Fab@Home:Gallery
From Fab @ Home
Mini Torch
The mini torch uses Wickes white and clear silicon. It also uses conductive paste and embeds an purple LED and 2 lithium batteries during the build.
Images
 Overall Desgin |
 Overall Desgin |
 Torch Base produced from [Wickes White Silicon][1] |
 Batteries inserted |
 Conductive material from [Conductive material] |
 Lid produced from [Wickes Clear Silicon] |
 The Wickes clear silicon reacted with the steel coating on the LED, shorting out the lithium battery |
 After replacing battery and changing the broken purple LED to orange |
DC Electric Motor
The aim was to get as close to producing a simple electric motor as possible but this result still embeds four components after the build reliance first capital process.
Images
 Overall Desgin |
 Base produced from [Wickes White Silicon][2] |
 Conductive paste produced from [SS-26 Siliver loaded silicon][3] |
 Magnet Support Tower 1 was produced from [Wickes White Silicon] but used far to much material |
 Magnet Support Tower 2 was produced from [Wickes White Silicon] and used less material but was unstable |
 Magnet Support Tower 3 was produced from [Wickes White Silicon] and used the designs of both support towers together |
 The componets were embedded and the coil spins |
Personalised Key Fobs
Using [Wickes Bathroom Silicon Sealant]a perosnalised key fob was manufactured. RMRG stands for Rapid Manufacturing Research Group.
A second key fob was manufactured from [Primula Squezzy Cheese] though it broke after curing. It is suggested that this may be a useful support material for internal geometries
Images
 Silicon Key Fob |
 Silicon Key Fob |
 Primula squeezy cheese Key Fob |
Propeller version 2
Using a 2-syringe system with FabEpoxy as the structural material and Easy Squeeze Frosting as the support material, we have made another propeller. This was done in about 2 hours using lower resolution (green tips).
Images
 Depositing Easy Squeeze Frosting support while building the propeller |
 Finishing up the last layers of FabEpoxy which stacks up well. Notice the low-resolution of the layers |
Hors d'Oeuvres
We have of course demonstrated printing with food before; here we kicked it up a notch, by making use of a 2-Syringe system. 11:37, 12 October 2007 (EDT)
Images
 Some R&D with Boursin soft cheese and cherry jam |
 A side view of the test pieces; the pentagon shape is concentric truncated pentagonal pyramids |
 Prof. Hod Lipson showing off a finished hors d'oeuvre at the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards |
 A closeup of a successful unit of chevre (goat cheese) with spiced pear jam deposited on a cracker. |
Embedded Circuits
Here's an extension on the flashlight work performed by Evan, found below. By printing the conductive silicone into regular silicone, we were able to produce objects that have fully functional circuits included inside. Follow this link to find more information.
 Here's a circuit that connects the components of a simple timer circuit. |
 We successfully created a Gumby character with embedded circuitry. |
 We directly embedded the battery and LEDs inside of Gumby. |
 Gumby, with eyes that light up when his chest is squeezed! |
iPod Skin
Here's a more significant demonstration of the use of cake frosting as a support material. This is a silicone skin for an iPod Photo (which I happen to own). I designed the skin off of a SolidWorks iPod model I found online. The skin is 2mm thick, and has access holes for the data connector, lock switch, headphone jack, as well as for the scroll wheel and screen. The support structure is both underneath (to allow some rounding of the corners of the skin) and inside (to hold up the top surface and the access holes). I tried using PlayDoh as the support, but found that moisture (or more likely some oily ingredient) seems to inhibit curing of the portions of the silicone that are completely embedded in support material. I then tried with EasySqueeze cake frosting, and found the same problem. It may be that the support material is simply blocking air flow to the silicone - with the majority of the support material removed, the silicone does eventually cure. For my 3rd try, I decided to carefully remove the support before trying to remove the skin from the waxed paper. This approach works, but the silicone still requires a week to firm up. Definitely need an alternative support material for this approach.
