3D Printing Archives - Digital Urban

IoT 3D Printable Devices – The Spring 2021 Collection

Andy — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 09:42:01 +0000

At The Connected Environments Lab, part of The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, here at University College London we are designing and building a series of IoT devices to communicate live data feeds. Using a mix of servo motors, neopixels, LEDs, speech systems, eink and sound we are exploring ways to monitor data within a home/office environment. These form part of a module exploring the ability to build and design devices that not only can be physically made but also exist and run with both Augmented and Virtual Reality.

The YouTube clip below details the collection so far (Spring 2021):

Each of these objects will be explored further and made available to print, insert into 3D worlds and view online. One such example is our ‘THE’ – Time, Headlines and Environmental Data.

We have a full tutorial on making a ‘THE’ over at Connected Environments. A more recent addition is the ability to upload models to SketchFab and make them available to download.

Spring 2021 Collection on SketchFab

SketchFab also allows models to be embed and viewed directly within a web browser – below is an example of our 3D Printed Barograph, using realtime data feeds combined with more traditional paper and ink to recreate the Barograph – click ‘Play’ to view the model in 3D.

We will be posting more about the Spring 2021 collection in the coming weeks. Its been a while since our last post over here on Digital Urban, it is good to be back.

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3D Printing a Radiation Shield for the Weather Flow Air

Andy — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 15:56:06 +0000

Weather Flow Shield – Fusion 360 Model Render

The Weather Flow ‘Smart Weather Station‘ is arguably one of the most innovative weather sensors on the market. Launched via a kickstater campaign in 2017, the system is now shipping to backers and will be made available for general sale shortly.

Air, Sky and Breathe

The system consists of two current hardware modules – the Air and Sky with a third unit – Breathe focusing on air quality arriving at a future date. The Air (pictured above left) measures Temperature, Pressure, Humidity and Lightning. The Sky unit (above middle) measures wind (via ultrasonic sensors), rain (haptic sensors), Solar Radiance and Solar UV.

Sensor data refreshes every 3 seconds via either the Weather Flow app (see smartweather.weatherflow.com/share/2701/grid for our data feed) or via a dashboard powered by various 3rd party applications.

Local Weather Data Dashboard

Placing temperature and humidity in the field is not as easy as simply putting a device outside. It needs to be suitably shielded from the sun and rain as well as being at a set height (1.25m) to reduce heating from the ground. High end stations often use a ‘Stevenson Screen’ to shield instruments and to comply with international measurement standards.

Typical Stevenson Screen Construction

Such screens are expensive to buy and often impractical for home based weather stations. As such we decided to model and 3D print our own shield for the Weather Flow Air.

Modelled using Fusion 360 it is designed to be made on a standard 3D printer, apart from the screws required to fix it to a post. We used the Ultimaker 3.

Model Rendered Fusion 360

The model consists of 6 separately designed parts – top and bottom mounts, middle sections, rods, nuts and spacing washers (again all printed) – and is designed to be easy to print and assemble. Everything slides into place without any need for gluing or fixing.

Assembling the Shield

Each part was sanded (1000 and 400 grit), primed and sprayed with gloss white paint – although this is not an essential, it can simply be 3d printed. The Weather Flow air sits inside and the parts act as a shield against radiation and the sun.

All the parts are available on Thingiverse, Weather Flow makes its data available via UDP, opening up opportunities to link to systems such as Node Red or any number of data displays/home hub devices. We will have more of that in future posts.

Bottom up view from Fusion 360

Btw – Digital Urban is back, its been a long time since the last post – with a focus on connected environments, sensors and sensor validation, data visualisation and 3D systems its good to be back online – after a long stint as Head of Department (and various other things) at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London.

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3D Printed Mechanical Clock

Andy — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 13:26:50 +0000

The rise in 3D printers and the move towards semi-consumer level models, such as MakerBot Replicator 2, opens up a wealth of opportunity to build everyday items. With a Replicator 2 in the corner of the office here at CASA, University College London, we thought we would try to print a weight powered 3D clock. There are a number of sites online that provide plans or kits for wooden clocks, often aimed at CNC type machines or simply scroll saw cutting out of the individual cogs. A key site is woodentimes.com, the clock we have printed is a modified version of the Septimus.

Replicator 2 Printing Cogs

The parts were created in the free version of SketchUp, via a DXF plan and exported to .stl for import into MakerWare. 3D printing is still a hit and miss affair, we printed each part out individually to minimise the risk of any printing errors on the replicator.

3D Printed Parts

In general, printing in the centre of the replicator reduces any errors, we also added a raft to each cog and printed at 100% to increase the strength of the final print. Each cog took approximately 2 hours to print with the frame sections 3 to 4 hours.

3D Printed Clock

The complete clock took 4 days to print, it runs on an 600g weight and requires winding every 48 hours – the clip below details the completed 3D printed clock:
3D printing opens up any number of possibilities, at the moment it is still slightly experimental and creating the clock was a process of trial of error, especially in terms of the 3D printer settings. The ability to load up SketchUp, model an item and have a 3D printed version in a few hours still fills me with wonder though….

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