Cetus 3D Printer cover with pdf plan.

Outside with Printer installed

Inside, thermometer left, cable cutout top, peep hole and plug left

View through the peep hole with thermometer and printer.

Filament Side of Cover

Hi, If you are reading this and don't have a Cetus 3d printer, then you might want to  waste your time somewhere else.  But if you do, then this may be of interest.  The Cetus printer comes without a cover and also does not operate well in cold temperatures.  But if you put an insulating cover over it, the heat from the motors and extruder is kept in, and it can operate well in room temperatures of about 5 degrees C.  

There was a recent contest Cetus ran for the design of a cover, but I can't find the link for that, but anyway here is my effort.  This is a functional cover.  It doesn't put the printer on display as clear covers do, just does the job of holding its heat in and should not be too hard to build.  Here is the web folder containing the pdf plan.

The enclosure is designed with all the corrugations horizontal, and that should help with the heat transfer from the from enclosure: hot air can travel up the corrugations if they are vertical.  Here is a link to the material I used, I got mine from Bunnings. An alternative material would be heavy cardboard, and a recycled bike box (often given away free from bike shops here in Australia, just ask) would be ideal and plenty large enough.

The plan, download it from here

There is an opportunity for Cetus to help there users out here.  If the packaging the printer came in were made for reuse as all or part of a printer cover, or even if they printed a template for a cover on the packaging, it would help users get more out of the printer.  A few years ago I raised a patent for "useful packaging for cycles" which is accessible via the download spec. link here.  Exactly the same principles could apply for the Cetus packaging.

As far as the printer goes, it has worked very well for me.  I'm a mechanical engineer who is finishing a masters degree in industrial design , and since getting the Cetus a few months ago, I have been developing designs on it to help me get into phd studies.  Some of the designs are summarised here and you can follow the link to get to stl files for printing.  Look forward to your feedback on the printer cover design.

Regards  Steve Nurse

3d Print Construction Set

2 cubes that can be made with the Tribo parts.

Hi

This page gives some examples and techniques for a 3d printed modular construction set I have developed.  The files to print the set are available for $US 3.00 each from this page on cgtrader.com, and can be used multiple times.  This is the minimum price for cgtrader parts. As an introduction to the kit, you can look at this video, which shows you how to make the cubes shown above using printed parts and 2.5mm bamboo skewers available from supermarkets.

This sampler pic shows how the parts in the set can be connected together, with wooden skewers or with m3 or m4 bolts.  Parts themselves are labelled A, B, C, D, click on the links to download the respective files.

 Here are a few examples of assemblies made with sets of parts A, B, C, D.  In a few photos, I'm including a little bill of material that shows how many of each part are needed.

Dodecahedron, each wooden skewer is 250 mm long.

First crewed rocket to Mars!

Photo Frame Part 1, Assembled frame and adding corflute or cardboard to one side.

Photo Frame Part 2, Add a photo, then add some decorative bling, in this case a few buttons from my wife Christine's Collection.

"Retro TV"

"At the Drive-in"

5 sided prism.

Complex Column Structure. This uses assemblies of seven small triangles arranged in a crinkled up circle as a subassembly and was built after discussions with Monash University maths lecturer Daniel Mathews.

 So that is all I'm going to do for you today!  Here is the video link, please download the files for A, B, C and D, then please print and show me what you've made.   Regards  Steve Nurse,
steve (the @ symbol) modularbikes.com.au

A wooden trike to Monash

Trike as it was when I pulled it out from the side of the house

Glen Iris Bikepath sign

Now cleaned up trike leaning against a solar powered light.  Thingie

Newly opened Blakes Feast Cafe

Parked at Monash outside the main Caf.  Note orange and black gloves in "glovebox".

Ben starting off.

Hi,

During my recent Industrial design master's degree at Monash Uni I made 6 leaning trikes.  A few of these were development machines and were taken apart and the parts used to complete newer frames.  But I still came out of the degree with 4 trikes, and I can't use them all.  So I decided to give one away to the Monash HPV team, and after an email to their leader Piyath, he said ok, they wanted it.  The email exchange was last Friday, and I spent some of yesterday morning cleaning it and pumping up the tyres, and other bits of the morning riding it on errands to the chemist, bank, pathology lab and post office.  And it all worked ok!

This morning I headed off to Monash Clayton, just a lazy 24k away, and the trike worked just fine.  This ride used to be part of my commute, but I hadn't been along one part of the bike trail for a while, and was pleasantly surprised with some bike track upgrades.  Instead of being forced to ride along Brixton Rise in Glen Iris, there is now a nice bit of bike path with the Blakes Coffee Window at the end of it.  I stopped for a hot chocolate and to chat to some seemingly interested bike riders about the trike.

Anyway, the ride to Monash was uneventful, and although slightly wobbly at the start, Monash HPV's rider Ben didn't have too much trouble getting going.  Here is a short video.  Hope the trike goes well for you!

Regards

Steve Nurse

Tweaking the Timber Trike

At Mada Monash, Ply Bike on a Ply Wall

Piebald Chain, but it doesn't clunk

Shortened Seat Bolts

Extra Bolts inside, top bolt circled red

Cropped brake noodles

Hi

For the last few days I have been riding my latest timber trike, and its been a lot of fun, and given me the chance to iron out a few wrinkles.

