Intense Brushless DC Stage Brings More E-Bike Power

July 7, 2015 by Nava Whiteford 17 Comments

[ZombieSS] wrote in to share the latest iteration of his new open hardware Brushless DC motor high power output stage posted on the Endless-sphere forums. The thread is a gold mine of useful information on designing, building and debugging high power electronics and the whole thing is worth reading. This includes the story of issues he faced with common mode noise picked up by the probe leads on his Rigol, which sidetracked the project for a while.

We’ve covered various ebike hacks before, but the guys at endless sphere appear to be developing a number of solid open hardware designs in this area. This includes the Lebowski controller which [ZombieSS] used in conjunction with his design.

He has installed the controller and output stage on his electric bike, and you can see one of the first test runs in the video below. We look forward to hearing more from the awesome hackers at Endless sphere!

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Collabatorium On Wednesday

July 7, 2015 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Our next Collabatorium is just around the corner. On Wednesday we’ll open up the Hacker Channel for another action-packed discussion on what you’re building. Show your work, see what others are doing, ask for help, offer your skills, and more. It all begins at 19:00 CET (UTC+2).

All are welcome but you need to be added as a collaborator on the Hackaday Prize Hacker Channel. Go there now and click the “Request to join this project” link on the bottom of the left sidebar.

We had a blast last week with a huge mass of hackers hanging out in our virtual hackerspace. This week we’re changing up the time zones so that hackers in different parts of the world may take part. If you’re in Europe, this should be late enough that the work day done. Make sure to drop in and represent the hacker community in your part of the world. See you on Wednesday!

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

On-Demand Paper Clips

July 7, 2015 by Rich Bremer 19 Comments

3D Printers are great for printing out parts or items you need, but can they really help if you run out of paper clips? Yes, the all important and extremely overlooked bent metal fastener can put a serious damper on your day if not readily available. There is a solution to this problem, it’s called the Paper Clip Maximizer 1.0. The only consequence of using such a machine may be the destruction of mankind.

The machine takes a spool of wire and methodically bends it into a paper clip shape. Just like an extruder on a 3D Printer, there is a knurled drive wheel with a spring-loaded bearing pinching the wire. This drive wheel is powered by an RC servo that has been modified for continuous rotation. After the drive mechanism, the wire passes through a sturdy guide block. Upon exit, the wire finds the bending head, also powered by a servo. There is a bearing on the end of the bending head that is used to bend the wire around the guide block. After making several bends to form the paper clip, the bending head swings around to cut off the newly manufactured clip with an abrasive wheel. Unfortunately, this part of the process doesn’t work well. The cutoff wheel motor is powered directly by the Arduino that controls the entire machine, the power output of which is not enough to easily cut the wire. It can also leave a sharp burr on the cut wire which is not a great feature for paper clips to have. But we just see these as future fodder for hacking sessions!

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