Collaborate Disseminate
Is there anything more satisfying than building a useful machine from mostly junk? We think not. [ke4mcl] is a big fan of reusing and repurposing things before settling for the …read more Continue reading Woofer-Based Parts Cleaner Bounces to the Beat
Despite epithets like “bird-brain,” our feathered friends are actually pretty smart. Being able to maneuver in three dimensions at high speed must have something to do with it, and the cognitive abilities of birds are well-documented and still being researched. So it naturally makes sense to harness avian brainpower to …read more
Continue reading Cleaning Up the Yard with AI — Avian Intelligence
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys recap a week of hacks. A telescope mirror that can change shape and a helicopter without a swashplate lead the charge for fascinating engineering. These are closely followed by a vibratory wind generator that has no blades to spin. The Open Source Hardware …read more
In his continuing quest to reduce the parts count of a robot as far as possible, [Carl Bugeja] has hit upon an unusual design: robots built of almost nothing but PCBs.
Admittedly, calling these floppy four-legged critters robots is still a bit of a stretch at this point. The video …read more
Continue reading Flexible PCB Robot Flops Around To Get Around
[Andrzej Laczewski] has something big in mind for small parts, specifically SMD resistors and capacitors. He’s not talking much about that project, but from the prototype 3D-printed bowl feeder he built as part of it, we can guess that it’s going to be a pretty cool automation project.
Bowl feeders are common devices in industrial automation, used to take a big pile of parts like nuts and bolts and present them to a process one at a time, often with some sort of orientation step so that all the parts are the right way around. They accomplish this with a …read more
Continue reading A 3D-Printed Bowl Feeder for Tiny SMD Parts
Search for “bowl feeder” on Hackaday and you’ll get nothing but automated cat and dog feeders. That’s a shame, because as cool as keeping your pets fed is, vibratory bowl feeders are cooler. If you’ve seen even a few episodes of “How It’s Made” you’re likely to have seen these amazing yet simple devices, used to feed and align small parts for automated assembly. They’re mesmerizing to watch, and if you’ve ever wondered how parts like the tiny pins on a header strip are handled, it’s likely a bowl feeder.
[John] at NYC CNC is building a bowl-feeder with Arduino …read more
