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The Doodatable

Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 8:53 am
by charles.yates
One of many projects on the go at the moment - this one is called The Doodatable:

Image

The motivation came from my attempts to spray paint Bender with a chrome finish - it was painted pre-assembly like:

Image

While doing it, it occurred to me that painting assembled models would be a pain in the arse, so a turntable seemed like a logical requirement. Having a spare Arduino, stepper motor and some microswitches, I decided to make it electronic, so the switches turn it clockwise and anti-clockwise.

Not shown (or done), but the concept is mainly that I need to cover the table part with painter's tape and put the table in a box, with the circuitry on the outside and it should make a handy little .. umm.. thing. It can also be used for 3D scanning (will have a crack at this too), and as a general rotating presentation thing for other models.

Haven't posted on thingiverse yet - vaguely thinking about a box to host the electronics and switches, and creating some variants (both wired and non-wired).

Work in progress jscad model is found here:

http://www.geminidev.be/3d/openjscad/#e ... main.jscad

The design of the motor component makes me smile :D.

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:14 pm
by Jules
:lol: Cool Design! Have you got the table turning on marbles? :lol:

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:24 pm
by charles.yates
Many thanks and, yes, I do indeed :D.

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 1:49 pm
by Jules
Clever! :D

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 12:28 am
by charles.yates
Thanks :) but can't claim all the credit on that one - it was one of the guys at my local hackerspace who first mentioned it.

Kinda having fun with this one, though it is a very simple one to make.

This is the doodatable in use after a first coat:
doodatable-bender-2-hd.jpg
And this is the doodatable mini - basic model, changed the radius to 50mm and reduced the number of spokes to save on some filament and printer time:
doodatable-mini-hd.jpg
Need to do a few more things here, but I think it's looking pretty good so far.

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 12:39 am
by Jules
You know, you're using tape on that....had you thought of using Glad Press-n-Seal? Stuff is fantastic for painting things, because the bottom side adheres with pressure (to just about everything) and it comes in a wider roll. :D

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 8:00 am
by charles.yates
No - I've never even heard of it :).

Looks quite expensive to get over here in Belgium (pack of 3 from amazon $17 + $15 shipping and import duty).

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2016 11:46 am
by Jules
Yeah, I guess the import duties would be prohibitive. (Might want to check your local big chain grocery store in the food wrap aisle though...they might sell it there.) :?

Re: The Doodatable

Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2016 2:42 pm
by charles.yates
Well, I screwed up during the gluing stage :) - now decided to glue before printing, but it leaves me with a small problem - how the heck do I reliably make Bender's butt shiny? :D

Provisionally posted to http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1444236 with two sample models and the (optional) connectors for the motor - pictures of the current usage can be found there too.

I should also add that my focus has now shifted (yet again) in the direction of hacking the openjscad stuff:

* I've added some of my current jscad projects to the examples section on the left (if you want to see code, open the editor/right hand panel first, then select from the examples in the left hand panel)
* Trying to add some consistency to the design of my projects to allow for the maximum amount of reuse
* I've added a mechanism to allow urls to carry overrides of the defaults so for example http://www.geminidev.be/3d/openjscad/?p ... doodatable will take you directly to the assembly view of the small table posted on thingiverse

The intent is to provide a means for users to obtain the current url and they can then bookmark those or forward to other people (meaning that they don't have to send STL models to forward custom/non-default uses).