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@E2Weeks

2 жыл бұрын

This is really cool. Thank you for making my day!!!

@unmanaged

2 жыл бұрын

you should ty this with pinch valves... made a shot dispensing water cooler with them

@BartSliggers

2 жыл бұрын

Please install fly back diodes for your solenoids, or else you might damage you transistors, or more ....

@1will2000will1

2 жыл бұрын

This is really cool! I have a thought though. I wonder if it would be easier to control the fluid if you added a small amount of vegetable glycerin to the water. You have to be sure it will not react with the highlighter (which I doubt but safety is important with chemicals) I'm also unsure if it would gum up the pumps but there are other possibilities for thickeners.

@theGoogol

2 жыл бұрын

It's amazing that you can replicate it but what I'd like to know ... how would you improve on the concept? I worked with a laser driven 2D waterfall concept (as a VJ, back in the 00's) and have since been wondering, as have many people, how a true 3D display in a large volume could be displayed. I'm a science enthusiast but I'm just that, just a fan. I do wonder, though; could laser interference be able to project voxels? Could you make a voxel by interfering laser bundles? Know what I mean?

Fluid mechanist here. I think you should look up how an inkjet printer works, because that would be a better design. Instead of trying to produce droplets on demand, just produce droplets consistently (like with a piddler design, that's how an inkjet printer does it). That's significantly easier. Then, you just need a fast baffle system to let droplets through to the display region or fall back on a collector pipe (not sure how easy that will be). This will make a binary image, line by line, which is kinda what you need for a display. The refresh rate will still be low, as that only depends on the fall time of the droplet; i.e. height and initial velocity. You can create higher speed jets (as long as the Reynolds number is below 2000 they will form laminar jets and repeatable droplets). Higher speed jets will allow for increased refresh rates. Anyways, that's my two cents!

@MysticX_X

2 жыл бұрын

This was interesting, I came across 2 types one that uses the heat or a resistor to expand the ink, and the second one uses piezo, the resistor looks way too complicated, I will try the piezo one, thanks

@arifibrahim590

2 жыл бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/X3iXzbmHp6idgpc.html - A video from theengineerguy has a great video on this topic of droplets, piezoelectric or resistor type seems like what industry uses to create reliable droplets. I feel with more development with this project it can look much more impressive!

@2wen98

11 ай бұрын

but then how would you light the needed points?

@maxk5065

11 ай бұрын

a wise 2 cents equal 4cents at least

@davidjennings2179

11 ай бұрын

​@@2wen98Same way as is already being done, this is talking about how to produce the falling drops, the rest of the system can still work the same.

So that's why I had trouble getting a couple of those solenoid valves for my next project...

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

I'll trade, one solenoid for one piece of soggy toast

@chrisbrooker9707

2 жыл бұрын

That one there was a violation and personally I wouldn't have it

@Zeddify

10 ай бұрын

same here joel

"this line contains the valve index" My brain picturing a VR headset in the line of text

@FaceFirst

2 жыл бұрын

Same thought

@Megaphonix

2 жыл бұрын

Hah, my ears perked up when I heard this and then found your comment

Now I don’t feel so bad about having dozens of “almost right” prototype iterations lying around.

@ShopperPlug

2 жыл бұрын

I know what you mean man lmao.

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

You should see my bag full of trash solenoid heads. There must be at least 100...and I don't know why I kept them all!

@eideticex

2 жыл бұрын

Have a box of PLA almost right parts. The box sits under the work bench I take my parts to in order to clean them up and inspect them. To think at one point I thought brim and support material would have filled that box faster than parts that failed in the design phase for whatever reason.

@ShopperPlug

2 жыл бұрын

@@eideticex I hope you know you can easily recycle ♻️ them and make PLA filament again.

@mbunds

2 жыл бұрын

@@3DprintedLife Now that's what I call "dedication to design proof!" I actually keep many failures, even some spectacular ones, as reference for what went wrong. I'm guilty of attempting a few ill-advised "stupid printer tricks".

Multiple drop timing can probably be solved by having multiple valves in a row, all connected to a single nozzle. Then you can step through the different valves for a single horizontal position and drop the water out the same singular nozzle.

I always appreciate it when people show just how hard these things can be and they really do take time and patience.

