I got mine for $550 shipped.

Leveling Up

The difference comes from how you level the bed.  The most common bed is a piece of aluminum with 4 screws attached at each corner.  As you screw down each corner, you are bending the bed, trying to make it flat enough for your print to adhere correctly at all points.  Realistically you end up warping the bed.  Every time you get one point leveled, you’ve just unleveled the opposite point.

Auto bed leveling uses a probe and triggers when it detects the bed.  It does this at multiple points on the bed at the beginning of each print to determine the shape and warpness of the bed, and then tries to correct the skew as it prints.  When it works it’s amazing, but if it doesn’t you risk damaging your bed, hotend, and printer components.  Also, depending on the controller board and software determines how well the software can compensate.

On the Maker Ultimate (and numerous other printers) the bed is leveled by 3 screws.  One in the front and 2 in the back.  Doing this makes a plane and makes leveling a quick affair that just works and tends to stay in place for longer.

I also like that the bed is stationary and just moves on the Z axis, rather than i3 type 3d printers that moves the bed on the Y axis.  I’m not a fan of how much motion is generated when moving the bed like that.  I’ve had failures due to the wobble of the bed causing a print to fall off.

There are many great i3 printers, and a well tuned printer will make good prints on any machine, but man, I’m so pleased with this Monoprice Maker Ultimate.

It’s made 3D printing fun again.

 

Apr 15

Arcades! Arcades! Arcades!

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Hey All,

This weekend is Star Wars Celebrations!  While I’m not able to go, for the past week I’ve been helping Free Play Florida finish their 10 foot Star Wars arcade cabinet for the convention.  This thing is awesome!  And MASSIVE!

This machine will be at Free Play Florida and Orlando Maker Faire this year 😀

SwitchCade

The Nintendo Switch has come out, and I have put a ton of hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild already.  This is one of my favorite consoles so far.  The eShop already has Neo Geo games and a new Street Fighter game is coming out ( Ultra Street Fighter II ) so of course I had to make a Nintendo Switch Arcade Machine 😀  The files to make your own are on Thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2235516/#files 

Have a great weekend all!

-Shea

Jan 09

(Late) Friday Post: and the winner is! Also Monoprice Maker Architect 3D Printer

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Hey All!

The winner of the Raspberry Pi Zero giveaway is Aaron!  Congratulations!  I will be emailing you later tonight!

Onto other news.  This has been a hell of a week.  Had a small health scare with my grandmother, so we drove 200 miles yesterday to visit her.  We spent the night and drove back home today.  Hence the late post.  Shes doing better, so phew! 😀

This week I implemented a cool video encoding queuing system using Redis and Django.  The module I used is called Django-RQ, and it makes it super simple to convert your functions into queue-able objects using the @Job decorator.

This Tuesday is my birthday! Woo!  I turn 32.  I’m content.  I also start classes that night.  Yay lol.  I bought this as a gift for myself:

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It’s a Monoprice Maker Architect 3D Printer for $300.  It’s a major upgrade compared to my Micro, but it takes a lot more to get it going.  I’ve had it for two days and I’ve finally got most of the settings dialed in.

When I went to visit my Grandma I took along my Kinect sensor and used Skanect to scan her, so I was able to quickly print out a very low poly version of her as a bust.

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The Skanect free version limits exports to only 5000 polygons.  Once I upgrade I can export at full resolution.

Have a good week / weekend all.

Thanks for reading.  I really appreciate it.

-Shea

Sep 18

Friday Post: Maker Faire Orlando 2015 Was Awesome!

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Hey All,

Maker Faire Orlando 2015 was amazing!  It was awesome.  So much fun was had by all.  We set a new world record for the tallest arcade machine (playing Bubble Bobble).  I am so proud of all my fellow makers that made the event a success!

 

You may have noticed an all black arcade cabinet and a game being played at our booth.  A few friends and I are working on a classic shoot em up style game, and it is getting really good.  Hopefully I’ll have more to say about that real soon ™.

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

Sep 11

Friday Post: Orlando Maker Faire is here!

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Hey All!

Orlando Maker Faire is here!!!  If you are in Orlando, make your way to the Orlando Science Center and come see 300+ exhibits including PiPlay and our custom arcade machine!

IMG_5647.JPG-1 IMG_5648.JPG-1

 

Factur, FamiLAB,  PiPlay, and Free Play Florida also have the worlds largest arcade machine being setup!  It stands at 15 feet tall and plays Bubble Bobble!

