A 3D jello printer made out of old CD-ROM drives:
…Over on SpritesMods, one intrepid party-goer realized jello shots for a 25th birthday party could be spiced up with some food dye and a syringe, but found the process of creating the figures by hand to be a bit tedious. So, a 3D printer was created by breaking down the parts of some old CD-ROM and DVD drives, and mounting the usable parts, such as the stepper motors, to a wood base.
A tube was hooked up to a syringe that held the dye, which in turn was connected to the injection needle. One of the CD-ROM drive’s tray ejector was positioned near the syringe’s plunger and used to inject the dye.
A few different figurines were hard-coded into the printer’s AVR microcontroller by way of specifying different dye injection coordinates. The printer only needed around 10V of power to function, so it was hooked up to a laptop battery, making the rig somewhat portable….
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!