Last month, I was invited by GM Canada up to Alaska to try out the 2011 Chevy Volt ahead of the Canadian launch happening this fall. My first encounter with the Volt was during the 2010 Winter Olympics when I got to drive a pre-production model on a test track.
Earlier this year, I also got to briefly drive a production Volt during SXSW as part of their ‘Drive a Chevy’ promotion where they basically offered taxi service to all attendees in Austin and let you drive the car to your destination.
This time though, I got to really try out the production model over the course of the better part of a week. As soon as we landed in Anchorage, Alaska, we were given our ‘own’ cars for the duration of the trip.
I’m actually a target consumer for the Volt. My current commute is just under 70 kilometres roundtrip from Port Coquitlam to North Vancouver each day. With the Volt’s electric range being around 86 kilometres on a single charge, I could easily go to and from work without charging and still have some range for some shopping trips on the way home.
Once the electric battery is depleted, the Volt will seamlessly switch over to power the electric engine using a conventional gas engine where it can continue for nearly 400 more kilometres. Unlike some hybrids, the switchover is unnoticable since the Volt just maintains the electric batteries with the gas engine and doesn’t directly drive the vehicle.
There are more and more options for charging an electric vehicle. Many hotels now offer at least a couple of stalls with power in their parking lots and recently in Vancouver, local parking company, EasyPark announced a pilot program to have a handful of electric outlets designated for electric vehicles in their lots around the city.
While it is possible to charge the Volt via a regular household outlet, it takes about 10 hours to fully charge a depleted battery. If you have access to a 240V outlet (like what your washer/dryer would use), you can charge the battery in about 4 hours. A 240V outlet can easily and cheaply be installed in your garage. The trunk of the Volt has all the connecting cables you need to plug in anywhere using the outlet on the opposite side of the vehicle from the gas tank.
I really enjoyed driving the Volt while in Alaska. As you can see in this short time-lapse video of the road trip, it’s a beautiful place and reminds me quite a lot of BC:
The roadways around the peninsula were surprisingly flat considering we were in quite a mountainous area. So while the Volt has a number of drive handling modes, I couldn’t really tell much difference between them considering the roads were pretty consistent the whole trip.
I’m looking forward to the chance to check out the Volt again once it launches in Canada later this year…and seeing how it really stacks up on my own daily commute. According to GM Canada, the costs of operating the Volt in BC is 1/5 the cost of a comparable gasoline only vehicle. That seems to be a pretty compelling reason to look into this technology closer, not to mention the environmental impacts of using less gas overall.
I stumbled across this clever animated short film called FULL PRINTED about how 3D printing is useful as well as a potential future of this technology.
Recently I printed Stephen Colbert’s head on my MakerBot (in ‘John Boehner orange’ as someone in the comments on Flickr pointed out):
and made a timelapse of the nearly 2 hour print process:
and then Cory Doctorow blogged about it on BoingBoing.net (thanks to Darren for submitting it).
Which then lead to my “A few weeks with a MakerBot…” post getting picked up by the Spanish version of Digg and over 30,000 hits in 24 hours to the post plus all kinds traffic to other posts and on Flickr.
I’ve had my MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer up and running for a few weeks now and thought I’d document some of the things that I’ve learned during this process. Hopefully these items will help someone else who’s interested in the world of 3D printing.
Keep in mind these thoughts are based on my experience assembling and using a MakerBot Industries Thing-O-Matic (serial number 4190) in June/July 2011. Many things, like the assembly instructions wiki, can change as well as the iterative design and manufacturing process used to make the Thing-O-Matic (ToM for short). Your ToM may or may not resemble mine depending on when you bought it.
Yes, it’s as awesome as you think it is.
I get asked daily about my 3D printer…it’s pretty wild to blow people’s minds when you explain what a 3D printer is and show them samples (I usually carry a few prints with me)…and you will get asked if you need 3D glasses to view the printed objects.
