Perhaps the biggest complaint lofted at the nascent 3D printing industry is that, when it comes down to it, unless you’ve got a very special kind of robot, chances are your DIY object printing projects will be done in plastic. Still effectively the future, my boy, using the much-maligned synthetic solid is all-but unavoidable when it comes to most additive manufacturing. That’s not to say all plastics are bad—PLA, one of the two plastics primarily used in extrusion-based 3D printing, is derived from renewable resources including corn starch and tapioca—but they’re still a tough sell considering that only 23% of the 50 billion plastic water bottles Americans use every year are recycled.
Precious Plastic, a set of ‘plastic machines’ created for small-scale DIY plastic recycling aims to change all of that: created by designer Dave Hakkens of Phonebloks fame, injection, rotational, extrusion, and shredder, are four viable mechanical answers to the ever-contemporary question of, “What do I do with all this plastic?”
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython Pico W Bluetooth, CircuitPython 8.0.4 and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
