Techno Excursions...: March 2017

I acquired a Prusa i3 type 3D Printer kit late last year from ElectronicGeek.com (EG) (Montreal; great printer, good price compared to eBay import for same printer, and great customer service from EG, btw!) The printer works reasonably well as built; the learning curve for solving the problems that occasionally appear is not trivial, but I am making progress.

We decided to use PLA only until we have a very good reason to use something else. Although I have a heated aluminum bed that works well, it is not needed for PLA work so far. I use blue painters tape (from Home Depot) to cover the bed, and get mostly good adhesion, as long as I change the tape frequently (no more than half a dozen prints in the same place, otherwise adhesion starts to become unacceptable).

A recent print that turned out well, was a case for my recently acquired Electronic Device Tester. This device, the LCR-T3-H, is a very versatile Arduino-based tester that handles many different types of 2 and 3 terminal, active and passive components. I've included some photos of several types of components being tested. The particular device I bought is based on a public domain design that is very well documented here: https://www.mikrocontroller.net/articles/AVR_Transistortester .

The case I built is described on Thingiverse here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:694790 .

This design was straightforward to print in PLA (despite a small amount of warping from insufficient bed sticking). The pcb is a tight fit, and the display panel backlight connections stick out a small amount past the edge of the pcb, requiring that a small section of the side wall of the case be cut out to allow the pcb to fit in the case. Still works very well.