I think there's a better way than trying to create drops with valves. Instead create multiple streams of water falling down, with laminar flow. Then use flaps operated by solenoids to interrupt the streams. They wouldn't stop the flow, but they'd divert it into a trough to create gaps in the flow. It's kind of how those fountains work where you have water "worms" jumping from one place to another.

Wow. That's a tremendous amount of work. I max out at like 18 hours for my circuit bending and building projects, after that I get distracted by a new idea. I definitely respect your dedication

Excellent engineering!

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

Thank ya!

@GimmeMonie

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly! And that's why I subscribed :)

Thank you for documenting and sharing your unfinished build. I'm impressed by how many iterations youhave gone through, very interesting watch.

absolutely love your tenacity and willingness to scrap old work in favor of a better/simpler solution

I really liked your sharing of the nozzle design modifications and performance tests. Amazing work!

a nozzle cut at an angle will help drops detach (like a needle). A demultiplexer using SPI would allow you to run up to 10mhz which is much faster than any solenoid. This would also take all the load off the mcu since it would only be sending out an SPI stream. I would precalculate the droplets using a script on the pc and only send a binary on/off to each nozzle. Run a row loop using a timer (at least 1/2 the max solenoid freq but less is better) (1 row = 1 "packet") nested in a frame loop (1 complete image worth of rows) on the controller and then you can send a very short row packet. 1010 would actuate nozzle 1 and 3 for instance. each packet is one row and if solenoid can do 6 drops per second your loop should have 3 steps just like Nyquest frequency on an Oscope. The frame loop can be used to control the UV leds and to group rows into images. You can either flash them 1 per row to animate drops or 1 per frame to animate an image. A demultiplexer using SPI would allow you to output rows up to 10mhz which is much faster than any solenoid. This would also take all the load off the mcu since it would only be sending out an SPI stream. As the loop runs it will take 1 row of pixels and send them to the demux over SPI. Once an entire image of rows has been sent the frame loop increments and sends the first row of the next image. By incrementing the row loop at 1/2 the speed of the solenoids, you can make sure the solenoids don't miss ant pixels if there are any mechanical timing issues.

@AlexKivikoski

2 жыл бұрын

Brilliant.

@excitedbox5705

2 жыл бұрын

@@AlexKivikoski lol I just realised when I moved the first sentence of the last paragraph it got duplicated. I hope this helps though.

My Dad already solved this problem with a 3/5 Circled Plain on/off Valve except having it spin in a 360 Degree continuously moving motion. The water pulsed at a very hi rate but being motor driven, it didn't last long. What he used his water drop display for was to watch a projected VHS movie on a Non-Existant Screen - it Worked. Bestest Holloween Scary Movie Trick of the Year, I could watch that way of viewing a movie - for Hours.

Each seperate route from the hopper through the pipe and out the nozzles will have different pressure drops. As fluids take the easiest route you will find some lines get more flow than others which can account for the differences in consistency. Adding a small manual valve after the hopper allows you to add a tiny bit of back pressure to equalise all lines.

Hell yeah dude so glad someone is working on future concepts like actual Holograms, amazing work man I've had similar ideas after seeing that Gatorade ad but you're out here doin the lords work boii keep it up 🔥🔥🔥

Automotive fuel injectors might be a better option than the solenoid valves.

@bltzcstrnx

2 жыл бұрын

Automotive fuel injector sprays instead of drops.

@petercoutu4726

2 жыл бұрын

@@bltzcstrnx that can be compensated for with a 3D printed cap on the end of the injector that has an internal volume that catches the spray and displaces enough water to release a single drop, while at the same time priming the internal volume with another charge of water. This is more practical with automotive fuel injectors rather than conventional solenoids because they are designed to make precise volumes that can be designed for and adjusted through software.

@danratsnapnames

2 жыл бұрын

automotive fuel injectors also needs allot of pressure to operate and lubrication. fuel is not water. and fuel is lubricated and water is a solvent.

@petercoutu4726

2 жыл бұрын

@@danratsnapnames pressure can be achieved with a generic fuel pump and the addition of a minor amount of light oil would provide for the lubrication. However the potential issues from lack of lubrication of fuel injectors are not as much of a problem in this case as compared to their intended use. Now potentially he could avoid some or all of the stated issues by using some more obscure water injectors from steam assisted engines, but that brings up the cost point, where fuel injectors are common and fairly expensive while still being accurate and easily controllable through the same use of a microprocessor and power supply.

@fullmetaljacket7

2 жыл бұрын

@@danratsnapnames ethanol fuel injectors don't need the lubrication.

