6-axis 3D Printer

October 14, 2013 by 18 Comments

We just stumbled upon this video by Professor [Yong Chen] and his students [Xuan Song] and [Yayue Pan] on a 6-axis 3D printer. The group is from the University of Southern California and their project is called the “Development of a Low-cost Parallel Kinematic Machine for Multi-direction Additive Manufacturing”.

That’s right. 6-axes of 3D printing. It uses six linear actuators to move the tool head in almost any direction. The whole thing is powered by a KFLOP board by Dynomotion, a company dedicated to premium motion control for CNC manufacturing and robotics and automation.

In the video they give examples of printing on angled surfaces and cylindrical surfaces — but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With 6-axes, parts could be designed with completely different characteristics, you could build up the base of a part, and then build off of it in different angles, no more horizontal layers throughout!

Unfortunately we haven’t been able to find any published information on their research, only this video — so stick around after the break and watch it in awe!

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Adventures In Hackerspacing: Freeside Atlanta, Part I

October 14, 2013 by 12 Comments

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The internet is littered with how-to step-by-step guides for starting and maintaining your very own hackerspace. Don’t worry, we’re not adding to the pile. If you want a checklist, Eric Michaud’s got that covered. Adventures in Hackerspacing is different: epic re-tellings, anecdotes, and behind-the-scene stories that fill in the gaps for those fragmented, laundry-list requirements. Here you’ll find nightmare scenarios come to life, clever legal loopholes to save the day, and overhauls that helped a space “click”. Adventures in Hackerspacing has plenty of advice to share, but like every good adventure, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

First up, Freeside Atlanta Part I: Philosophy and Culture.

I sat down with directors [Alan Fay] and [Steven Sutton] on a quiet summer evening to discuss how the space found redemption and success with its philosophy of promoting diversity and embracing humility.

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Build A DIY Plate Reverb

October 14, 2013 by 20 Comments

PlateReverb

[Telegraphy] needed a reverb for his recording studio. There are hundreds of computer-based and standalone digital reverb systems out there, but he decided to build his own plate reverb. Reverb is an effect used in many professional audio and music recordings. Reverb adds thousands of echos to an audio signal. These echos decrease in amplitude over time. When used correctly, the effect is generally very pleasing to the ear.

A plate reverb uses a plate of sheet metal to generate the reverb. An audio driver is placed in contact with the metal plate. Audio is fed into the driver, which vibrates the plate. The vibrations travel along the surface of the plate, bouncing off the edges and reflecting back. These reflections are captured by a pickup, which then converts them to a voltage signal. The final reverb effect is actually created in the sound engineer’s mixing board when the “dry” source signal is mixed with the signal returned by the plate.

[Telegraphy’s] plate reverb was built almost entirely from found, Radio Shack, and hardware store parts. The plate and frame are from Lowes. The audio driver is a cut up speaker from an old car stereo. The pickup is a modified piezo transducer from Radio Shack. As [Telegraphy] states several times, there are a lot of differing opinions on exactly how and where to mount the various parts of the reverb. Any placement will generate some reverb. The question is where and how to mount things for the best effect. Much like beauty and the eye of the beholder, the answer to that question is in the ear of the listener.

Jump past the break for a tour of a slightly more involved plate reverb at Gallery Acoustics Studio.

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Reverse Engineering A D-Link Backdoor

October 14, 2013 by 47 Comments

Here’s one true hack (Google cache link) for our dear Hackaday readers. On a Saturday night, as [Craig] didn’t have anything else to do, he decided to download the firmware of an old D-Link DIR-100 router (because who wouldn’t?). His goal was to see what interesting things he could find in it. He fired up binwalk to extract the SquashFS file system, then opened the router webserver on the multi-processor disassembler/debugger IDA. [Craig] discovered that the webserver is actually a modified version of thttpd, providing the administrative interface for the router. As you can see in the picture above, it seems Alphanetworks (a spin-off of D-Link) performed the modifications.

