Collaborate Disseminate
Even in technical disciplines such as engineering, there is much we can still learn from nature. After all, the endless experimentation and trials of life give rise to some of …read more Continue reading 3D Printing With a Drone Swarm?
When one thinks about microscopy, it seems to be mostly qualitative. Looking at a slide teeming with bacteria or protozoans is less about making measurements and more about recognizing features …read more Continue reading 3D-Printed Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope Measures Microns
Most CNC robots people see involve belts and rails, gantries, lead screws, linear bearings, and so forth. Those components need a rigid chassis to support them and to keep them from wobbling during fabrication and adding imperfections to the design. As a result, the scale is necessarily small — hobbyist bots max out at cabinet-sized, for the most part. Their rigid axes are often laid out at Cartesian right angles.
One of the exceptions to this common configuration is the delta robot. Deltas might be the flashiest of CNC robots, moving the end effector on three arms that move to …read more
Continue reading Cable Bots, Arise! Domination of the Universe is at Hand
A group of embedded developers from Sioux Embedded Systems in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, wanted to get experience working on Microsoft .Net. To make it fun they made it their project to produce a LEGO train with visitors at LEGO World, the official LEGO convention in Denmark. The team developed an application in C# to fully automate the train, with Mindstorms NXT and EV3 bricks as well as LEGO Power Functions motors controlling everything.
The train project carries a simple premise: the visitor chooses one of four colors, and the train goes and picks up a piece of simulated candy with …read more
Continue reading Monster Mindstorms Delta Bot Delicately Picks Candy
[Alonso Martinez] is an artist working on virtual characters at Pixar so it’s no wonder that his real life robots, Mira and Gertie, have personalities that make them seem like they jumped straight out of a Pixar movie. But what we really like are the tricks he’s used inside to bring them to life that are sure to get reused for the same or other things.
For example, Mira’s head can rotate in yaw, pitch and roll. To figure out how to make it do that he recalled having a joystick called the Microsoft Sidewinder Pro that had force feedback. …read more
Continue reading Pixar Style Robots Are Treasure Trove Of Building Tricks
It doesn’t happen that often, but this is the last time that [Lucas] comes back from hours of unattended 3D printing to find a large portion of plastic spaghetti mess and a partly disassembled Kossel. The crash sensor he designed will now safely halt the printer if it detects that something went wrong during the print.
Unattended 3D printing is even more thrilling if your delta printer’s effector platform attaches to the delta arms through magnetic joints. While magnetic joints have their benefits, a small irregularity in the printing process can cause them to detach. The unknowing printer will then …read more
