January 2024

Be sure to bookmark mbox.fyi for quick access to Maker Box reveal posts.

Filamentcolors.xyz is a digital catalog of filament from around the globe, curated with the purpose of helping people find the perfect colors for their project. We print and photograph every filament under the same conditions, allowing users to compare different colors directly. We also measure the color and report this as a hex color, and use that to calculate complementary colors, similar filaments, and even similar colors in other materials to help users perfectly plan their projects. We’re a hobby project and always growing through filament donations and partnerships, so keep checking back to find your favorite filaments!

SWAG & CODES

Hostess Cakes
Zyltech Sticker
Trading Cards

Please login to view codes if you received this months UFO.

Subscriber @tsiolkovsky created a neat trading card holder for the top of the printer to hold the card for the sample you're printing with!

Download Card Holder

Easy

Explorer

Accessory

Carbon-Hardened Steel Needlenose Pliers

Needle Nose Pliers are a bit of a multi-tool for me. Grabbing filament boogers off a hot nozzle, grabbing little bits of filament in hard to reach places of my printer, holding on to a hot heatsink while I mess with the nozzle... it's one of my most used tools.

View on Amazon

Project

+Nano version of the Maker Box received an ESP32-WROOM

Triaxial Numechron Clock

I thought this project looked really cool for its electronics simplicity.

Kit Includes:

• Stepper Motor- 28BYJ-48: Grab on Amazon
• Motor Driver - ULN2003 5v Driver

NOTE: I screwed up in 2 ways - 1) The project lists "variety of M2 screws" so I didn't know how many of what size to buy. By the time I received the parts and built the clock to figure out how many of each I needed, I couldn't get them in time to send them with the UFOs. You can grab a pack from Amazon and I'll try to use more in future projects so you're not buying a whole pack for one project. 2) I forgot to order jumper wires and didn't have enough in my stock. You'll need 6 female to female 6 to 8 inch jumpers =( I generally order a variety of those as well on Amazon for when I'm working on projects

Trivial issues, but I have been trying to include everything needed as I know that's been a complaint in the past.

If you're using the ESP32-WROOM boards that come with the +Nano version of the UFO, then there is a case below that I designed that goes under the clock to mount the board, driver and motor. You'll need the base, case and 3 clips.

Program the board before mounting it in the case. When programming the board, select the ESP32 Dev Kit board and be sure to press and hold down the boot button on the board while the code is being uploaded.

As usual, I've added the code to Arduino Cloud for simplicity.

ESP32 VIN to ULN2003 +
ESP32 GND to ULN2003 -
ESP32 12 to ULN2003 IN1
ESP32 32 to ULN2003 IN2
ESP32 25 to ULN2003 IN3
ESP32 27 to ULN2003 IN4

Project Files at Printables

STLs for ESP32 Board

Project Code