You should add a flyback diode to each of the solenoids, as this will protect your transistors and decrease the time the solenoids return to idle state.

@suspense_comix3237

Жыл бұрын

Would slow down the closing of the solenoids though.

I suggest trying o-rings to seal the luer lock and investigate different needle lengths.

This is really cool. I can see a lot of promise in this kind of display. Can't wait to see the next one

Awesome work! That's real dedication getting those nozzles right. Well done

Really does motivate me for my projects, reminds me that every cool project has hours of failure and troubleshooting, thank you

Delighted you are having so much fun!

Great to see your engineering progress over the years since the 2Up days. I always look forward to glimpses of your latest projects.

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

I've definitely learned a ton since then, though there are still a few people out there running a 3uP! Not sure how 😁

It might be worth reaching out to thunderf00t about this project, he recently went through a whole ordeal to create a consistent microjet of water, whilst you are looking specifically for droplets, it might be that he could offer some insight into fluid dynamics that would help here, idk, this is a cool project anyways, can't wait to see a full volumetric version :P

I can just imagine that feeling when I show up with my fancy automated volcano to the science fair, and then you show up. :)

Really nice project, looking forward to v2!

Keep trying and never give up!!! You have a lot of potential, and once you learn what it takes to finally get your stroboscope display to actually work; you will have achieved something that will prove invaluable in the future... Awesome video-Thank you!

It's nice to see a true representation of success, it takes hundreds of failures first!

A small LED beamer that shines light exactly where the drops are could help with higher framerates

@zombieregime

2 жыл бұрын

They could use those hand fulls of transistors and break out the LEDs to make illumination planes or regions by lighting individual LEDs or pairs.

@mehrschwein7378

2 жыл бұрын

but then whats the point of water drops?

Need a valve that in the retract state draws fluid into a chamber through a one way valve(like a simple membrane valve), and 'sucks' a similar output valve closed. Then when it fires the fill valve is pushed closed and a measured volume of fluid is squeezed out of the output valve directly out of the nozzle. Sort of like how fog machine pumps work. suck, squirt, suck, squirt... Also, take some of those transistors and break out the LEDs into illumination planes. You can then follow a drop down with lights and once its far enough away, drip another drop into an illumination plane above it. Adding a small re-circulation pump would save having to fill the top hopper by hand, and allow it to empty into the lower catch pan afterwards avoiding spills. Add some reticulated open cell black foam or a honeycomb grating to avoid splash back too. There is a comment lower down about using tonic water that glows blueish, which might make for less pucker factor when dealing with the working fluid. Also also, bread boarding transistors is exactly the correct way to control coils. A true maker should not expect the MCU to do everything for them. And besides, coils have inductive kickback. Much easier to handle that with a proper control circuit off chip than find something with a snubber large enough for a range of applications inside the IC. Bread boards are nothing to be ashamed of or disappointed by. Anyone who says otherwise can come try to change my 15 years in theme park animatronics mind. But they might end up disappointed ;)

It’s so cool you engineered and build this!

I am designing an ultra high performance solenoid driver. It has boot strapping for 2x turn on voltage, peak and hold for low turn off energy, and a zenner diode for even faster turn offs. For solenoids this small you could even just use a boost converter and bump the turn on voltage way up.

your channel is amazing!!! it should have at list two million subs , keep up the good work and youll probably become a massive youtuber in no time!

Your vids are always top quality 😄

This man is a legend! He made science fiction dreams a reality!

VERY cool project dude! Very inspirational

It is incredible how you fixed problems I honestly thought were way too finicky for a cheap/simple solution. Can't wait to see what the result is after a few more months of refinement!

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks, I'm excited for it too! I've been able to get way more consistent and clean drops during the tail end of my preliminary testing, I'm hoping after some more work I can achieve results that clean for all 8 (and eventually 64) valves!

Nice work! The industrial printer we use at work uses piezo actuators to emit dots of ink. The ink would drip from the nozzles, but something called a meniscus system holds the ink up. This is a vacuum used to hold the ink in a suspended position. Then the piezo has just enough force to push a droplet out. Your valve system is using a seal to hold and gravity to emit. Maybe you could modify your valve design to use the solenoid plunger to overcome a little vacuum. This way you might have a faster reaction time. The volume of the plunger can also be changed to adjust the drop size.

