Author: A. Brososky

3D printing is an incredibly useful tool for creating a wide variety of objects, from prototypes to finished products. One important aspect of 3D printing is the material you use to print your object, as different materials have different properties and can produce significantly different results.

One way to ensure that you are using the right material for your project is to print sample swatches before you begin your main print. Sample swatches are small test prints that allow you to see what a particular material will look and feel like, as well as how it will behave during the printing process.

There are a few key reasons why printing sample swatches is important:

1. Material properties: Different materials have different properties, such as strength, flexibility, and durability. Printing sample swatches allows you to see firsthand how these properties will affect your final print.
2. Printing quality: Some materials may require different print settings in order to achieve the best results. Printing sample swatches allows you to fine-tune your printer’s settings to ensure that your final print is of the highest quality.
3. Cost savings: Printing sample swatches can save you money in the long run by allowing you to test different materials before committing to a full print. If you find that a particular material doesn’t work for your project, you can avoid wasting time and resources by switching to a different material before you begin your main print.

Overall, printing sample swatches is a valuable tool for anyone using a 3D printer. It allows you to make informed decisions about which material to use and how to set up your printer, which can ultimately lead to more successful and cost-effective prints.

For my personal printing I found the STL file for the swatches at the following location:

https://www.printables.com/model/111326-filament-swatch-library/files

While for the box, I did not like the lid on the option above so someone had already made a compatible bottom only here:

https://www.printables.com/model/343165-open-filament-sample-box

Then to give the swatches a nice label I used QR Code Monkey to Generate QR Codes of the links that I used to purchase the material for easy ‘re-filling’ of the material when supplies run low.

https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/

To print the labels I used a Brother QL-710W label maker with the P-touch Editor to create the labels that stick onto the swatches. The QR Codes created in QR Code Monkey were simply copied and pasted directly into the label.

I have been a subscriber to hackerboxes.com for quite some time, however, I typically just get their boxes every month, review the contents and set it aside for another ‘not so busy day.’

https://hackerboxes.com/

http://www.instructables.com/id/HackerBoxes-0020-Summer-Camp/

Today I decided to pull out an older box, the ‘Summer Camp’ Badge box.  This box has you build an program an ESP32 connected to a TFT, 5 neopixels, cap touch buttons printed on the board, a lipo battery charger and a buzzer.  The board builds in about 30 minutes, and takes about 30 more to setup the IDE and test all of the functions.  A photo of my build running is below, it is scanning all of the SSIDs that it can see and displaying them to the TFT.

The notes from instructables do leave out a few key things that I will list below for anyone else working through this tutorial and having issues:

1.) You will need to get and install the following Arduino libraries from github (remember to restart the Arduino IDE after adding new libraries to the ./Arduino/libraries folder:

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_ILI9341

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_NeoPixel

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-GFX-Library

2.) When you install the ESP32 tool suite from github, you will need to select the ‘ESP32 Dev Module’ as your board.  The instructions are fairly straight forward, the biggest thing to remember to do after you clone the repository to your ./Arduino/hardware directory is to run the ‘get.exe’ command to install the ESP32 tools in the Arduino IDE.

https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32

Next Steps:

Next I will be adding the ability to do the following from a web interface:

1.) Change the text on the TFT

2.) Set the NeoPixels

3.) Play sounds on the Buzzer

The ultimate goal will be to use an ESP32 module on my own board to control above and under cabinet neopixel strings that can be controlled via a webapp.

*More to come!