Headset Reduction: Final Design - Sanding and Priming

Another update on the ongoing project of headset size reduction. I've previously written about the tear down of the old headset and a test print of the design.
I have now worked through the design I had for the ear muffs and head band I printed as test pieces. Originally, I was going to only slightly alter the ear muff design by scaling it to make it a bit taller. Instead I chose to completely model it from scratch again, only keeping my original measurements. I made this decision because I had learned several new techniques in Fusion 360.

Here's a comparison between the first test pieces, in blue, and the final design, in silver. At this point I've painted the silver parts with a couple coats of primer. I'm going to lightly sand these before they get some shiny, black spray paint.

The differences between the two design are that the ear muffs in version two of the design are taller, and thus more rounded. This gives two improvements over the previous design: The sound is more well rounded, and it looks more streamlined - which in my opinion looks much better. I also added a small protrusion at the hole for the audio jack. This has the benefit of letting the female audio jack sit closer to the the shell of the ear muff. Which in turn means that I don't have the push the audio cable as far into the headset.

Of course I'm adding my own logo when I make something completely custom!

You always have to balance between a final cost increase from prototyping, and keeping the final cost as low as possible. For this design I did one test print with material that now has to be thrown away. It would could have been better for the final design to do a couple more test prints, but that would have greatly increased the total material used to do this headset remake. I believe I made the right decision by doing one run of test prints and then springing for finishing the headset.

Still, I might have to make one more iteration of the head band. It was printed with 10% infill and this made the band to stiff. When pulled over your head, the band wont flex enough so it's a bit tight. I'm going to fix this either by reprinting the band without infill, or by modifying the band by decreasing it's structural integrity.

Book of Light

About a year ago I made a gift inspired from an instructable I had read. This instructable detailed how to make a book that lights up with a warm glow when it's opened. Here are the instructions.

I really liked the idea, but there were some areas I wanted to change or improve.
For one, I didn't use batteries in the book. This was to avoid having to either change or recharge batteries. To me this meant the book could be used more freely because there weren't any battery anxiety. Instead of batteries I opted for an USB cable so the book could get power from any old phone charger. The USB cable I ordered was extendable. I chose extendable so the cable could be rolled together and neatly tucked away when the book wasn't powered.
    Another change I did was to use regular 5 mm LEDs. Regular size LEDs are much easier to acquire and they don't develop as much heat. Heat was a big concern to me because all the electronics would be enclosed in old and dry paper. Opting for regular LEDs instead of high wattage LEDs had another positive effect. The book could be made with several more light sources, which meant the light from the book would be spread more evenly.

Video demonstration;

And by the way! The book was made as a gift and I'm happy to report it was a huge success. Appreciation always makes the effort worth it.

I won another prize

I just received another prize a won!
Because I recently wrote about how I won a prize from Instructables I feel like I'm on lucky strike here!

I won a completely new Arduino the MKR1000. Arduino have partnered with Atmel, Adafruit, and Microsoft and they are hosting the Worlds LargestArduino Maker Challenge.
Here I entered by pitching my idea for what I would like to make with the new Arduino board. The idea I pitched was for a DIY Plant Stick.

The MKR1000 is not yet commercially available but you can read the technical details here. What's really got me excited is its tiny form factor, the built in WiFi chip and the on-board Li-Po battery charger.

The team over at Arduino asked us to not yet share any detailed pictures of the board. This is because it's an exclusive pre-release version of the MKR1000. They said they didn't want third parties to start designing components for a boards that likely will change before final release.

The box. It's not much bigger than a regular match box.

This is an excerpt from the pitch I wrote to the maker challenge:
I really want to use the MKR1000 to make a plant stick.  With this I mean a small stick filled with electronics made to monitor and give essential feedback on plants growing indoors, like small indoor kitchen gardens in urban environments. 
So what is included in this plant stick? The idea I've played around with is this stick you put into the soil of your plants, and then it monitors different parameters of your plants, which are then sent to the cloud.
I want the plant stick to look at the following:
* Soil humidity. Also giving recommendations for when to water the plants
* Temperature
* Humidity
* Light level. This parameter will also trigger a relay for a grow light to make sure the plants receive enough light throughout the day.
* Air quality
* Internet. This is the most exciting and why I'm really looking forward to work with the MKR1000. I will use the internet to connect to Windows Remote Arduino. This will allow people to log and analyze trends for the plants. This is also what will streamline the whole indoor gardening practice.

I won a prize

I won a prize from Instructables!
Now, a while ago I wrote about how I made my own DIY Grow Light. Along with that blog post was the link to a instructable entry I had made. This contained all the details on how the light was made and how other people can make their own.

I entered this instructable in a contest they were running at the time, the theme of the contest was Indoor Gardening. Well apparently enough people liked my design and solution so I won third prize in their competition.

I just received my prize and keeping with the theme of the contest, I received a Hydroponics Experiment Kit. This kit is meant to experiment with different growth solutions for plants in hydroponics. Hydroponics in a couple of words, means growing plants in a water and nutrient solution instead of using soil. Also in my prize pack was an instructables t-shirt and a couple of stickers.
All in all it was really fun getting recognized for one of my projects.

3D Printer Heated Bed Insulation

I have just upgraded my 3D printer.
The heated bed on my printer have been taking some time heating up. I've been guessing this is because the long and flat heating element looses a lot of heat downwards, with only a fraction of the heat going upwards towards the print zone. This is to be expected because the heating element is long, flat, and very thin. This means that the element has a huge surface area with very little mass.
      This was the problem I wanted to solve. My thinking was to insulate the underside of the heating element. Most people know of the insulating properties of cork. It is very common to use circular cork mats to insulate heated pans from a kitchen bench. It's exactly the same thinking I brought to insulating the printer.

