Category Archives: joint

3D Printing, Halloween Style

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The wonders of 3D printing don’t stop coming. Whether it’s printing tools on the International Space Station, printing houses out of concrete, or just making spare parts for a child’s toy, there’s virtually nothing you can’t get done with the right 3D printer, including spicing up your Halloween decorations.

Not only is this pumpkin a great-looking decoration for the season on its own, but it can also transform into a rather unsettling spider as well for a little bit of traditional Halloween surprise. The print is seven parts, which all snap into place and fold together with a set of …read more

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Ask Hackaday: Whatever Happened to Wire Wrapping?

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Back in the 70s when I started getting interested in electronics, tons of magazines catered to the hobbyist market. Popular Electronics was my favorite, and I think I remember the advertisements more than anything, probably because they outnumbered articles by a large margin. Looking back, it seemed like a lot of ad space was sold to companies hawking the tools and materials needed for wire wrapping, which was very popular for prototyping in the days before solderless breadboards were readily available. I remember beauty shots of neat rows of small, gold posts, with stripped wires wrapped evenly around them.

To …read more

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Mechanisms: Couplings

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I was splitting wood one day a few years back, getting next winter’s firewood ready on my hydraulic splitter. It normally handled my ash and oak with ease, but I had a particularly gnarly piece of birch queued up, and the splitter was struggling. The 20-ton cylinder slowed as the wedge jammed in the twisted grain, the engine started to bog down, then BANG! I jumped back as something gave way and the engine revved out of control; I figured a hydraulic hose gave out. Whatever it was, I was done for the day.

I later discovered that a coupler …read more

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Super-small Robotic Joints Don’t Exist? They Do Now!

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[Tim] needed very small, motorized joints for a robot. Unable to find anything to fit the bill, he designed his own tiny, robotic joints. Not only are these articulated and motorized, they are designed to be independent – each containing their own driver and microcontroller.

None of the photos or video really give a good sense of just how small [Tim]’s design is. The motor (purple in the 3D render above, and pictured to the left) is a sub-micro planetary geared motor with a D shaped shaft. It is 6mm in diameter and 19mm long. One of these motors is …read more

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