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95 Articles

CNC Hot Wire Cutter From Scanners

October 19, 2009 by 29 Comments

hot-wire-cutter-from-scanners

[Raul] built a CNC hot wire cutter that he uses for cutting shapes out of foam. His device uses two flat bed scanners to provide two planes of motion. One scanner arm has the foam mounted on it and provides the Y-axis movement. The other scanner has the hot wire mounted on it and provides the X-axis movement. The cutting wire is mounted on a flexed bow made from heavy gauge coat hanger wire.

He tapped into the logic board of one scanner to gain access to the motor movements. The other is connected through a couple of H-bridges. Both are controlled by an Atmel AVR ATmega128 which in turn takes its commands from a connection with a computer printer port. A python program uses vector graphic files in SVG format and traces the outline for cutting.

We’ve got a video of this in action after the break. At our request, [Raul] took some time to post a set of pictures and make comments on them. Thanks for the hard work and great job! Continue reading “CNC Hot Wire Cutter From Scanners” →

Barcode Scanner In Processing

September 22, 2009 by 3 Comments

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Reader [Nikolaus] decided that instead of using an existing image based bar code decoder, he would write his own. Using the Processing language he created a scanner that parsed the black and white pattern when a bar code was centered on the image. His code then parsed that data and compared it with the initializing character to provide a reference. Currently his scanner supports three character sets of the Code 128 encoding, and provided his complete code so that others could add as they see fit. He admits that the code is a bit messy due to the lengthy character tables, but very straight forward.

DIY 3D Gets A Nod At SIGGRAPH

August 27, 2009 by 3 Comments

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Among the courses at this year’s SIGGRAPH (an annual technical conference and showcase of the latest in computer graphics research) was an introduction to 3D scanning that covers all the bases: mathematical foundations, two different build-your-own hardware approaches, and how to process and render the resulting datasets. The presenters have assembled all the course materials on a top-notch web site featuring slide shows, complete source code, and an extensive round-up with links to both commercial and homebrew 3D scanning gear. The simplest of these methods requires nothing more than a webcam, halogen light source, and a stick!

SIGGRAPH and 3D scanning have been highlighted many times on Hack a Day, but we’re swelling with pride now seeing an academic venue give a favorable nod to the DIY hacking community (on their links page). Okay, so Hack a Day isn’t called out by name, but just wait’ll next year!

[Thanks Fahrzin]

Scanner Sensor Multi Touch

July 27, 2009 by 28 Comments

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/5765795]

[Kyle McDonald] had a Visioneer XP 100 portable scanner laying around, so he started trying to come up with alternative uses for it. In the video above, we can see a multitouch setup rigged together using Openframeworks in Ubuntu. As you can see in the video, there’s some considerable lag. That is due to the 250-500 ms of buffering built into the scanner. It does have nice resolution; 10k pixels wide at 60 fps, so it has to be useful for something (aside from scanning). Anyone got any ideas? He says if the field of view was wider, he’d use it on a river bed to watch fish.

130 Megapixel Scanner Camera

June 9, 2009 by 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9ZoaPIHQc]

Made from a 1200 dpi epson scanner and a manual focus canon lens, this camera captures 130 Megapixel images. With a resolution of 13,068 x 10,173, these pictures are very detialed. You can see some examples in his flickr set. It doesn’t look like they’re the full size originals though.  If you want to build your own, here’s a good start. Keep in mind that it’s from 2004 though.

Bohemian Rhapsody On Old Hardware

April 19, 2009 by 24 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht96HJ01SE4]

Here’s another junk music performance to add to the list. [bd594] put together this rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody on assorted computing equipment. The lead piano sound is from an Atari 800XL. Lead guitar is a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. An 8inch floppy plays bass while a HP ScanJet 3C covers the vocals. He had to dub the scanner four times to get all of the vocal parts. He wanted to use four independent scanners but the prices on eBay were forbidding. The use of oscilloscopes to show the wave forms in the video is a nice touch. Check out our post about Radiohead’s Nude for more examples of this.

[via adafruit]

Stepper Motor Controller From Old Scanner

April 10, 2009 by 7 Comments

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[Murray484] submitted his instructable on how to create a stepper motor controller from an old scanner. He removed the motor and controller from an old scanner then harvested the parts. He’s pretty much starting over, taking the ULN2003 chip from the scanner motor controller and putting it on a fresh board. He then wired it all up, installed the software and got it working. Finally, he built a container out of cardboard for it all. Though he could have made it nicer looking and used higher quality building materials, he was trying to make this a “green” project for the epilog laser cutter contest. He’s done a good job recycling, this could be pretty useful.