Check out the latest 3D printed project with embedded electronics from Kris Kortright — one of my favorites of his to date! (And a great demonstration for using Blender to creating electronics projects.) You can find it at Thingiverse Thing 91160:
This is a wand/protector for the Adafruit RFID Breakout Board that I’m using in my RiderScan project.
(The 10mm LEDs (2) for them can be found here.)It’s one of the best RFID/NFC breakout boards around, and since I’ll be using mine in a Horse Barn environment, I needed an enclosure that could stand up to wear and tear, as well as be functional and easy to use. This is my 2nd attempt to make such an enclosure using Blender and my trust MakerBot Replicator – I have ideas for a 3rd design in the works now.
The board is made by Kevin Townsand of Adafruit, and is a particularly well-made product – really ahead of it’s time. Branded with both the Adafruit and MakerBot logo’s, this is my Nod to both of these fabulous companies – some of the best modeling I think I’ve done to date, and I hope the community finds it useful for your projects as well 🙂
And of course, you know where to find the MakerBot Replicator!!
I’m making updates to the handle, and will post a new version soon!
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Featured Adafruit Products!
PN532 NFC/RFID controller breakout board – v1.3: The PN532 is the most popular NFC chip, and is what is embedded in pretty much every phone or device that does NFC. It can pretty much do it all, such as read and write to tags and cards, communicate with phones (say for payment processing), and ‘act’ like a NFC tag. If you want to do any sort of embedded NFC work, this is the chip you’ll want to use! (read more)
MakerBot Adafruit Edition: Adafruit has teamed up with our friends over at MakerBot to offer the MakerBot Adafruit Edition. The talented members of the Adafruit community are exploring 3D printed solutions for their inventions, electronics enclosures, mounting hardware, and artwork, so we have bundled a MakerBot Replicator 2™ desktop 3D printer with three of our more popular DIY electronics projects. After you’ve built your kits use your new MakerBot to print out the kit enclosures! This MakerBot includes a special limited edition MakerBot + Adafruit build plate and a 3d printing for electronics pack! (read more)