I bought cork mats from IKEA. These mats were meant to be kept under plates while eating to reduce mess. They are thinner than usual cork mats used for heat insulation, but they are thick enough for my purpose. The price for four of these are 29 NOK, I only needed one so I have a few for other projects. The description can be found here.

It was super simple to install. What I did was unscrew the print bed and then I used this to make a cut out of the cork mat. Then it was simply a matter of poking holes for the screws in the corners of the mat, and sandwiching everything back together.
I haven't analyzed the heat up difference with and without the insulation yet, but I will at a later time.
The heated bed does seem to heat up faster. I also imagine the printer uses less power during printing, because the heating element wont have to work as hard to maintain a stable temperature.

This is how the final product looks:

Headset Reduction: Parts and Test Print

Finally all the parts I need for the final headset remake have arrived. The parts I needed was a female audio jack, male to male audio cable, and a bluetooth sound receiver. The bluetooth receiver lets me unplug the audio cable from the headset so I can listen to music over bluetooth whenever I want.

I've also done a test print of the 3D parts for the headest. I was reluctant at first to use filament for something I knew I was going to throw away, but I'm glad I did the test print because it showed some areas of improvement.
When I designed the ear muffs I was focusing on slimming down the profile of the headset. Well, I slimmed it down a tad too much. When I attached the speaker to the ear muff and listened to music, the audio was a bit thin. I'm going to solve this by scaling up the ear muff so it has a bigger air volume.

I also test printed the band between the ear muffs. I was surprised at how much flex and strength the PLA had. I was originally planning on printing the finished design in ABS, but this test print convinced me to print everything in PLA instead.
    I tested both parts by throwing them at the ground and there was not one crack. This is good news because it is much easier to print the finished product in PLA than ABS.

Headset band and ear muff. The final product will be a much finer resolution.

 Came out pretty good just need some scaling.

 Nice red to go with the painted black headset. Female audio jack to go inside one of the ear muffs. Bluetooth audio receiver for wireless playback.

Sweet Talking Box

I've made a new instructable! I'm showing how to create a small box with only a visible audio jack and push button. When the button is pressed a prerecorded message will play through the audio jack.
To read the instructable and all the details on how the box and electronics was made, click here.

The finished product.

The 3D printed box.

The 3D printed box was designed in Fusion 360 and can be downloaded here.


Introduction at instructables.com:

In this instructable I am going to show you how to make your own little sweet talking box.

So what is a sweet talking box? This is a tiny box where all you can see is a headphone jack and a small button. When you connect a headset to the box and press the button a prerecorded message will play for your recipient.

This is a perfect gift idea to make for someone you care about and for someone you want to keep encouraged or reminded by your own words. There are unlimited options to make this gift even more personal by crafting your own box or enclosure!

The project is easy and you neither require a lot of experience or tools. The most challenging in this project is the soldering required.

Bit Holder - Everyday Carry (EDC)

I've sometimes found myself in the situation where I just need quick access to a screw driver. This often leads to some searching for whatever will substitute either a phillips head or flat head.
This is the problem I set out to solve.

I've made a small 3D printed key chain which can hold any regular hex bit. Keeping one or several of these with your keys will solve the desperate rummaging for whatever item that can somewhat act as a screw driver.

The file for 3D printing can be downloaded here.
How to make it can be found in this instructable.

I modeled the file in Fusion 360. I'm growing fond of this modeling software, and I'm learning several new tools and techniques every time I use it.

Headset Reduction

Several years ago I bought the Fatal1ty gaming headset. I still have the headset in working condition and it has great sound.
The only thing is, the headset is huge! This means the headset is not practical for everyday use. I still enjoy the quality audio from the headset though, so I don't want to completely put it away.

My plan is to make a new headset where I reuse the audio drivers from the fatal1ty headset. This should give me a slimmer, more practical headset, with great sound.
The way I'm going about this is first tearing open the old headset, and then I will 3D model a new headset. Later, I'm going to get the headset 3D printed before I mount everything back together.

This is the first project I'm modeling in Autodesk's software Fusion 360. I imagine there will be a steep learning curve.

The headset I'm starting out with. As you can see, it's huge.

My own headset tore open. That's some great audio drivers.

Modeling the new ear muffs.

3D Printed Laptop Stand - Minmal Material

I've wanted a laptop stand for my desk for a while. I would like to raise my laptop ca 12 cm to give more room on my desk for books and a keybord, as well as giving a better viewing angle.


There exists some designs of laptop stand to be 3D printed, but all of these use a massive amount of plastic when they are printed. I set out to solve this problem. I wanted a laptop stand which could be 3D printed without going through half a spool of material.
This is my first real experience with designing something in 3D and printing it.

The result:

The file for printing your own stand can be downloaded here.

I used Autodesk Inventor. It was a fine program, but next time I'm designing something I'll look into Fusion 360 to compare the programs.



Description at thingiverse:
This lets you print a laptop stand with minimal material and print time.

This stand will raise you laptop about 12 cm. The stand gives better viewing angle, and more room on your desk.

Print as many copies of this model as you need. Connect the parts together with a couple of pencils, to keep all the parts on the same line.

Just one of these stand parts is strong enough to hold my computer, which weighs about 2 kg.

I printed them with 10% infill, it took about 40 mins per part.
Print with greater infill for a greater stability. This means you can print fewer parts.