Category Archives: stepper

Light Painting Animations Directly From Blender

Posted on by

Light painting: there’s something that never gets old about waving lights around in a long exposure photo. Whilst most light paintings are single shots, some artists painstakingly create frame-by-frame animations. This is pretty hard to do when moving a light around by hand: it’s mostly guesswork, as it’s difficult to see the results of your efforts until after the photo has been taken. But what if you could make the patterns really precise? What if you could model them in 3D?

[Josh Sheldon] has done just that, by creating a process which allows animations formed in Blender to be traced …read more

Continue reading Light Painting Animations Directly From Blender→

Hackaday Links: July 29, 2018

Posted on by

Another holy scroll for the Church of Robotron. PoC || GTFO is a semi-annual journal of hardware exploitation, and something you must read. About a year ago, No Starch Press released the first Bible of PoC || GTFO, and now it’s time for a new testament. PoC || GTFO Volume 2 is out now, covering Elegies of the Second Crypt War to Stones from the Ivory Tower, Only as Ballast. It’s still Bible-shaped, with a leatherette cover and gilt edges.

KiCad version 5 is out, and you know what that means: It’s time to start on version 6. To …read more

Continue reading Hackaday Links: July 29, 2018→

An MRI-Safe 3D Printed Pneumatic Stepper Motor

Posted on by

You will no doubt have seen those videos where MRI machines suck up all sorts of metallic objects with hilariously disastrous results. The magnetic field in one of these machines can easily pull in metal objects from across the room, exerting a force of several hundred pounds on any ferrous object unlucky enough to wander too close. As you can probably imagine, designing mechanical devices that can operate in such an intense magnetic field is exceptionally difficult.

But this fully 3D printed pneumatic stepper motor designed by [Foad Sojoodi Farimani] might one day change that. The PneuAct, which he presented …read more

Continue reading An MRI-Safe 3D Printed Pneumatic Stepper Motor→

This Cetus Printer is Rigged for Silent Running

Posted on by

The entry-level 3D-printer market is a rich one, with offerings from many vendors that are surprisingly good. But nothing is perfect, and to hit the $200 price point some compromises are inevitable. That doesn’t mean you have to live with those engineering choices, of course, which makes these cheap printers a great jumping off point for aftermarket mods.

[Linas K] took this route and in the process made his Cetus 3D-printer essentially silent. The first part of the video below reviews the shortcomings of the stock machine and the mechanical changes [Linas] made, including new brackets for the Z-axis slide, …read more

Continue reading This Cetus Printer is Rigged for Silent Running→

Juggling Machine Listens to the Bounce to Keep Ball in the Air

Posted on by

It’s a seemingly simple task: bounce a ping-pong ball on a wooden paddle. So simple that almost anyone can pick up a ball and a paddle and make a reasonable job of it. Now, close your eyes and try to do it just by the sound the ball makes when it hits the paddle. That’s a little tougher, but this stepper-driven platform juggler manages it with aplomb.

That’s not to say that the path to the finished product in the video below was a smooth one for [tkuhn]. He went through multiple iterations over the last two years, including a …read more

Continue reading Juggling Machine Listens to the Bounce to Keep Ball in the Air→

Carousel of Cereals Mixes and Matches Custom Breakfast Blends

Posted on by

There are those who reckon the humble bowl of breakfast cereal to be the height of culinary achievement. Look askance if you must, but cereal junkies are a thing, and they have a point. The magic comes not from just filling a bowl and adding a splash of milk, but by knowing which cereals to mix together.

Who needs all that fussy mixing, though, when you can automate and customize your cereal dispensing chores? That’s the approach [Kevin Obermann] and [Adrian Bernhart] took with their Cereal Dispensing Machine, even if they went a little further than necessary. Laser-cut plywood forms …read more

Continue reading Carousel of Cereals Mixes and Matches Custom Breakfast Blends→

Simple Camera Slider Adds a Dimension or Two to Your Shots

Posted on by

Camera sliders are a popular build, and properly executed they can make for impressive shots for both time-lapse sequences or real-time action. But they seem best suited for long shots, as dollying a camera in a straight line just moves subjects close to the camera through the frame.

This slider with both pan and tilt axes can make moving close-ups a lot easier. With his extremely detailed build log, [Dejan Nedalkovski] shows how he went about building his with only the simplest of materials and tools. The linear rail is simply a couple of pieces of copper pipe supported by …read more

Continue reading Simple Camera Slider Adds a Dimension or Two to Your Shots→

A CNC Plasma Cutter Table, From The Shop Floor Up

Posted on by

Some projects are simple, some focus on precision and craftsmanship, and some are more of the quick-and-dirty variety. This home-built CNC plasma cutter table seems to follow a “go big or go home” philosophy, and we have to say we’re mighty impressed by the finished product.

For those who follow [Bob]’s “Making Stuff” YouTube channel, this build has been a long time coming. The playlist below has eight videos that cover the entire process from cutting the first tubes of the welded frame to the initial test cuts with the finished machine. [Bob] took great pains to make the frame …read more

Continue reading A CNC Plasma Cutter Table, From The Shop Floor Up→

Dive Inside This Old Quartz Watch

Posted on by

In an age of smartwatches, an analog watch might seem a little old-fashioned. Whether it’s powered by springs or a battery, though, the machinery that spins those little hands is pretty fascinating. Trouble is, taking one apart usually doesn’t reveal too much about their tiny workings, unless you get up close and personal like with this microscopic tour of an analog watch.

This one might seem like a bit of a departure from [electronupdate]’s usual explorations of the dies within various chips, but fear not, for this watch has an electronic movement. The gross anatomy is simple: a battery, a …read more

Continue reading Dive Inside This Old Quartz Watch→

Linear Clock is a Different Way to Look at Time

Posted on by

There are usually two broad user interfaces for clocks. On the one hand you’ve got the dial clock, the default display for centuries, with its numbered face and spinning hands. The other mode is some form of digital clock, where the current time is displayed directly as alphanumeric characters. They’re both useful representations of time, but they both have their limits.

Here’s a third model — the linear clock. [Jan Derogee] came up with it thanks to the inspiration of somewhat dubious run-ins with other kinds of clocks; we feel like this introductory video was made with tongue firmly planted …read more

Continue reading Linear Clock is a Different Way to Look at Time→