I’ve been able to print some pretty complex objects…some with multiple hours of printing of multiple parts but the end results have been awesome. I’ve also been printing some very useful objects like this Arduino PCB holder which I used in a project that I’ll be posting about soon:
A few technical notes:
Automated Build Platform (ABP) versus the Heated Build Platform (HBP)
The idea of the ABP is awesome – you hit print, the bot prints your item and then ejects it via a conveyor belt. It’s like magic.
It really is a cool concept. Except it caused me a lot of grief. Why? Printing with plastic requires a print surface that will hold it in place as subsequent layers of plastic are applied. I found that the conveyor belt would cause the prints to rock back and forth as the print head went over them causing curling and warping around the edges. Or worse case, it would cause the print head to knock the print free and basically lose it’s place in the print.
After reading extensive forum and wiki posts about the various platforms, I opted to assemble the Heated Build Platform. I had already ordered the aluminum build plate so I used that along with the 2″ 3M blue painters tape as a top layer. The difference in print quality once up and running was astounding. I then ordered the 4″ Kapton super wide tape which single handedly made for the best prints as of yet. Objects stuck perfectly in place on the platform with no warping, curling or knocked loose prints. I REALLY wish the ABP worked as well as the Kapton tape surface did. It’s like night and day. The only downside is that it can be trickier to remove your prints once finished since they are stuck in place really well. Just make sure to let everything cool for at least 90 seconds before touching it.
If you get one piece of useful advice from me it’s this: skip the (current) ABP and go with the HBP with aluminum build surface covered in Kapton tape.
Does the colour of the ABS plastic matter when printing?
Along with my ToM, I excitedly ordered a 1kg spool of green 3mm ABS plastic. Army green is one of my favourite colours and couldn’t wait to print in that colour instead of natural ABS or something else. Unfortunately, it seems (to me) that it’s possibly one of the worst colours to print with. After getting the ToM all dialled in, I printed a few whistles in natural and green. The natural print looks almost perfect and solid. The green one showed more imperfections and the layer lines were much more obvious. My theory is that it has to do with the pigments used in the ABS filament but I have no idea. I wasn’t able to find any definitive listing or table of ABS colours and their optimal printing speed/temperature/etc. I just received some ‘safety orange‘ and ‘nuclear green‘ ABS filament and like the natural, the prints are near perfect using the default 225 degrees for the print head. I tried all kinds of temperature settings with the regular green and none made a difference.
Installing better lighting
One of the things that first attracted me to the MakerBots were the intense lights I’ve seen many of them have installed in them. I scoured the MakerBot site and couldn’t really find any specifics of ‘pimping out your bot’ but fortunately, Greg @ MakerBot.ca filled me on how it works. So I ordered a set of green LEDs.
Using the MakerBot LED light strips, I simply peeled the 3M tape backing off and stuck them in place around the inside top of the MakerBot. Unfortunately, there is practically no documentation about installing the leds so I had to figure it out for myself. The LEDs are 12V so I used one of the extra lines from the power supply that wasn’t being used. I also printed a button casing for a switch that drops into one of the unused holes on the top of the ToM that I’ll wire up next time I want/need to open the electronics bay (the bottom of the unit).
but have since removed it because the LEDs were too bright and would wash out any photos/video as well, the mount got in the way more often than I’d like when trying to either shoot or monitor the print process. I’ve ordered a meter of the LED light strips in white that I’ll mount in the front sides of the ToM and use that for more even lighting while making timelapse videos or shooting photos.
First thing you should print: some kind of spool management helper!
My ToM came with an unspooled (but coiled) pack of natural ABS. It worked great for awhile just sitting on my desk until I started doing some serious printing then it all went to hell. It uncoiled itself, rather violently on my desk and I wasn’t able to get it all tidy again until I had to cut it to untangle it. It can also cause damage to your printer if it has to work too hard to pull filament into the drive and I’ve had a few close calls – usually from not paying attention to the filament as it unspools.
Even the spooled ABS isn’t 100% trouble free. I had similar issues with it so I printed some spool holders that attach to the frame of the ToM and things are much more under control now. I’ve also printed a heavy duty filament spool for my unspooled filament which I used to wrangle the natural filament that I have and it works great and it gives me options for having lots of colour options on hand for printing.