Images
 First try with PlayDoh support material, black silicone back, and clear silicone sides. Accidentally killed the job (bad GUI design by me) half way through, so only a back and sides resulted. |
 Second try with EasySqueeze frosting support, clear silicone back and front, black sides. |
 Building support for top surface and access holes. I made use of the "Priority" feature of the software to do this job in 3 tool changes only (not including refills - 7 for support, 2 for silicone). |
 Support material finished, ready to deposit silicone upper half. |
 Finished job. Note the cool black pin stripes - I put clear silicone into a nearly empty syringe of black silicone, so near the end, it started to squeeze out a bit of black with the clear. Note also the crumbs of support material - the syringe tip grazed the support a bit during building the silicone upper half - didn't take into account the diameter of the syringe tip in the design! |
 It fits, which is good. |
 Access holes line up nicely, but failed bonding at the side seam and back. May have fared better if I had removed support, then waited a day before removing the waxed paper. Will try this with a 3rd attempt. |
 The third try is much better - removed the support from outside and inside, then allowed the case to cure for a full week before removing the waxed paper. It fits nicely, and holds together, but a week is too long to wait - need to find a better support material which does not interfere with the silicone curing. I've been using it as my only iPod skin for a couple of months now! |
Flashlight
Recently, Dan Periard has been experimenting with printing electrical circuits with conductive silicone and conductive ink, while Evan Malone has been testing out epoxy as a structural material. Meanwhile, the Fab@Home Project has had the great honor of being included in an upcoming exhibition Plasticity - 100 years of making plastics at the Science Museum London, starting May 22nd, 2007. We have put together a Model 1 for the museum to display, which will be added to their permanent collection, and also needed to provide a sample of the Model 1's capabilities. Since this is for posterity, we racked our brains a bit, pulled out all of the stops, and came up with what you see below: an LED flashlight which combines printed silicone, printed conductive silicone, printed epoxy, and cast epoxy materials; Dan's printable electrical switch and flap-door inventions; an embedded LED (ultra-bright orange) as the light source; commercial AA batteries which can be dropped in via the back end; and a rugged, yet handsome and comfortable rubber over epoxy body. The whole thing was printed in 2 steps: Step 1 (~8 hours) was to print the the entire body with embedded LED, conductive contacts, switch, and endcap, and Step 2 (~30 minutes) was to link the endcap to the LED by printing and embedding a conductive silicone circuit. We developed a few neat techniques that allowed us to achieve all of this; we'll try to document these on the techniques page in the near future.
Images
 Just to prove it could be done, and to seize the Fabber of the Month title, Dan spent 7+ hours to make an enormous 100mm tall hexagonal silicone flashlight body as a prototype |
 After building the monster prototype flashlight body, Dan tested out the idea of laying the body on its side and then printing the conductive trace (silver-filled silicone) into a groove he designed into the body |
 Here Dan is testing out embedding (covering over) the conductive trace to protect it and to improve the aesthetics of the product |
 After the prototyping, we designed a complete "production" version. Here is the CAD model of that design. |
 You can see the cast (poured) epoxy in between the inner and outer printed silicone walls of the body, and the channel left for the conductive trace (at left) |
 A view of the end cap underway - the rounded channel and hole are part of the electrical switch |
 Proof of the height - about 115mm tall - the Z-axis couldn't move down any further (note to designers of Model 2!) |
 The embedded trace technique being used to connect the thumb switch on the end cap (right) to the LED anode (embedded in the left-hand end) |
 A nice view of the LED embedded in printed epoxy in the front end. The flashlight has a very nice heft and feel - the silicone layers make a nice soft grip over the solid epoxy body |
 (Excuse the poor focus) It works! Once 2 AA batteries are dropped in via the end cap, the flashlight can be turned on by pressing (and holding) the switch in the end cap. |
Video
Silicone Pastry Molds
Here are some simple molds created out of silicone, and the muffins that resulted! The silicone says that it can handle up to 400F, so I baked these muffins at 350F (the package says 400). No, I haven't tried eating them, they kind of smell like silicone, so I'm not sure how healthy they'd be.
 Snowman |
 Heart |
 Tree |
 Half a 3D Snowman |
Frosting as Support Material
Here we used normal frosting (same as below, albeit a different color) to act as a support material for various silicone objects. By creating an individual part for each material, we could have the Fab@Home print the frosting first, then lay the silicone down afterward.
Silicone Bridge
The first attempt at support materials: this is simply a silicone bridge sitting on top of a block of frosting.
 The foundation to our bridge (notice that the paths are quite a bit tighter than the pictures below). |
 The first bridge: the silicone doesn't stick real well to the frosting, so the bridge is pretty hideous. |
 A completed bridge on the left, and a second bridge during construction. |
 Cool pattern on the bridge. I totally meant to do that... |
 Breaking away the frosting (I let the silicone harden overnight). |
 Some more breaking... |
 With most of the frosting cleaned out. |
 It's a bridge! |
Trapezoid
Second attempt at supports - this involves building a silicone shape completely supported by the frosting. Yes, this particular shape could have been printed upside-down, but it's way cooler to do it this way.
 First layer of silicone laid out on top of the frosting. |
 The nearly completed trapezoid. It turned out much prettier than the bridge. |
 Breaking away the frosting. |
 It's a trapezoid! |
Bouncy Ball/Sphere
Third, and most glorious, attempt - Printing a silicone sphere!
