Design Analysis: Core XY Vs H-Bot

Hackaday writer [Joshua Vasquez] wrote about the mechanical difference between the Core-XY and H-Bot movements commonly used in 3D printers on his personal website. There are so many things a beginning mechanical designer can overlook when setting out to make a movement. Sometimes,in the case of these movements, they aren’t readily apparent, and like finding a troublesome pattern in code; have to be shown before the mind picks them up in future designs.

[Joshua] starts by describing how each movement works. At first glance, the H-Bot movement seems simpler and more effective than the Core-XY.  The Core-XY uses more belting, and some of the pulleys are out of plane with each other. However, this is done to eliminate a moment put on the frame in the H-Bot design. This moment can throw off the accuracy of the movement in unpredictable ways.

The Core-XY movement is one of our favorites. It keeps the motors stationary. It’s compact, precise, repeatable, and linear. It’s good to understand the mechanical reasons for this. Just like learning the SQL database calls a library has been obfuscating for you lets you write better code.

2,100 Mechanical Mechanisms

[Nguyen Duc Thang]’s epic 2100 Animated Mechanical Mechanisms is one of the best YouTube channels we’ve ever seen. A retired mechanical engineer, [Nguyen Duc Thang] has taken on an immense challenge: building up 3D models of nearly every imaginable mechanism in Autodesk Inventor, and animating them for your amusement and enlightenment. And, no, we haven’t watched them all for you, but we’re confident that you’ll be able to waste at least a couple of hours without our help.

If you’re actually looking for something specific, with this many mechanisms demonstrated, YouTube is not the perfect lookup table. Thankfully, [Nguyen Duc Thang] has also produced a few hundred pages of documentation (PDFs, zipped) to go along with the series, with each mechanism classified, described, and linked to the video.

This is an amazing resource as it stands, and it’s probably a good thing that we don’t have access to the 3D files; between the filament cost and the time spent shepherding our 3D printer through 2,100 mechanisms, we’d be ruined. Good thing we don’t know about the Digital Mechanism and Gear Library or KMODDL.

Thanks [alnwlsn] for the tip!
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Continuing Education Via Wheel Balancing

There’s an old saying that you should make things twice. Once to figure out how to build the thing, and again to build it the right way. [Pmbrunelle] must agree. His senior project in college was a machine to balance wheels. It was good enough for him to graduate, but he wanted it to be even better.

The original machine required observation of measurements on an oscilloscope and manual calculations. [Pmbrunelle] added an AVR micro, a better motor drive, and made a host of other improvements. As you can see in the video below, the machine works, but [Pmbrunelle] still wasn’t happy.

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How Retractable Pens Work

[Bill Hammack], aka the [EngineerGuy] is at it again, this time explaining how retractable ballpoint pens work.

pen-thumbIn this excellent video, he describes the simple (but remarkably sophisticated) engineering of the mechanism that allows a pen to pop the ballpoint mechanism out, then back in again. It is a great example of how to illustrate and explain a complex concept, much like his videos on how the CCD sensor of your camera works.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the video is an off the cuff observation he makes, though. The Parker company, who first developed the retractable mechanism, were worried that this new design might flop. So they didn’t put the distinctive Parker arrow clip onto the pen until a few years later, when the pen was a big seller. It seems that while some engineering problems are easy to solve, short-sighted accountants are a harder problem.

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Chicken-powered Pendulum

Every once in a while we get sent a link that’s so cute that we just have to post it. For instance: this video from [Ludic Science]. It’s a wind-up chicken toy that kicks a pendulum back and forth. No more, no less.

But before you start screaming “NOT A HACK!” in the comments below, think for a second about what’s going on here. The bird has a spring inside, and a toothed wheel that is jammed and released by the movement of the bird’s foot (an escapement mechanism). This makes the whole apparatus very similar to a real pendulum clock.

Heck, the chick toy itself is pretty cool. It’s nose-heavy, so that under normal conditions it would tip forward. But when it’s wound up, tipping forward triggers the escapement and makes it hop, tipping it backward in the process and resetting the trigger. The top-heavy chicken is an inverted pendulum!

And have a look, if you will indulge, at the very nice low-tech way he creates the pivot: a bent piece of wire, run through a short aluminum tube, held in place by a couple of beads. Surely other pivots are lower-friction, but the advantage of using a rod and sleeve like this is that the pendulum motion is constrained to a plane so that it never misses the chicken’s feet.

Our only regret is that he misses (by that much) the obvious reference to a “naked chick” at the end of the video.

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Bike Pedals In Both Directions, Gets You To Your Destination AND Back

[punamenon2] has built an interesting bike that moves forward regardless if it is pedaled forward or backwards! What? Yes, you read that correctly. Pedal forward or backwards and the bike goes forward. This project started off as any old cruiser with a free-wheeling rear hub. To pull off this mod a second free-wheel and sprocket had to be added to the current wheel assembly. One free-wheel and sprocket set is used when pedaling forward, the other set is used when pedaling in reverse. There is also a new chain tensioner that serves to not only keep the chain taut but also allows for the chain to change directions which ultimately allows this novel idea to work.

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Hackaday Links: August 25, 2013

hackaday-links-chain

[Adrian] came across a treasure trove of 507 mechanical device designs. It didn’t seem quite right for a Retrotechtacular post, but we wanted to share it as it’s a great place to come up with ideas for your next Rube Goldberg machine.

Biking with headphones is dangerous. That’s why [J.R.] built a handlebar enclosure for his Jambox Bluetooth speaker.

While dumpster diving [Mike] found a Macbook pro. It was missing a few things, like a keyboard, touchpad, battery, ram, and storage. He borrowed a power supply to test it out but without the keyboard there’s no power button. He figured out the traces on the motherboard which turn it on when shorted.

[Mateusz] want to let us know about the Hercules LaunchPad. Like the other TI Launchpad offerings it’s an all-in-one dev board. The Hercules line features a couple of flavors of dual-core ARM chips. Can you believe the dev boards you can get for under $20 these days?

After seeing the ammo can sound system about a month ago [Ilpo] was inspired to share his ammo can PC case with us.

And finally, here’s a way to display your Bitcoin mining rig for all to see. This system was laid out in an antique frame and hung on the wall.