Github user tabnair (Patrick Rainsberry) maintains a batch exporter add-on for Fusion360 that can export a Fusion project structure into multiple formats. Currently: IGES, STEP, SAT, SMT, the native F3D and STL.
Platform independent Photoshop Alternative
Krita is a capable open-source Photoshop alternative for many common image editing tasks available on OSX, Linux and Windows. Download here: https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/
HowTo Add A New Infill Pattern To PrusaSlicer
The Dev-Team at Prusa has done a nice job of cleaning up the Slic3r sources with their “PrusaSlicer” fork. Also setting up a build is so much easier now.
Playing with infills is always fun. The following shows were you need to touch the sources to add a new infill pattern to libslic3r and the GUI.
“src/libslic3r/Fill/”
create “NewFill.hpp” and “NewFill.cpp“
“src/libslic3r/CMakeLists.txt”
Add “NewFill.hpp” and “NewFill.cpp” to the “addLibrary” call.
“src/libslic3r/Fill/FillBase.cpp”
Include “NewFill.hpp” and add “case ipNewfill: return new FillSinusoidal();” to the “Fill::new_from_type” function.
“/src/libslic3r/PrintConfig.cpp”
Add to the “fill_pattern” enum at around line 830
def->enum_values.push_back(“newfill”);
def->enum_labels.push_back(L(“New Fill”));
“src/libslic3r/PrintConfig.hpp”
Extend “enum InfillPattern” with “ipNewfill” and the “get_enum_values()” function with “keys_map[“newfill”] = ipNewfill;”
How To Write Micropython Firmware to the Wemos D1 Mini
All Wemos D1 Minis I tested required a different flash mode than shown in the official documentation to successfully write the Micropython firmware to the module.
The following commands resulted in a succesfull write.
esptool.py –port [usbdevice] –baud 115200 erase_flash
esptool.py –port [usbdevice] –baud 115200 write_flash -fm dio –flash_size=detect 0 [firmware.bin]
Build ESP32 MicroPython Firmware with Custom C-Module
To add a custom module to the MicroPython firmware for the ESP32
Follow: blog.mmone.de/2019/09/26/howto-build-micropython-for-esp32-on-osx/ to setup a build environment on OSX.
Pass the module to the make command like that:
ESPIDF=<path to IDF> PYTHON2=/usr/bin/python USER_C_MODULES=<path to module> make all
HowTo Build MicroPython for ESP32 on OSX
A prebuild toolchain for the ESP32 is available from Espressif: https://dl.espressif.com/dl/xtensa-esp32-elf-osx-1.22.0-80-g6c4433a-5.2.0.tar.gz
If you’re interested in building from scratch check the docs for IDF v.3.3 https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/v3.3/get-started/macos-setup.html
Get MicroPython and initialise its dependencies
git clone https://github.com/micropython/micropython.git git submodule update --init
Get the correct version of the IDF and its dependencies
As of 09/2019 the MicroPython build needs v3.3 of the IDF. Later versions use cmake instead of make.
git clone https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git git checkout 6ccb4cf5b7d1fdddb8c2492f9cbc926abaf230df git submodule update --init --recursive
Unpack the toolchain and add IT to the PATH
tar -zxf xtensa-esp32-elf-osx-1.22.0-80-g6c4433a-5.2.0.tar.gz export PATH=$PATH:<replace with absolute path to toolchain>/bin
Virtual Environment
Some of the build tools and dependencies require Python 3. Lets create a virtual environment and activate it to keep things separated.
virtualenv --python=python3 esp32buildEnv source esp32buildEnv/bin/activate
Install the python dependencies required by the IDF
pip install -r esp-idf/requirements.txt
Build the crosscompiler
cd mpy-cross make
Build the ESP32 port
cd ports/esp32 ESPIDF=<path to IDF root> PYTHON2=/usr/bin/python make
The resulting “firmware.bin” can be uploaded to your ESP32 with the “esptool” as usual.
3D Printing nonplanar Layers
This Master thesis by Daniel Ahlers et al. demonstrates how a modified version of the open source slicer software “Slic3r” can be optimised to output GCODE for printing nonplanar surfaces.
Digital Scale Pinout and Protocol
Open Source Audio Server
Volumio is a great open source audio server with a browser based UI. It runs on a Raspberry Pi and many other platforms
Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors as Actuators
Here is a blog post by Dan Berard about using MLCC as actuators based on this phys.org article and the original paper.