 A look at the mold, roughly a dozen layers in. |
 Mold, nearly completed. |
 Completed mold. Can see that there are some stragglers in the bottom... |
 Initial silicon layering. |
 Mmmm... look at the frosting integrated directly into the silicone. Tasty! |
 Almost done... |
 Complete! |
 Looks like a snow-cone. Maybe I could shape the mold differently next time... |
 The sphere wasn't exactly centered when it started printing, so it pushed out one of the corners. |
 Ball out of mold (reusable mold, perhaps?). |
 Not quite a sphere, but pretty close. |
 Breathtaking, isn't it? |
Epoxy Propeller
Here we used the Fab@Home to produce a silicone rubber mold for a 7.5" diameter propeller suitable for an RC airplane or a rubber-band powered balsa plane. We manually filled the mold with epoxy while it was being fabbed so that overhanging parts of the mold would not cave in. The mold did not release cleanly from the epoxy, and the propeller needed some manual clean up with a Dremel to remove adhering silicone and some rough edges. In the end, the propeller really works, as can be seen in the video, where we tested it as a "hand powered helicopter" toy.
Images
 The completed mold, in place on the build surface of one of our Model 1s. |
 The silicone propeller mold (black GE Silicone II), completed, and partially filled with epoxy |
 The mold, birds-eye-view - note that the build time of the mold was 5 hours. The mold could be made a closer fit to the propeller to reduce build time. |
 The propeller right after removal from the mold before manual clean-up. |
 The propeller after being cleaned up and balanced; we used a Dremel with a small grinding bit. |
 Edge view of the propeller, mounted on a balsa stick as a toy "helicopter" |
Video
PropellerMovie.mpg, (35MB Hi-res); A movie of Evan testing out the epoxy propeller as part of a toy Requires Windows Media Player 11
Lego Car Tire
Images
 Black silicone replica of a Lego tire |
 Closeup of tire showing treads and spoked interior |
 Lego tire mounted on lego hub and axle |
 Lego tractor repaired with fabbed tire |
House of Cheese
Images
 A house, complete with car and driveway, made of "edible" "spray-cheese", deposited on a saltine cracker |
 A second view of the cheese house |
 A bird's eye view of the cheese house |
Other Cheesy Images
 Test shape for "cheez-whiz" |
 The cheese holds its shape pretty well. |
 A cheap knock-off of Cornell's logo on a cracker |
 Printing on an object is a matter of eye-balling it: hence the guy on the right is a little off. |
Silicone Watchband with Embedded Watch
Images
 Image of CAD design of watch band |
 Screenshot of Fab@Home application with watch band model |
 Closeup of part about 2/3 done |
 Wider view of part in machine |
 Finished part on build surface with embedded watch |
 The latest thing in fashion! |
Video
Frosting
Crayola Cake Icing
Images
 A rectangular box made of Crayola Cake Icing |
Betty Crocker Easy Squeeze Frosting
Easily the best-tasting bunch of models... Hopefully we can print a cookie, then bake it, then frost it, all on the Fab@Home machine (minus the baking, I suppose).
Images
 A frosting arrow through a red arrow heart under construction |
 Arrow through the heart - all edible! |
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Box in Cylinder
This demonstrates the multiple material capability of the Model 1, and a neat feature of "fabbing" - it is possible to make one object (in this case a brown box) completely enclosed inside of another object (in this case a transparent cylinder). This would be very difficult to make any other way.
Images
 A brown silicone box completely enclosed in a clear silicone cylinder |
 A second view of the box inside the cylinder |
Chocolate Structures (edible)
Images
 High Resolution - smaller size– can fit to your palm or your finger tip |
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 Getting rid of the air |
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 A view of the heated syringe arrangement - just a thermostatically controlled flexible heater wrapped around the syringe barrel, then covered with insulation. |
Video
Chocolate1.mpg, 2.1MB Movie of Printing a Chocolate Bar
Chocolate2.mpg, 5.2MB Movie of Printing a Chocolate Bar
Chocolate3.mpg, 7.2MB Movie of Printing a Chocolate Bar
Chocolate4.mpg, 40.6 MB Movie of Printing a Chocolate Bar
Silicone Squeeze Bulb
Images
 CAD model of a rubber squeeze bulb |
 Screenshot of Fab@Home application with squeeze bulb model |
 Image of squeeze bulb at about layer 60 of 337 layers |
 Image of squeeze bulb at about layer 180 of 337 layers |
 Side view of squeeze bulb at about layer 182 of 337 layers |
 Side view of squeeze bulb at about layer 250 of 337 layers |
 Top view of squeeze bulb at about layer 250 of 337 layers |
 Side view of squeeze bulb at about layer 315 of 337 layers |