So to wrap up this post, I’ll conclude by saying that I’m really enjoying my MakerBot. It really does seem like this is a technology just about to really take off. It’s not currently for everyone since it does require a lot of care and maintenance but for those willing to spend the effort, it’s very rewarding and a lot of fun. It’s been a fantastic learning opportunity for me as well.
I’ve got no shortage of objects that I want to print from the Thingiverse and I’m just starting to dabble in some of the 3D software packages out there for creating my own objects.
Can’t promise it will always be on but will try to record interesting prints and live stream as much as possible.
If you have any suggestions for better/free ‘webcasting/recording’ software that is Mac compatible, drop a comment as I’m not entirely happy with the UStream option. I’d like to at least record in HD if not broadcast in HD as well.
I’m a little late to the party but I was recently given a HP TouchPad by the nice folks at HP Canada and stumbled across an interesting app today called Preware. In the WebOS world (which runs the TouchPad and other Palm/HP smartphones) it’s the equivalent of Cydia for iOS devices which basically allows you to jailbreak your TouchPad and install homebrew applications like Cydia does on iPhones/iPads/Touches.
The big difference though is that HP has embraced this and even supports it’s development unlike someone else. WebOS has a large homebrew community and it appears to be quite vibrant…at least as far as the smartphones goes…it’s still very early days for the TouchPad.
Why would you want to ‘jailbreak’ your TouchPad?
To enable functionality that hasn’t yet made it to the official firmware and generally have more control over your device. The options this gives you is still in it’s infancy because the tablet only came out a few days ago but it’s already progressing at lightening speed.
The install process is quite similar on a PC or Linux but since I hacked mine with a Mac, this is what you get from me. There are a number of ways to get Preware on your Touchpad but I’m going to cover the WebOS Quick Install method that doesn’t require installing the SDK.
Let’s get started.Step 1: Enable Developer Mode
The first thing you need to do is enable Developer Mode on the TouchPad. I can’t believe that the way you do this is by simply performing a search in the “Just Type…” search box for the Konami code:
upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart
This will reveal a hidden app that has a slider to enable Developer Mode and set a password if you want to on this mode.
Step 2: Install WebOS Quick Install
Grab WebOS Quick Install from here and run the .JAR file
I didn’t need it but you can also grab Java 1.6 from that same link. I did this whole process on a stock Snow Leopard Mac Mini running 10.6.8.
Make sure your TouchPad is connected and ensure you click cancel on the USB drive prompt:
Allow Quick Install to install the Novacom drivers if it prompts you.
UPDATE: Someone in the comments suggested that if you’re having problems installing the drivers, use the HP SDK method instead.
Once you get the above screen, click on the globe icon on the righthand side, just about the phone image. This will give you the repository listing for all the apps. Type ‘preware’ in the search box (make sure you’re in the Applications tab), select it in the results list and click install.
I didn’t get any feedback that it was done…but rest assured, you should have Preware in your downloads tab on the TouchPad:
Launching Preware gives you this screen:
At the moment, there isn’t a lot of TouchPad specific apps/patches but more is being added all the time.
I installed these patches to start and can say for sure that they have dramatically sped up things on the TouchPad:
I also installed “Add Launcher Tabs” after this screenshot was posted in order to give me the “Games” and “Homebrew” tabs.
I first saw this app a few months ago, well before I had decided to get into 3D printing.
Trimensional is an iPhone app that lets you take 3D photos. I thought it was just a fun camera app to make animated gifs like these:
That is until they added the ability (via a modest in-app purchase) to export the scans as files that can be read by a 3D printer (.STL), like my MakerBot:
So here’s the scan of my face from above, printed in ‘nuclear green’:
I spent about 15 hours assembling the Thing-O-Matic last week and on Friday night was able to make my first 3D prints!
During assembly, I really got to understand how the whole system works and through the course of trial and error over the weekend, was constantly fine tuning the machine. Part of the issues were related to using the software and others were related to my assembly of the machine. The biggest pain is dealing with the tension of the X & Y belts and the electronics bay in the bottom of the machine being incredibly tight to fit all the wires – some of which weren’t quite long enough to be routed the way the assembly instructions stated.
