3D print your very own working Stargate

While it may not be able to create an actual wormhole just yet, one Maker recently devised her own 3D-printed, Arduino-powered Stargate that actually dials.

Cara McNab brought the project to brought to life using an AT90USB1286 powered Printrbot Simple Metal 3D printer extruding gray (and some transparent ) PLA materials, before adding a stepper motor to drive the inner ring and 5mm NeoPixels to light up the chevrons. To round out the build, the DIY Stargate is controlled by an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) along with an Adafruit Motor Shield that uses a customized Arduino sketch.

“The gear was modified to snugly fit onto the stepper motor, and added a hole through which the stepper motor could be tightened to its mount,” McNab notes. “I combined some parts that were 2 pieces into one piece so that the build required less gluing and was structurally stronger.”

The entire creation measures just over 16 inches wide, making it a suitable decoration for any diehard Stargate fan — or for those with some serious intergalactic travel aspirations.

Intrigued? Well, travel on over to the project’s official page on Thingiverse here. You may also get a kick out of this ATmega2560 based DIY wormhole actualization machine as well.

Building a wormhole actualization machine

A wormhole, also known as an Einstein–Rosen bridge, is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would fundamentally be a “shortcut” through spacetime.

As Wikipedia points out, a wormhole is much like a tunnel with two ends each in separate points in spacetime.

Various representations of wormholes have been depicted on sci-fi shows like Sliders and Stargate, although most of us are (presumably) still wondering what it is really like to travel at hypersonic speeds through a wormhole.

Enter the wormhole actualization machine – a rather impressive Arduino-based (ATmega2560) psychedelic spacetime visualizer built by Alan Watts.

WAM – which was recently featured on BoingBoing – boasts 120 LEDs, an infinity mirror and some old-school NASA-inspired hardware.

The Wormhole Actualization Machine is currently on display at Northern-Southern in Austin.

Interested in learning more? You can check out a detailed project breakdown here.

The Stargate-Arduino (Chappa’ai) connection

A Stargate is a portal device within the fictional SG universe that facilitates practical, rapid travel between two distant locations.

According to Wikipedia, the devices first appear in the 1994 Roland Emmerich film Stargate – and subsequently in the television series Stargate SG-1 Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. 

The stargates – created millions of years ago by an alien civilization known as the Ancients – typically measures 4.6 m (15 ft) in diameter and weighs in at 29 metric tons (64,000 pounds).

Since a “proper” sized stargate may be a little too big for the average living room, den or basement, a Maker by the name of Shlonkin is working to create a smaller replica, (19cm in diameter), complete with a dialing computer.

“It will move and light up just like the version in SG-1. When a proper address is dialed, a connection will be opened up via the Internet to a corresponding device or computer,” Shlonkin explained in a recent HackADay blog post.

“Exactly what will be transmitted has not yet been decided. The hardware/Internet interface will be via [an Atmel-based] Arduino Uno (ATmega328 MCU). One team member, myself, will design and build the physical device. Another member, Dkopta, will create the software.”

Aside from the Atmel-based Uno, key project components include:

• Two 1.2mm polypropylene sheet
• Two 3mm polypropylene cutting board
• One wireless 10-key (IR)
• One stepper motor
• One SN754410 H-Bridge for the motor
• 7 red SMD LEDs and 1k resistors
• One plastic food container
• Assorted paints

“I will definitely post all the build details, but not until I make a little more progress. The parts are made with hand tools. I’ll probably use some thin(5mm) HDPE boards that are really easy to carve. I’ve never done anything this detailed with HDPE, so it will be a learning experience,” he added.

“We will go as far as we can get before the end of the contest. I would love it if the top chevron moved like in SG-1, but since it is so small(about 2cm) I don’t know if I will be able to pull it off, [but] I’ll think [about] it.”

Interested in learning more? You can check out the project’s official HackADay page here.