Luckily for [Craig], the guys at Alphanetworks were kind enough to prepend many of their custom function names with the string “alpha”. Looking at the disassembly of the http identification functions revealed that a backdoor is implemented on the firmware. If one malicious user has the string “xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide” as his browser user agent, no authentication is required to gain access to the router. One of the comments on the reddit thread points out that reading that string backwords results in: “edit by (04882) joel backdoor”.

PACCAM: Interactive 2D Part Packing

October 14, 2013 by 12 Comments

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Do you have a laser cutter or CNC router? How much material do you waste from project to project due to inefficient part packing? Enter PACCAM, a software interface designed by [Daniel Saakes] to aid in efficient 2D part packing.

Using a cheap webcam, it is possible to capture the outline of used material, exactly where it is located in the CNC machine. The software then can limit your workspace to the material available in the machine. New parts can then be dragged into place, automatically avoiding interferences — certain algorithms also exist to utilize the remaining material most efficiently.

Looking to engrave custom items? The software can do that too by showing you the material (or in this case, object), you can simply drag your design onto the material available, without having to worry about aligning your object inside the CNC machine!

In the video after the break, [Daniel] shows just how powerful and useful the software is by putting a crooked, cookie-cutter riddled piece of material in the machine, and then using the software to cut new parts out of what would be scrap material in any other shop.

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Turbot Is A Beam/Picaxe Hybrid

October 13, 2013 by 18 Comments

[James] wanted to build a BEAM turbot. He ran into some problems with the BEAM circuitry though, and ended up with a BEAM/Picaxe hybrid.
Beam robotics are the brainchild of Mark Tilden. The acronym stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics. BEAM based bots were very popular with hobbyists in the 90’s and early 2000’s, but popularity has since died down. BEAM robots tend not to use microcontrollers, instead attempting to simplify things down to the lowest number of elements.

[James’] turbot uses a miller solar engine. The original design used the engine to drive a Solar Turbot Latch. [James’] problem was that the photodiode “eyes” of the robot were not properly enabling the 74AC245 to pass current to the motor. Since the robot was built in a tiny space, debugging the circuit was extremely hard. After struggling with the ‘245 for some time, [James] decided to swich out the BEAM circuit for a Picaxe microcontroller.

The Picaxe can only sink or source about 20ma per pin, which is slightly less than the no load current of [James’] motors. To make up for this, he ganged up four pins per motor. There was some risk in the motors blowing up the Picaxe. However between the lightly loaded gearmotors and low current solar panels it seems to be working just fine.  Overall the bot is a very clean, compact build. Jump past the break to check out its really smooth crablike walking action.

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How Do You Build A Relay CPU?

October 13, 2013 by 48 Comments

relay

The Hackaday tips line is always full of the coolest completed projects, but only rarely do we see people reaching out for help on their latest build. We’ll help when we can, but [Tim]’s relay-based CPU has us stumped.

[Tim] already has the design of his relay CPU completed with a 12-bit program counter, sequencer, ALU, and a transistor-based ROM. The problem he’s having deals with the mechanics and layout of his homebuilt CPU. Right now, all the relays (PC pin, we guess) are glued top-down to a piece of cardboard. This allows him to easily solder the wires up and change out the inevitable mistakes. This comes with a drawback, though: he’s dealing with a lot of ‘cable salad’ and it’s not exactly the prettiest project ever.

The ideal solution, [Tim] says, would be a PCB with through-hole plating, but this isn’t easy or cheap for the home fab lab. We’d suggest some sort of wire wrap setup, but proper wire wrap sockets and protoboards are for some reason unreasonably expensive.

If you have an idea on how to do the mechanical layout and connections of a relay-based computer, drop a note in the comments. [Tim] has a very cool project here, and it would be a shame if he were to give up on it due to a lack of tools.

Video below, and if you’re having a problem with a project, feel free to send it in.

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