Eventually I was able to solve most of the issues I was having and finally printed a few things to make the printing process better, before I start printing the really fun stuff.
First up was a clip for the safety cutoff switch. The Thing-O-Matic build called for me to drill some holes in the wood cutouts and I didn’t want to do that and thankfully someone posted a simple design to just clip the circuit board onto the platform.
It printed reasonably well…except that the back and forth motion of the printing process caused some wobble in the automated build platform so it got a little smooshed on one side…it’s just a simple clip so it doesn’t matter that much.
Next up is a filament spool holder. I had my spool just sitting on my desk and it worked okay to feed the material into the Thing-O-Matic but the spool holder makes much more sense:
Here’s a video of it printing (listen to the cool noises it makes while printing):
It actually printed the best so far of anything I’ve printed…until once again, the automated build platform came into play. This took nearly 2 hours to print and towards the top (and end of the print) the bottom of the object wobbled loose from the conveyer belt and the extruder head knocked it around and out of alignment. So I stopped the print. Fortunately, it was close enough to being done to still be usable when mounted on the top of the Thing-O-Matic:
Now the filament easily feeds itself right into the extruder with no fuss…I love it when simple solutions work so well.
Here’s some more photos from my Flickr set of the assembly and operation of the Thing-O-Matic, which I’ve named TK-421:
During the assembly, I did feel a little over my head sometimes and wished I’d opted for the fully assembled version (an additional $300 to the cost of the machine) but was able to figure it out and now have the knowledge of how the whole thing works….kind of like if you bought a motorcycle in kit form. Ongoing maintenance should be easier with the assembly knowledge I gained and it was pretty fun & challenging.
So what’s next? I still have some final adjustments to make to the Y axis as well as rerouting some wires. Once I take apart the electronics bay tonight, I should be truly fully operational! I’m also expecting some LED lighting to arrive shortly that should help in taking better photos and video of the printing process once installed inside the MakerBot.
Stay tuned for part 3 once I have some decent 3D objects printed.
Bonus video – MakerBots on CNN this past weekend:
Update: Just found this cool map of all the MakerBots around the world – I added TK-421 to the list.
This past weekend was Vancouver’s first Mini Maker Faire and even the weather cooperated.
Part carnival, part technology showcase, and part craft show, it’s definitely not your grandma’s kind of faire – you actually have to sign a waiver to gain entry due to some of the exhibits on display and their inherent dangers.
Like this truck that shoots flames:
or this giant, electric walking spider that people drove around the fairgrounds:
a somewhat safer pedal version patrolled the row of tasty food vendors:
There were lots of hands on demos for things like glass blowing, laser cutting, soldering, Arduinos(!) and spin art among a bunch of other crafts and exhibits:
as well as items for sale:
My favorite area was the 3D printing area where I got to see up close for the first time the predessor to my Thing-O-Matic, the RepRap which can actually print a good portion of it’s own parts (minus the motors & electronics):
Another Thing-O-Matic in the wild!
It was cool to see some sample prints from another 3D printer and to chat with the guys that operate them as I was troubleshooting my first prints. I was also able to connect with a number of great people at the Vancouver Hacker Space and the Victoria MakerSpace.
A Nintendo Nunchuk controlled Xylophone:
And lastly, something to use that old iMac for:
I really enjoyed the MakerFaire (and spent WAY too much money at the Solarbotics booth buying Arduino stuff)….I’ve been trying for a couple of years to make it to the big one in San Francisco but scheduling has just never worked out. I’m really glad Vancouver’s turned out to be so great and hope that the organizers are able to make it an annual event. The crowds that turned up and the favorable responses from people I talked to seems to suggest there is a huge market for this kind of event in Vancouver with so many talented and creative folks around. It was also really cool to see so many kids enjoying the faire and learning about technology and the DIY culture that is the mantra behind Maker Faires.
I didn’t take as many photos as I normally would…I was too busy enjoying the faire.
by the nice folks at 
here is a 
