Halloween was approaching, now I’m not one for celebrating american traditions, but I’ve been invited to a few parties so needed to come up with something. Somehow the idea of a blowfly seemed appealing as I’d never seen a mask like that before, and making something with large compound eyes seemed like a blast. The…
Since extending the Z-axis on my wanhao i3 printer I discovered that there was a small amount of ringing toward the middle of the axis when printing at high speeds. To alleviate this I decided to use the feed screw to provide extra support. I did this by putting a small bearing block at the…
WANHAO Duplicator i3 Z-Axis extension Decided to extend the Z axis on my Wanhao i3 printer as it was wanting to print some rather tall teardrop lampshades. The whole process is very simple and only requires about $40 worth of parts, you will need: 1.5 meters of 60 x 3mm equal mill aluminium angle. This…
This mechanical weight clock has been designed with ease of printing and construction in mind. The design uses a minimum of specialized parts, requiring just 2x paper clips, 4x 12mm countersunk head timber screws, some epoxy glue, 4x M20 stuctural nuts and 9x M14 nuts. All other parts are printed. All the gear and mechanical…
This basic direct current electric motor has been designed with simplicity and ease of construct in mind, as such there are a minimum of parts and requires no soldering. This makes it an ideal classroom or children’s project. The project consists of only 3 printed parts, four 2x10mm neodymium magnets, 2 C cell batteries…
So i went shopping in ALDI a little while ago and ended up coming home with a 3D printer and a bunch of other impulse items. The Cocoon Create 3D printer is actually just a re-badged Wanhao Duplicator i3 which is a very popular entry level printer with a huge online community. However after using…
A few spring showers and cooler weather this year meant that the garden picked up nicely, there is still a huge amount of work to do removing the nutgrass lawn and installing an irrigation system for the orchard, but it will happen. Trying to get the belgian d’uccle back into the hutch, she is a fast…
I was gifted with four old bantam chickens when I moved into my house, they were about 7 years old, so a little dusty and wobbly, but still great egg layers. But some weeks ago my gold pekin hen and bantam rhode island red went broody, so obviously it seemed a good time to contact…
A few months ago I spotted a very interesting and attractive looking valve amplifier on gumtree that I couldn’t resist. The amplifier was being sold for repair or parts as one of the valves was red-plating leaving one channel dead. This really didn’t phase me as troubleshooting valve gear is pretty straight forward, and red…
A few months ago I had the idea to drag my old aquarium out of storage, it had been stored away after my original fish died from old age (6 years is not bad for a goldfish). The aquarium base had been a quick job that I had made out of scrap timber from an…