One of the most influential inventions of the 20th century was Big Mouth Billy Bass. A celebrity bigger than the biggest politicians or richest movie stars, there’s almost nothing that could beat Billy. That is, until [Kiara] from Kiara’s Workshop built a Magikarp version of Big Mouth Billy Bass.

Sizing in at over 2 entire feet, the orange k-carp is able to dance, it is able to sing, and it is able to stun the crowd. Magikarp functions the same way as its predecessor; a small button underneath allows the show to commence. Of course, this did not come without its challenges.

Starting the project was easy, just a model found online and some Blender fun to create a basic mold. Dissecting Big Mouth Billy Bass gave direct inspiration for how to construct the new idol in terms of servos and joints. Programming wasn’t even all that much with the use of Bottango for animations. Filling the mold with the silicone filling proved to be a bit more of a challenge.

After multiple attempts with some minor variations in procedure, [Kirara] got the fish star’s skin just right. All it took was a paint job and some foam filling to get the final touches. While this wasn’t the most mechanically challenging animatronic project, we have seen our fair share of more advanced mechanics. For example, check out this animatronic that sees through its own eyes!

Biking can be an incredibly rewarding hobby, but what do you do with all of your expensive pieces of metal and composite when you aren’t hitting the trails? They take up space that you could use for more bikes! [Chaz] figured there had to be a better way and discovered the unlikely solution of the humble garage opener.

Garage doors are made to lift high with moderate weight, exactly what one would expect from a bike lift. If you have high ceilings in your garage or wherever else you store your bikes there can’t be much easier than pushing a button to get your bike out of the way.

To assemble the unusual bike rack, [Chaz] mounted the motor to the wall with a few scraps of wood, and built a wooden platform that rides along the rail. This additional board allows you to use a traditional bike wheel rack to gently raise the bike. While initially [Chaz] had some questionable results, this was quickly resolved with removing the rotational elements of the mount and allowing a slight slant in the bike.

While not everyone may need to raise their bikes to the heavens, this type of simple hacking is always rewarding to see come together. If you want to see how some more bike specific tech works, check out the insides of this expensive bike seat!

Surgery is hard, there is a reason why school is so long for the profession. Making the job easier and smoother for both patients and surgeons is valuable for all parties, which is why [Mayo Clinic] is now working on including 3D printing into its more regular medicine pipeline.

Prepping for surgery often requires examining CT scans of patients to figure out, well, what they’re even going to be doing. Every body is different, and complex surgical procedures require checking to see where certain organs or features are located. This can be made much easier with a physical model of where the bones, organs, or nerves are specifically located in a patient. While this isn’t true in every case of treatment, there are even cancerous cases where custom equipment can be used to decrease side effects, such as mini-beam collimator adapters.

What if you could use the same pipeline to print what was lost from certain procedures? In a mastectomy, the breast tissue is removed, which can cause negative attention from curious gazes. So why not 3D print a custom breast? Cases like these are generally considered poor commercial investments from industry, but are relatively easy for an existing medical facility to add to treatment.

[Mayo Clinic] is far from the first to consider 3D printing in the medical setting, but seeing the technology see actual applied use rather than future seeking is exciting. Medical hacking is always exciting, and if you want to see more examples, keep sure to check out this commercially available simulator (with some free models).

In the desktop 3D printing world, we’re fortunate to have multiple online repositories of models that anyone can load up on their machine. Looking to create a similar experience but for electronic projects, [Mike Ayles] created CircuitSnips — a searchable database of ready-to-use KiCad schematics available under open source licenses.

Looking for reference designs for LiPo chargers? CircuitSnips has you covered. Want to upload your own design so others can utilize it? Even better. Currently, there are over four thousand circuits on CircuitSnips, although not all have been put there purposely. To get the project off the ground, [Mike] scrapped GitHub for open source KiCad projects. While this doesn’t run afoul of the licensing, there’s a mechanism in place for anyone who wants to have their project removed from  the repository.

To scrape the depths of GitHub, [Mike] had to simplify the text expression for the KiCad projects using a tool he’s since released. For anyone so inclined, he’s even put the entire site on GitHub for anyone who wants to try their hand at running it locally.

CircuitSnaps fills a very specific space to post your circuit diagrams, but if you’re looking for somewhere to host your complete designs, we can’t fail to mention Hackaday’s own repository for hardware projects and hacks!

When someone creates a US patent, they go through a review process to stop the most blatant copies from previous patents or pre-existing work. After this, you may still have bad patents get through, which can be removed through litigation or publicly accessible methods such as Inter Partes Review (IPR). The latter of which is planned to be changed as we know it in the near future.

IPR is a method where an individual can claim that an existing patent is invalid due to pre-existing work, such as something the individual should have creative ownership over. While there is always the litigation method of removing blatantly fraudulent patents, a small business or the average person is unlikely to have the funds.

New regulations are changing how IPRs can be filed in some substantial ways. Now, if someone files an IPR, they give up the right to future litigation on their rights over a patent. This is obviously not ideal for someone who may have their own products on the line if an IPR is to fail. Additionally, IPRs will no longer be able to be even tried if there are existing cases against the patent, even under poor previous cases. While this change is meant to increase the efficiency of the patent office, there are some serious consequences that must be looked into either way. The patent office also cites IPRs being beneficial to larger organizations rather than the smaller businesses, though you can make your own conclusions based on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s arguments here.

Hackaday certainly can not give any legal advice on how this change will affect you, but there are cases given by both sides that may persuade you to write to your legal representatives if you live in the States. Even still, we here at Hackaday have seen our fair share of patent trolls causing issues. If you want a case of blatant patent shenanigans check out these 3D printing layers that promise improved strength!

Thanks [patentTrollsAreTheWorst] for the tip!

There’s never been such a thing as being “too competitive” when it comes to competition. This is something that [Tom Stanton] from “Tim Station”, [Tom]’s 2nd channel, took to heart for Polymaker’s 3D design challenge. The goal was simple: a single 3D printed part to hold as much weight as possible.

While seemingly simple, when considering the requirements, including a single print in addition to being able to open up for the mounts, the challenge gets exponentially more complicated. While the simplest and strongest joint would be a simple oval for uniform stress, this isn’t possible when considering the opening requirements. This creates a need for slightly more creativity.

[Tom] starts out with two flat C-shaped geometries to test his design. The design includes teeth specially placed to allow the forces to increase their own strength as force is applied. Flat features have the unfortunate quality of being able to slide across each other rather easily, which was the case during testing; however, the actual structures held up rather well. Moving onto the final design, including a hollow cavity and a much thicker depth, showed good promise early on in the competition, leading up to the finals. In fact, the design won out over anything else, getting over double the max strength of the runner up. Over an entire metric ton, the piece of plastic proved its abilities far past anything us here at Hackaday would expect from a small piece of PLA.

Design can be an absolute rabbit hole when it comes to even the simplest of things, as shown with this competition. [Tom] clearly showed some personal passion for this project; however, if you haven’t had the chance to dive this deep into CADing, keep sure to try out something like TinkerCAD to get your feet wet. TinkerCAD started out simple as can be but has exploded into quite the formidable suite!