A Weird Kind Of Printer

December 19, 2013 by James Hobson 23 Comments

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[Benjamin] is just putting the finishing touches on his home-made, paper-stabbing, needle-printer!?

From a distance, it looks like the bare bones of a regular inkjet printer, but it’s not. Instead of an ink-head it features a needle — It’s kind of like a dot-matrix (hole-matrix?) printer. He’s using it for silk-screening masks, which we have to admit, must be pretty handy — it certainly makes soldering SMT’s less scary! It could also be used for embossing or even braille printing.

The frame of the printer is laser cut out of clear plastic, and two Nema 17 steppers drive the X & Y axes. A simple solenoid actuator provides the needle-stabby action. He’s controlling the whole thing using an Arduino, and sending the data to it using a call-and-response protocol to avoid any data losses. It was built for just shy of $200, which was his original goal for the project.

Check it out after the break!

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Thermochromic Imaging

December 19, 2013 by James Hobson 10 Comments

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[clarii_d] is currently finishing up her thesis project on thermochromic pigment to silkscreen receipts. The idea behind it is that when a receipt is touched, part of it fades revealing a hidden message.

As you can guess, thermochromic paint is a type of substance that changes color when introduced to heat — or in this case, fades altogether. Remember when mood rings were all the rage? Same thing.

In her project she is using silkscreening to transfer text onto the back of receipt paper using regular ink. Once dried, she silkscreens an image over top of the message, this time using a thermochromic pigment. The result is a slightly obscured image, but after holding it for a few seconds, it disappears and only the text remains.

Color-changing anything is a bit gimmicky, but we think [clarii_d’s] project is a pretty cool and unique application of it. A few years ago we shared another interesting project utilizing thermochromism; a color-changing clock face that utilized the heat given off by resistors!

Snowden Immortalized As Bond Villain In Edge-Lit Acrylic Poster

December 17, 2013 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

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[Wilywyrm] needed to come up with a final project for art class that commented on a social issue. Healthcare, schmealthcare, he said, and busted out this movie poster about the NSA spying scandal instead.

The circuit uses three extended-duty astable 555 timers to control the brightness of the 5050 RGB common-anode LED strips that run up the sides of the 24″ x 12″ x 1/4″ acrylic panels. Each of the three panels was laser-engraved at 600 DPI on an Epilog laser engraver and features a different aspect of the poster. There’s one for Snowden, one for Daniel Craig, and one for the text.

[Wilywyrm] tied the color channels together in the first panel to output white light. He used red for the second panel and blue for the third. A complete list of parts with build notes is available on his Google Drive. [Wilywyrm]’s notes include improvement ideas, like making all the RGB strips color-adjustable with more 555s or a microcontroller and timers.

Perhaps [Wilywyrm] could get into the clear whiteboard business after college.

Roboxotica (Barbot Festival In Vienna)

December 13, 2013 by James Hobson 9 Comments

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Just this past week was this year’s Roboexotica 2013! The annual event was the world’s first and is perhaps the finest festival of cocktail serving robotics out there!

Founded 15 years ago in San Francisco, Roboexotica brings together scientists, hackers, and artists from all around the world to build the most awesome drink dispensing technologies. It’s also an opportunity to discuss innovation, science fiction, and the world of robotics to come — after utilizing some of the robots of course!

The photo above is of one of the popular bots from this year — it’s called the Minecraft Cocktailbot. It dispenses the liquor out of its floppy drive, but only when you control it from inside a game of Minecraft!

More of the barbots present at Roboxotica can be found on the main site. We think our second favorite is the Bunnybot. It defecates peanuts — the mightiest of all in pellet-form bar food.

Stick around after the break to see the Minecraft Cocktailbot in action!

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Steampunk Battleship Complete With Steam Engine!

December 11, 2013 by James Hobson 10 Comments

The photo above doesn’t do this huge and whimsical Steampunk Battleship justice. It’s an amazing project that took its creator, [Ed Ross], over 2500 hours to complete.

Called Barnum’s Dream, it was said to be originally commissioned by Queen Victoria as a ship for the Crimean war, and was the largest paddle wheel steam warship ever built. It was then retrofitted with a massive train carriage to be used in the Franco-Prussian war (that’s right, on land!).

The model is just over 4 feet long and just under 4 feet tall. Aside from the steam engine (which was modified) it was completely build by hand. Almost all of the mechanical linkages and powered by the internal steam engine. The level of detail that went into this is absolutely awe-inspiring.

If you enjoyed the background history of the ship, there’s a delightful tale of the ship’s apparent origins on [Ed’s] blog which is thoroughly enjoyable. Make sure to check it out after watching the video after the break.

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E-volo VC200 Makes Maiden Flight. Flying Cars Incoming

December 10, 2013 by Adam Fabio 83 Comments

The e-volo VC200 has made it’s maiden unmanned flight. Does the craft above look a bit familiar? We first reported on the e-volo team back in 2011. Things have been going great for the team since then. They’ve created an 18 motor (Octadecacopter?) prototype dubbed the VC200. The group has taken a smart approach to building their craft. Rather than try to keep everything in-house, they’ve created a network by partnering with a number of companies who are experts in their fields. A sailplane company laid up the carbon fiber composite frame for the EC200. Junkers Profly, a German aviation company, developed a ballistic parachute system in case something goes wrong in flight.

From the outside, the VC200 looks like a grown up version of the Quadcopters we’ve seen here on Hackaday. Even the control system used for the test flight looks like a modified Radio Control Transmitter. The motors are outrunner brushless motors. Props are carbon fiber. We’re hoping the control system is a bit more evolved (and redundant) than the systems used in R/C quads though. Just like in smaller scale models, batteries are still the limiting factor. The VC200 will only fly for about 20 minutes on a charge. However, e-volo says that new technology should allow it to extend that time to around an hour. Not very much for a cross country flight, but plenty to pioneer a new type of aircraft. Where do we sign for the beta program?

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DIY 3D Projector From An LCD

December 10, 2013 by James Hobson 7 Comments

We’ve shared many home made projectors in the past, but we think this might just be the first home made 3D projector!

[Nicholas] has created a wonderful write up on this project on his blog, and in an Instructable, and even more details are available on the original forum post (in French though).

To sum it up though, he’s using an old LCD from a broken laptop, split into two halves. By using a Fresnel lens and two separate optical lenses that are adjustable he can combine the two images (top and bottom of the LCD) on the wall. Then by adding a polarization filter to each lens, he can reuse the cheap 3D goggles from the cinema for his own setup to see in 3D! This style of passive 3D does require a special projector screen to keep the polarization intact — he’s using a Da-Lite Silverlight screen, whose metallic surface ensures the polarization is kept the same.

It’s a great project and is definitely worth checking out. If you’re in the mood for a smaller form factor projector, it’d be worth checking out this one we covered quite a few years ago!