Nevertheless, now that you own one, you quickly figure out that parts are pretty damn hard to find. As did I. This came up when looking for a certain part number: 325853601. The front grill badge, emblem, logo, whatever you want to call it. Now, to be clear, this part is all over ebay, however, when adding shipping, it becomes a pretty damn expensive badge.

Out comes the 3d printer and the vernier calipers, and a couple of hours later I have a new badge for the Scirocco.

You can get the file here if you need it to replace your Golf, Scirocco, Jetta, etc MK2 badge:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1847525944/3d-printing-file-stl-for-vw-passat

The post 3D Printed VW badge for the Scirocco appeared first on G00.

Ideally a hat should match the customers’ head size and shape. Obviously you can use a sewing tape measure to get the circumference of the head, but seeing that we are all unique flowers, we have been blessed with varied head shapes. Therefore, hat conformers are a thing.

They all work on a similar principle, multiple components that radially adjust to touch the head of the future hat bearer and lock into position. After that, the haberdasher can trace that outline onto whatever haberdashers trace their head outlines onto.

If you want to make your own, here are the files and instructions on how to assemble the thing:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1841312248/hat-conformer-laser-cutting-files-dxf

Parts list:

• 1 x Laser cut – Base – 4mm plywood
• 23 x Laser cut – Element A – 4mm plywood
• 23 x Laser cut – Element B – 4mm plywood
• 23 x Round headed M6x20mm bolts
• 23x M6 wing nuts
• 23 x M6 large washers
• 23 x 5mm shelf pins/pegs

Assembly

1. Use wood glue to assemble Element A to Element B
2. Insert 1 shelf peg into base
3. Place assembled Elements into base and insert bolt from below
4. Place washer on top of Elements and Wing nut on top
5. Repeat 22 more times
6. An elastic band should be used around the vertical elements to make conforming easier.

On an unrelated note, have you ever seen an actual banana hammock?

The post What shape is your head? Laser cut hat conformer. appeared first on G00.

It was basically working, except for its completely depleted battery. Hooked up to a 36v power supply, it powered up and all seemed ok.

Software

Following a guide posted by Emanuel Feru, I managed to re-flash the firmware to enable a 2 axis joystick input. This is an excellent guide and it contains everything you need to know and do.

I made some adjustments to the code for my use case and you can find it here.

Hardware

The most important criteria was to keep everything inside the beer crate as much as possible. This is what I came up with:

Basically, the mounting brackets for the motor shafts were cut off from the rest of the aluminium casting of the hoverboard and bolted to a welded structure designed to fit into the crate. After that, mounting the driver board, button brackets and battery was just a matter of rivnuts and cable ties.

The crate has some protuberances on the inside which rubbed against the tires, so those had to be ground off, but other than that, the crate has no changes made to it.

Bolted on a plywood seat and a fake (for now) headlight and voila:

Conclusion

There are some issues that still need to be addressed.

The biggest is that because all the wheels are so close together, it’s pretty unstable. I really had to dial the max speed and acceleration values down to keep it safe. Also the very stiff steel structure and stiff ‘tires’ make it lose traction if the surface you are riding on is bumpy. In effect, if one wheel is in a slight depression on the road, it just spins freely because there is no suspension or flex in the structure.

Another issue is that currently the joystick that is used to input speed and direction is a pair of middle resting potentiometers typical for a joystick module. What this means is that the input to stop the cart from turning or moving is half of the ADC value the board can measure. Therefore, if the driver falls off, but holds on to the joystick and the connection breaks, the BeerKart will hurtle off into the distance looking for the most expensive car it can find. And let me tell you, it does a great job finding expensive cars. The last time it happened it was an Audi.

Thanks for reading!

Check out the new video as well, if you want to see a build montage and a bit of the BeerKart in action:

The post The BeerKart appeared first on G00.

Nevertheless, I had the idea of using the iPad as a remote control for a future robotics project. Having Pythonista installed and knowing that the Xbox controller is supported by iOS, I thought I could research if it has been done before, and how.

It seemed it could be done, as outlined in the Pythonista documentation, but there were no examples available and I have trouble reading documentations as I have a very limited OOP backgound and I probably only wrote like two classes in my entire life.

After a couple of days of messing around, I managed to create an extremely simple example that reads the value of each button when its state changes. My example only uses one button (the left trigger) and can be easily extended to all the other buttons.

No matter how much I googled for an example, I couldn’t find one, so I thought I would publish mine here.

from scene import *

class XboxContr(Scene):
	
	def setup(self):
		self.score_label = LabelNode('0', font=('Avenir Next', 40), position=(self.size.w/2, self.size.h-50), parent=self)
		self.controller_val = 0
		self.changed_key = ''
		self.left_bar = SpriteNode('shp:RoundRect')
		self.left_bar.position = 150, 150
		self.left_bar.size = 50, 150
		self.add_child(self.left_bar)
		
	def update(self):
		self.update_text()
		self.update_bar()
	
	def controller_changed(self, controller, key, value):
		self.controller_val = value
		self.changed_key = key
		
	def update_text(self):
		self.score_label.text = self.changed_key + ' ' + str(self.controller_val)
		
	def update_bar(self):
		if self.changed_key == 'trigger_left':
			self.left_bar.size = 50, self.controller_val*1000 + 150
			self.left_bar.position = 150, self.controller_val*500 + 150
				
run(XboxContr())


#Here is a list of all the buttons and their values. This is returned by the get_controllers() method:
#[{'controller_id': '0x282afca80', 'shoulder_left': 0.0, 'shoulder_right': 0.0, 'dpad': Point(0.00, 0.00), 'button_a': 0.0, 'button_b': 0.0, 'button_x': 0.0, 'button_y': 0.0, 'trigger_left': 0.0, 'trigger_right': 0.0, 'thumb_stick_left': Point(0.00, 0.00), 'thumb_stick_right': Point(0.00, 0.00)}]


Here is the interface it generates. The upper text block changes in real time and shows what button is changing and what value it has. The lower left bar increases in height according to how hard you pull on the left trigger.

