[Hari] Prints An Awesome Spider Robot

Although we have strong suspicions that the model’s designer failed entomology, this spider robot is very cool. [Hari Wiguna] made one, and is justifiably thrilled with the results. (Watch his summary on YouTube embedded below.)

Thanks to [Regis Hsu]’s nice design, all [Hari] had to do was order a hexapod’s dozen 9g servos for around $20, print out the parts, attach an Arduino clone, and he was done. We really like the cutouts in the printed parts that nicely fit the servo horns. [Hari] says the calibration procedure is a snap; you run a sketch that sets all the servos to a known position and then tighten the legs in place. Very slick.

The parts should print without support on basically any printer. [Hari]’s is kinda janky and exhibits all sorts of layer-to-layer irregularities (sorry, man!) but the robot works perfectly. Which is not to say that [Hari] doesn’t have assembly skills — check out the world’s smallest (?) RGB LED cube if you think this guy can’t solder. Of course, you can entirely sidestep the 3D-printed parts and just fix a bunch of servos together and call it a robot. It’s harder to make building a four-legger any easier than these two projects. What are you waiting for?

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Laser Microscope Projection

looks totally safe to me

Ok, we’ll start this off by saying, looking at lasers can damage your eyes. Be careful. Now that we’ve got that absolutely clear, we couldn’t help but find this super quick and dirty laser microscope fascinating. Basically, they are just pointing a laser through a drop of water suspended from the tip of a syringe. The image of the contents of the drop are projected on a nearby wall. The drop seen in the video after the break was taken from a potted plant and you can see all kinds of life squirming around in there. Just don’t try it with this laser.

[via HackedGadgets]

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