Luciano Righetti

Renert: 3D sculpting

2020-10-01T13:00:00+00:00

First steps with 3D sculpting using Blender. Wanted to learn some Blender basics, so I decided to make a 3D model of one of the most famous characters of Luxembourg, Renert, the cunning fox from Michel’s Rodange fable.

I used some photos from the Internet from a monument that’s in the city center. It took way more than I expected and my wrist hurt a bit after since I did it with a mouse as I don’t have a drawing tablet yet. Very fun tho! You can find the 3d model here.

Some photos of the project:

Of course the final goal was to make some cool 3d prints of it:

Laptop Riser

2020-01-11T13:00:00+00:00

I was experiencing overheating issues with my personal laptop, so I decided to address the issue with some 3D printing. There are several laptop risers in the market, some of them even with built-in coolers. But why would I buy something if I can create it on my own and have fun in the process? Specially in a rainy winter weekend with not much else to do.

I remember I saw somewhere online a minimal design for this but for a macbook, but heck it’s a simple thing, so I did it from scratch. Another source of inspiration was the cosito de la pizza or pizza saver, one of our proud inventions among argentinians.

I designed it with Autodesk Fusion 360 and used a Ender 3 Pro for printing the models and white PETG.

Btw, it was kinda tailor made for my Lenovo Thinkpad E460, but if you want you can download the .step or .stl files for this.

Some photos and videos of the project:

Root CNC (DIY CNC)

2018-09-10T13:00:00+00:00

For some weird reason my desire to build a CNC router dates my highschool times, when I learned at school to drive stepper motors.

Long time after with some friends we decided to build a CNC router from scratch, using an existing open source design with some personal flavors such as a custom Z-axis designed by me.

The base project was a RootCNC v3, a relatively simple and inexpensive design.

It was a beautiful project that involved many hours of 3d printing parts and a couple weekends assembling the machine and tweaking it.

The original Z-axis used linear rails which were quite expensive/difficult to get in Argentina, so I decided to design a brand new mechanism from scratch, surprisingly it worked quite well. I used Autodesk Fusion 360 for the design.

Also, instead of using aluminium square pipes we used rectified steel ones, another huge cost saving.

Some photos of the making of:

Custom Z-axis:

Things tend to get messy in my apartment… my neighbors, delighted.

First movements…

It’s alive!

Maker pride

SmartrapCore (DIY 3DP)

2018-06-25T13:00:00+00:00

I decided to build a coreXY 3D printer based on a open source design called SmartrapCore, using some sacavanged materials such as Epson printers stepper motors and piece of MDF that I found on the street and a ~30 bucks Ramps 1.6 Kit from Aliexpress that a friend bought. All the pieces are designed in a parameterized OpenSCAD project which makes very easy to adapt the dimensions to your needs and materials.

To be honest, I was surprised by the results, didn’t expected much because used smaller motors than the usual.

It was quite easy to assemble and paying it’s respects to the RepRap philosophy the machine was quickly printing it’s own upgrades.

Yes, it looks like a 3D printer that came out of a Mad Max movie, I didn’t have the time yet to beautify it. But it works, that’s what matters.

Some photos and videos of the making of:

Used reclaimed MDF panels found of the street to build the frame.

First mechanical assembly.

First homing.

It’s alive!

Some minor upgrades:

Made a better bed frame with the help of the CNC.

Printed it’s own new geared extruder due to the size (small) motor I was using, because it was loosing steps at “high” printing speeds.

After this point I handed over the printer to my friend Dario and he carried on some aesthetics upgrades.

Some prints made with this machine:

MIKE

2018-04-16T17:52:13+00:00

My friend Mike asked me if I could make a device to measure the temperature of the exhaust of his heavily-customized Mad Max style two-stroke motorbike. So, challenge accepted, I bought some arduino electronics and came out with this project. The target motorbike:

Parts:

Temperature sensor with a Max6675 (0ºC a 800ºC)
Arduino Pro Micro
OLED screen

Some more project photos and videos:

Video

it wouldn’t be a complete project without an easter egg

CODENAME: CODDIE

2017-07-20T17:52:13+00:00

CODDIE was a project I did while working at Kiyok, the idea was to develop an opensource toy to encourage kids to learn programming basics. Part of the motivation was to learn how to design things with Autodesk Fusion 360, which is an amazing tool and combine that knowledge with 3D Printing and Arduino. The main logic board was a NodeMCU, which had several sensor shield boards connected to it that served as inputs for the robot. These sensors enabled the robot to:

Follow lines in the floor
Detect sounds / clapping
Measure distances
Move it’s wheels precisely due to the encoder attached to them

The robot output communication was a RGB led strip acting sort of like the Knight Rider car. The project is currently abandoned because I don’t have time now, also I found that there were several (commercial) similar projects and got me a bit frustrated. Nevertheless, it was fun to do it and I learned a lot of the Fusion 360 tools, like rendering, joints, animations, etc.

Some more project photos and videos:

Assembly	Sonar

3D Printed

Led	Sonar