3D Printing, Halloween Style

October 17, 2018 by Bryan Cockfield 3 Comments

The wonders of 3D printing don’t stop coming. Whether it’s printing tools on the International Space Station, printing houses out of concrete, or just making spare parts for a child’s toy, there’s virtually nothing you can’t get done with the right 3D printer, including spicing up your Halloween decorations.

Not only is this pumpkin a great-looking decoration for the season on its own, but it can also transform into a rather unsettling spider as well for a little bit of traditional Halloween surprise. The print is seven parts, which all snap into place and fold together with a set of ball-and-socket joints. While it doesn’t have any automatic opening and closing from a set of servos, perhaps we will see someone come up with a motion-activated pumpkin spider transformer that will shock all the trick-or-treaters at the end of this month.

It’s not too late to get one for yourself, either. The files are available on Thingiverse or through the project site. And we’ve seen plenty of other Halloween hacks and projects throughout the years too if you’re looking for other ideas, like the recent candy machine game, a rather surprising flying human head, or this terrifying robot.

Ask Hackaday: Whatever Happened To Wire Wrapping?

May 4, 2018 by Dan Maloney 129 Comments

Back in the 70s when I started getting interested in electronics, tons of magazines catered to the hobbyist market. Popular Electronics was my favorite, and I think I remember the advertisements more than anything, probably because they outnumbered articles by a large margin. Looking back, it seemed like a lot of ad space was sold to companies hawking the tools and materials needed for wire wrapping, which was very popular for prototyping in the days before solderless breadboards were readily available. I remember beauty shots of neat rows of small, gold posts, with stripped wires wrapped evenly around them.

To the budding hobbyist, wire wrapping looked like the skill to have. With a huge selection of posts, terminals, and sockets for ICs and discrete components, as well as a wide range of manual and powered wrapping tools, it seemed like you could build anything with wire wrapping. But fast forward just a decade or so, and wire wrapping seemed to drop out of favor. And today — well, does anyone even wire wrap anymore?

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Mechanisms: Couplings

April 5, 2018 by Dan Maloney 37 Comments

I was splitting wood one day a few years back, getting next winter’s firewood ready on my hydraulic splitter. It normally handled my ash and oak with ease, but I had a particularly gnarly piece of birch queued up, and the splitter was struggling. The 20-ton cylinder slowed as the wedge jammed in the twisted grain, the engine started to bog down, then BANG! I jumped back as something gave way and the engine revved out of control; I figured a hydraulic hose gave out. Whatever it was, I was done for the day.

I later discovered that a coupler between the engine shaft and the hydraulic pump failed dramatically. It was an easy fix once I ordered the right part, and I’ve since learned to keep extras in stock. Couplings are useful things, and they’re the next up in our series on mechanisms.

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Super-small Robotic Joints Don’t Exist? They Do Now!

September 12, 2016 by Donald Papp 11 Comments

[Tim] needed very small, motorized joints for a robot. Unable to find anything to fit the bill, he designed his own tiny, robotic joints. Not only are these articulated and motorized, they are designed to be independent – each containing their own driver and microcontroller.

6mm geared motor next to LEGO [Source: Pololu]

None of the photos or video really give a good sense of just how small [Tim]’s design is. The motor (purple in the 3D render above, and pictured to the left) is a sub-micro planetary geared motor with a D shaped shaft. It is 6mm in diameter and 19mm long. One of these motors is almost entirely encapsulated within the screw it drives (green), forming a type of worm gear. As the motor turns the screw, a threaded ring moves up or down – which in turn moves the articulated shaft attached to the joint. A video is embedded below that shows the joint in action.

[Tim] originally tried 3D printing the pieces on his Lulzbot but it wasn’t up to the task. He’s currently using a Form 2 with white resin, which is able to make the tiny pieces just the way he needs them.

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Variable Stiffness Joints For Robots And More

February 25, 2016 by Al Williams 10 Comments

The human body has many miraculous capabilities that we often take for granted. One of the more subtle ones is the variable stiffness of your joints. In technical terms, stiffness refers to the ability to resist a load. Delicately manipulating an artist’s paint brush, for example, doesn’t require much load resistance, but does require fine control. However, that same artist might pick up a bowling ball with a stiffer joint (and, usually, less fine control).

[Christopher Churchill] and some colleagues have a novel mechanical device that can rapidly change stiffness. The device could have applications in robotics and other devices. It can also transmit or attenuate vibration since non-stiff joints don’t pass vibrations as easily as stiff ones.

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