Heck yeah, cool original inspiration and cool recreation.

I think you could just use a reamer on your 3D prints to get a smooth and consistent exit tube. Awesome project! :)

Can't wait to see the next video! Subbed!

Great attempt, looking forward to watch your videos, you are a genius !

Dude what a cool project. Love the fluorescent water and the blacklight . Looks like lasers

I think you can also use electronic fuel injectors and a fuel pump so the stream can be pressurized and more precise thereby you can increase your refresh rate. You'll just need to refocuse your spray into a narrow stream by adding short unsharpened injecton needles at the tips

Try adding a cell phone vibrator to shake the valves. The vibration can decrease the surface tensions ability to stick to the surface. This would likely allow you to get better drop control. This video shows a setup were the water drops change from static to dynamic friction. The vibration would keep the system in dynamic friction and would liked remove many compensation needs.

I love to see a follow-up on this project :D

Silanized nozzle tips will allow for more predictable droplet detachment. Alternately, you can invert the process to create images using voids with interruptions in the stream. Distilled water will help the system last longer.

very good idea, nice attempt, do not give up

Another great video brother. Thanks!

You have my respect, keep doin your thing man!

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

Will do!

Awesome work!

Few suggestions to make calibration of drops more consistent. 1.) You'll want some sort of pressure regulator for your water source to ensure you get consistent pressure. 2.) You'll also want to ensure your source provides enough hydraulic power. Meaning even though you have consistent pressure, you'll want to provide as much flow as well. There's two reasons for keeping both pressure and flow consistent. When you're calibrating droppers one at a time it doesn't take into account the fact that in the setup you may be running all the dropper simultaneously. Which will change your input pressure and flow for other nozzles. And as your reservoir depletes your input pressure will drop. Few cheap solutions.. Hook your water source to a water line in your house. Or make your water source bigger, like a home depot bucket (equivalent to using a bigger capacitor) For sealing, if you go with o-rings just make sure you're not over squeezing. A thou worth of squeeze is sufficient. Any more and you're over stressing and possibly warping your dropper assemblies thereby introducing a leak path.

Very cool! Interesting to see the solution in the advertisement scaled down.

It looks easy at the beginning. But it turns out a lot more difficult than ever expected. But at this time you realize, you already put a lot of money, time and work in the project, so you have to go on.

Love this project!

Just had a quick idea and haven't checked if anyone else suggested it. What if you used some little speakers with plastic cones and a couple of check valves, reed type maybe to produce the drops. This should allow super fast drop and control of drop size. Make a little cavity and have the speaker pull a small amount of water into the cavity (cone in) and then shoot it out (cone out). You could try different voltages and polarities to modulate the drop size and timing. Thanks for the video.

Dude that is SO cool

Excellent work.

Can’t wait for the 3D version

This is sick bro!

Nice work!

Nice work!!!!

Interesting and well presented, thanks

This channel is extremely awesome

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

Glad you think so!

As cool as it would be to have a fast refresh rate, which i suppose could be increased by making the drops higher velocity, I'm pretty sure the original commercial was just shot at a low frame rate and then sped up in post. More like stop motion rather than being done in real time.

You're a role model!

Awesome job

You are speaking like not producing a custom PCB for prototyping is a shame. It is not! Every professional hw developer does it like that. Great video! Greets from an hw-engineer.

@ShopperPlug

2 жыл бұрын

That is true, from breadboard concept design, if everything works well, it is worthy to be made into PCB.

it'd be so cool to make a 2d pendulum wave equivalent with this sort of tech! that'd be awesome

Using surface tension to create a relaxed state.. I like it. 🤜🏼🤛🏼🇦🇺🍀🍀🍀🤓

One of the coolest stroboscopic effects I have seen recently was from Childish Gambinos performance on SNL of "This is America" this was an in camera trick of course timing the lasers with the frame rate but it was still incredible.

invert the display let the water run. this might be better.. also drill & tap the back of the solenoids and add hard stop limit the travel to a tight gap.. another option is use some fuel injectors.

Excellent!

dang, this is cool!

Creative video, thanks :)

Instead of making valves spit water to make pixels, try making them constantly send a stream of water, and close them briefly when you need a pixel. Basically, inverting your idea may help with consistency.

For your exit tube you should look into Thunderf00t's videos about a glass blowing kit for metallic water production. The nozzle he produces from a syringe is capable of dispensing incredibly tiny droplets. Equivalent nozzles from lab suppliers are extremely costly so his trick to produce them while it seems to take a little practice is kind of remarkable for how simple it is.

