Curing Silicone in SLA Photopolymer Molds
Update: See Part 2 of this series for a repeatable procedure to make great molds in SLA masters. SLA (stereolithography) printers are excellent for creating finely detailed parts with beautiful finishes. Their detail and ability to create complex shapes without the extensive support required on FDM printers make them theoretically ideal for creating masters for […]
A New EV Nova Ship Plugin
The first time I stayed awake until the sun came up was the night I got my color Macintosh IIsi. I was maybe ten or eleven years old, and I’d just gotten a space exploration game called Escape Velocity. It was fascinating in its openness and the range of ways you could play it. Years […]
A Toroidal Transformer Tester that Counts Turns
I was recently commissioned to build a machine that would perform a very interesting and unusual task: Count how many times a wire had been wound around a ring by measuring its electrical properties. This task was a relatively involved one, as it included a ground-up design of the circuitry, making choices about component prices […]
Eliminating Warp from 3D Printed Nylon 618 Parts
I’ve recently been attempting to enable a 3D printer to make parts out of nylon 618, and I immediately ran into the issue that the parts tend to fail to adhere or, when they do adhere, warp off the bed midway through printing. One of the common bits of wisdom with printing nylon is to […]