IMG_1827 playing_some_bubble_bobble__1024

The screen is 60″ and the buttons are 2.5″.  This thing is a beast.  More pictures to come!

I am exhausted from the push to get this all done today!  Hope to see you there!

Sep 05

Friday Post: Another week, another Make: article!

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Hey All,

Maker Faire is in one week!  Holy cow!  Not enough time to get everything done!

We are on Make: again, this time talking about the quest to make the worlds largest arcade game!

1

 

mf-orlando-badge

My own exhibit will be about PiPlay and my own arcade cabinet that I’m building:

IMG_6715

That’s all for this week!

Have a great weekend!

-Shea

 

 

Aug 28

Friday Post: Cool Stuff for Maker Faire Orlando

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First week of the semester is done!  Can’t say everything went off without a hitch.  Ran into a nasty timezone issue between servers that I just couldn’t figure out.  One image, two servers cloned from that image.  When pulling the info from Python one reported UTC, the other Eastern.  Tried a bunch of different ways to force Eastern, but eventually used this:

from datetime import datetime
from pytz import timezone
fmt = "%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S"
# Current time in UTC
now_utc = datetime.now(timezone('UTC'))
print now_utc.strftime(fmt)
# Convert to US/Eastern time zone
now_eastern = now_utc.astimezone(timezone('US/Eastern'))
print now_eastern.strftime(fmt)

So yeah, that was a fun couple days trying to make sure our data wasn’t 4 hours off 🙂  Also, we might be getting hit by a Tropical Storm / Hurricane on Monday.  Yay.

Onto the cool stuff!  Maker Faire Orlando!

I am working on two projects for Maker Faire.  The first is with Factur and FamiLAB.  We are making the worlds LARGEST arcade cabinet!  It is so awesome.  I can’t wait for the electronics to come in so I can help wire it up.  I’ll be posting more details as we get closer to the Faire!

facturworldsbiggest facturforscale

The top panel was recently added on, but I couldn’t get a good picture of it because it is about an inch from touching the ceiling of the warehouse, and I just couldn’t get a good angle on it.  This thing is massive!  It’s a beast!

My personal project is a new modular arcade cabinet.

This is a 3 piece cabinet that breaks down into sections for easy movement, transporation, and customization.  My main requirement was that it had to fit in my PT Cruiser, everything from there was negotiable.  This is what it looks like so far:

2015-08-26 copy1/3 Model.  Cat for Scale.

IMG_5534 IMG_5533 IMG_5516 IMG_5514 IMG_5511Team working the ShopBot CNC Machine.

Also!

3D Printed a Bulbasaur using glow in the dark filament!

IMG_5543

Have a good weekend all!

-Shea

 

 

 

Sep 19

Friday Post: Maker Faire and Kano Unboxing!

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Hey All,

What a week.  Maker Faire was amazing but exhausting!  So many kids playing Street Fighter 2, and so many adults loving the nostalgia.  It was a great time.  Tons of 3D printers, awesome products, and great people all around.  I hope you enjoy the gallery!

I also received my Kano computing kit today.  I haven’t had the chance to boot it up, but I have made a short unboxing video.  The packaging is spectacular, and the custom keyboard is great to hold and use (tested it on my desktop).

 

The next release of PiPlay is coming together, I hope to release it this weekend.

Small list of changes:

  • modified romlist layout to include area for game descriptions
  • added 2 player controller config support
  • added “button combo” support for PiPlay Menu actions
  • optimization, screen updates only happen on controlled events
  • removed horizontal romlist option in theme support
  • Loading time speed up
  • Wifi Configuration Tool

Have a great weekend all!

-Shea

Oct 04

Friday Post: Orlando Mini Maker Faire!

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Couple really cool things going on right now.  First of all, I got the physical copy of my book in hand.  I’m so proud!  Also Adafruit linked to my blog.  I was so surprised when I got the email, thanks for the link!

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This past week I’ve been having tons of meeting about software our team has been working on.  It’s really validating to have our projects get the attention of the higher ups and other vendors.  We work on cool things that help our 50,000 students learn in new ways.  I love working for a place that allows us and encourages us to make a difference!

Orlando Mini Maker Faire

Tomorrow is the Orlando Mini Maker Faire at the Orlando Science Center.  There will be 4 floors of makers showing off their creations, and that includes myself and FamiLAB.  I will have a ton of pictures tomorrow, but if anyone is in Orlando, I encourage you to go.

Screen Shot 2013-10-04 at 10.04.56 PM

-Shea