Number one was the chain clunking on high gear.  I couldn't find any parts of the chain where the links were tight, but couldn't find any, so then changed the chain on one side of the quick link.  Still no good, and still clunking, however the new chain I had fitted was silver and during my test I could see when the chain was clunking: on the other side of the quick link.  Swapping another section of chain over fixed things, but the chain looks rather pie-bald now and I plan to replace it for a better-looking chain soon.

I shortened the seat bolts so they are more presentable, and added a few other bolts so the seat holds together better.  As well, I cut some metal off the brake noodles meaning the front wheel can be removed more easily.

So that's about it, except I have something coming up and have been quietly gathering parts.  A friend at Uni, Yun, had a project  and he let me have some balls enclosing motion sensitive lights he had made for it.  These are to go in the back of the tailbox, and I have bought some clear floorcovering material to go with them.  Woohoo!

Motion Sensitive lights

Clear Floorcover

Cycle Zoo Pdf

Hi

My book "An Illustrated Guide to the Cycle Zoo" is now available as a pdf download for $AUD 4.00.  If you read the blog regularly or even don't, and just want an inexpensive reference book about cycles, you really need to buy it and are only a few mouse clicks and an email or two away.  The link to buy is here,  click on the Purchase It tab and then the top "Buy Now" button and after that you are in the hands of Mr. Paypal.  Then an email rolls in to my inbox, a small about of money is shuffled electronically around the world and I send you the pdf.  Easy Peasey.

 Still Free!  (But please buy a book if you enjoy it at all) is the cycle tour boardgame I designed.  It says in a very roundabout sort of way that all human powered vehicles are equal, it doesn't matter what you ride, and sharing a ride with friends is a wonderful experience. To read more about it and download free, follow this link. 

My friend Dave Trickey got the ball rolling on this new pdf-buying scheme.  Thanks Dave!

Regards

Steve Nurse

O Bikes in Melbourne

A small invasion of O-bikes outside the Hive, Richmond, Melbourne

The bikes are a strange mix of high and low tech, this handlegrip is integrated with a bell

Front mudguard, light, generator and band brake

Back Wheel, Band brake and Ashtabula cranks

Obikes in Victoria St Richmond.

A bike in Coburg

Hi

In the last few weeks, there has been an invasion of bikes on our streets.  In competition with the official melbourne bike share scheme which has blue bikes, Obikes have started to appear.  They seem to be more widespread than the Blue bikes, but I have yet to see anyone use one.  But I have seen them parked outside shopping centres and sort-of getting in the way.

The bikes have a curious mix of old and new tech, for example they have Ashtabula cranks (now seen only on the cheapest of cheap new bikes)  and a single gear.  The brakes are band brakes, and I'm not that familiar with them, but they look out of place next to the shiny generator on the front hub.

Jai in his biking in a big city blog  has documented what looks like a similar hire scheme in Canada, and he even hired one.  Me, I don't even own a smartphone.  Good luck, Obike.

Dangerous Designs Entry

Chinese contingent 1.

Chinese Contingent 2.  Who is the ringin, 3rd from left?

Ewan

me.

Hi, as I wrote quite a few posts ago, part of the reason for building my newest timber trike was to enter the Dangerous Designs competition.  My entry is now in! As well as building the trike itself, a few nice photos and a video were needed.  Some of the photos were taken at the local park, but I wanted to include a few photos of riding on the trike too.  My son, Ewan works at Melbourne Uni, so I arranged to meet him there for a photoshoot.  Its very hard to get your head around the workings of a vuong trike but dynamic photos and videos can help a lot.

So I pootled in on a Thursday morning, making sure timber panels were in place for the timber design competition.  On arriving at Melbourne Uni, I was swamped by a Chinese tour group of some description and they insisted on posing for photos with the trike.  I got them to take a few photos of me too.  The photos with the chinese contingent did not make the cut for the Dangerous Designs comp though, it is actually worth being serious about these things!

Then I rang Ewan, and got him to bring his helmet along as my helmets are too geeky to be seen in respectable photos.

The filming went ok, thanks Ewan!  Here is a link to the video.  Another competition / exhibition I have now entered is Fringe Furniture, my timber trike will be there on display from September 14 to October 1.

Regards

Syeve Nurse

Timber Leaning trike part 15

Mockup of trike and the actual trike with wooden panels

The same trike with fabric and coreflute sidepanels

This is how much the sidepanels weigh.  If you want to ride around with these timber sidepanels you have to suffer carrying an extra 1.25 kg around.

Last job before finishing, grinding the end off some screws which were sticking out of the timber panels.

A week or two ago, corflute was cut using the frame of the fabric sidecover as a template, and extra coreflute was cut to make clip holders.  Later the clip holders were cable tied to the coreflute.

Hi

My newest leaning timber trike is finished now.  It was just about finished a few weeks ago, but have been fairly busy and haven't got back to it.  But taday I had some time and finished off the quite heavy 4mm timber ply sidepanels and fitted and photographed them and the corflute panels on the bike.  The first photo shows my mockup of the bike from parts I had around the place, and next to it is   tadah! the real thing.  A few other vital statistics are weight: 18kg with cloth panels, and length 2400mm.  Not recommended if you don't want to be noticed!  Anyway, it has been fun building her and I hope she endures for many km.

Regards

Steve Nurse