Cool project

Cool! Would make a brilliant spectrum analyser, make it music sensitive, convert it to 3d with more nozzles=more resolution! Even different colours could be possible with somekind of RGB mixing? The possibilities are endless.

Excellent project. Love it! I think you might have overlooked the coil drivers circuit. You can improve a lot the timing and speed of the actuation (specially the shutoff speed).

No sure if it's been mentioned elsewhere, but Mineral Oil could be another suitable fluid for this project I've also seen similar setups (although less technical) that used fishing line to guide the droplets down. Also, a recirculation pump to send the fluid back to the beginning could be handy for longer runtimes/continuous use

Great video. And you also accidentally discovered how Mountain Dew is made. :D

You should definitely use a webcam (or some other method) to be able to automatically calibrate each solenoid. You could also extend it to measure variation of solenoids which could help automate your testing of new valves you design.

You may add a water pump for more speedy water out for more frame per second. And upgrade your lighting system for faster, colorful and filled projection on water drop

Wet 2D Hologram? Nice! :D

the external webcam for calibration seems like a great idea.

that looks so cool. good luck with that massive 3d one. also doesn't the feather support wifi so you could do a local host and get it to download the csv and then run it off local memory maybe allowing it to be faster? and i dont know if its different for solenoids but i dont know if you need a 'flyback' diode when dealing with inductive loads like that. like to clarify im really not an expert. Best of luck for the next one!

Check out PCbarnun’s video. Kind of takes the same concept, but instead of timing the droplets for each frame the droplets are consistent and he uses a projector to color each droplet as it falls.

Don't forget to put a diode for each solenoid to prevent back emf voltage destroying your precious circuitry :)

@3DprintedLife

2 жыл бұрын

Good call I won't forget a flyback diode on the full pcb!

@Dancer148

2 жыл бұрын

Back EMF diodes for coil circuits i.c.w. transistors are not optional but necessary! Not only does back EMF destroy your transistors but most importantly in your situation eliminating it with a propper diode will fluently flow the water drops! Creating a real smiley :)

This reminds me of makin a holograph projection. It requires a projector. It requires a projection screen. Possibly projection could be in "mid air" by oscillating the air molecules to such a state they reflect the projection

Might be worth adding pressure to the water feed so it’s more consistent. The mass of your water changes as you use up the water, hence the pressure will drop in a gravity feed (unless you keep it topped off).

The difference between a solenoid and a pump is very small. A single sheet of flexible material with a couple of cuts to make the valves and diaphragm would give you a fixed volume (one drop) and remove feed pressure problems. Also, if you use a bridge driver you can close the valve faster. When I looked at doing this it was a long long time ago and I used counter chips and loaded each with their time and simply gated them to count exactly synchronous instead of software switching them (run time was an issue back then)

Have you thought about using a water droplet confinement system to even out the timing of the droplets falling? Or small fan driven ducting to reduce droplet fall rate at lower heights?

You might make nozzles similar to ink jets. Instead of heat vaporizing solvent, you could make miniature diaphragm pumps. The actuator could be similar to aquarium fish tank pumps. Or if you wanted to go ultra precise you could have an inkjet style head that uses a triggered spark gap to generate the “bubble”.

Good job!!! As always XD. I thought that if instead of dropping the drop of water you shot it you would have a more linear acceleration. This being that the drop has less time to accelerate. However the firmware must be much faster. To shoot the drop you can do as a mini syringe always with solenoids, in my opinion it would be much better.

Very cool project 🔥👌🏻🇩🇪

you can also solve the multiple drop issue with addressable led strips instead of on/off strips.. you can even change colors. but not sure if the UV will work out though.. just a thought..

Very cool. Have you considered putting a laser under each channel and flash it instead of using a strobe. With a prism mixer you could do RGB dots. You can measure drop position (instant when it leaves the nozzle at least) instead of controlling the droppers as precisely. You might even be able to just have a single solenoid or a speaker. You will have to worry about what happens when the drop hits the laser at the bottom. Also the drop velocity will be a problem you may have to take some measures to deal with. It may have to be very tall to get the drops up to terminal velocity or use air to accelerate the drops or even do it in a partial vacuum with oil. It would be a tradeoff between plumbing and mecatronic vs optics.