I would love to see more finalized interfaces from you guys. Also, let me know if I made some dumb-ass mistakes in the code.

The post Using Pythonista to query an Xbox controller on the iPad appeared first on G00.

As a basis I used some kind of surgical clamp bought at the flea market a long time ago. I kept it around just waiting for an opportunity. Well, here it is. There was also a bit of 10mm flat stock in the workshop and used that to make the actual grabbing part.

After finding an appropriate diameter steel disc, I bent the flat bar around it, then used the wire bending jig I built a while back to bend back the ends of the circular sections.

Then I cut the end off of the surgical thing and drilled and tapped two holes for each tong. Of course I broke a tap in the process so had to drill another hole. So much for symmetry.

After a couple of matte black high temp spray paint, the tongs are done.

Here it is being tested out. Works great, and the built-in spring prevents you from dropping the flask.

The post Flask tongs appeared first on G00.

The next step we want to take is casting 3D printed rings. This would allow us to transition a bit more smoothly from silver to gold and we could make quite complicated designs with less effort.

One important note is that we wanted to keep the monetary investment as low as possible, so we took the cheap route. What I mean by this is that we could have just bought a vacuum casting machine and have everything already set up, but the cost is to say the least, prohibitive.

What follows is our first foray into the investment casting process. Certainly not a guide or tutorial but more of a technical diary for our future trials. Also note that I may have mixed up the terminology.

Act 1. The model

There are different ways of creating a model for a casting. One of the ways is by sculpting wax, for this you need a certain amount of skill which we certainly don’t have. Therefore, we went with 3d printing.

We bought an Elegoo Mars lcd resin printer and first printed some test rings in regular grey resin. After we worked out the bed adhesion issues, we got some exceptional prints. The adhesion issue was fixed after finding out that the more vertical the adhesion layers (the raft) the better the print sticks. The disadvantage is that they are a lot harder to unstick from the build plate after the print is done.

Here are some of the first prints.

Once we got that down, and once Victoria got familiar with blender, we took the next step and got some castable resin.
We got some Photocentric Daylight castable resin which was a lot cheaper than any other alternative, and got to it. I was really nervous about what settings to use with the castable resin but got it right on the first try. (80s for the adhesion layers and 10s for the rest).

Act 2. Putting it all together

After curing the prints in the UV lamp, we were ready to cast! Actually not quite. We still needed some wax sprues. Instead of buying wax in the proper diameter to fit the rubber cap of the flask, I just printed some sprues, then made a silicone mold and poured the wax in the mold.

The wax is actually used dental wax which we decanted.

Another thing which we used from the dental industry was the oven. It’s quite small, barely large enough for the flask, but we got it at a good price and it goes up to 1050 deg. C. The flask and investment powder were bought from a website that sells tools for jewelers.

Having everything we needed, we stuck the printed rings to the sprew and poured the investment.

Act 3. The burnout

Burnout is a terrible thing, but not in this case. With the flask in the oven, we tried to keep to the resin manufacturers’ burnout temperature chart, which said that first you need a 6 hour 150 C stage, then an 8 hour 780 C actual burnout stage, after which you cool down to 600C. Then you have a 2 hour window to pour the metal.

The truth is, by the time we reached the 14 hour mark, it was already 1 o’clock in the morning, so we just turned of the oven and let the mould cool down overnight. Our research revealed that some people allow their flasks to cool to room temperature and cast then, so we thought it would be okay.

Because of the small gap between the flask and the top of the oven, the airflow is very restricted. This airflow is needed for the gases resulting from the burnout of the wax and print to escape. Some ovens have air pumps to aid airflow.

Another issue is the cracking of the investment. There are multiple possible causes, but I’m willing to bet that turning off the oven directly from 800C without slowly turning the temp down, was the cuplrit. Nevertheless we pushed forward and cast the silver anyway to complete the experiment. Mainly to find out whether all of the model burned out cleanly.

Act 4. Casting

As we usually cast ingots for wire and sheet, we have a Sievert MAPP gas burner and a crucible which we used for the pour.

And here is the result.

There are a lot of things wrong here, but it’s a start.

• Incompletely filled mould. This was probably caused by the room temperature pour and the lack of more inner sprues to guide the silver up to the top of the rings.
• Rough surface. I’m assuming this is also caused by the cold pour.
• Air bubbles. One of the rings has sharp edges and they are not filled completely. This is either because of the orientation of the model, the cold flask or the lack of a vacuum pull while pouring the silver.

We’ll try once more with a 600C flask temp when casting and see what changes. Fingers crossed!

The post First try with investment casting appeared first on G00.

Having some left over plywood from another project, I went ahead and built a wall easel. With french cleats, mind you.

The build

Installed

Check out my instagram for more process shots: https://www.instagram.com/istimat.g00/

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