THP Entry: A $300 Pick & Place 3D Printer

pnp

With the advent of cheap PCB fabrication, (relatively) easy to use layout tools, and a whole host of prototypes for nearly any device imaginable, the age of custom circuits is upon us. The tools to make these custom circuits, though, are usually hilariously expensive or simply unavailable to all but the most resourceful hackerspace. It would be great if every workshop in the country had a pick and place machine, and the $300 Pick and Place / 3D printer would be a great way to introduce this tech to millions of electronic tinkerers around the world. It also makes for a great entry to The Hackaday Prize.

The basic design of this machine is a delta bot. This is a wonderful choice over a Cartesian bot; deltas are faster and can have higher acceleration, a great thing to have if you want to throw together a few boards quickly. Although the configuration looks a little inverted as compared to other 3D printer delta bots, there’s a reason for this: the design was simulated with evolutionary algorithms and statistical tests to find the best geometry for the machine. The completed machine should be able to place 0201 components; anything smaller would be called dust.

The software hits all the marks, using OpenCV for image processing, ARM boards for motor control and computational tasks, and a good bit of mechanical and pneumatic work to suck up the parts. They’re even working on a 3D printed tape feeders. Now a component often overlooked when looking at the total cost of pick and place equipment is essentially free.

It’s awesome work, and even if they don’t win The Hackaday Prize, it’s still something every hackerspace should have. Now if someone would only crack the through-hole plating problem…


SpaceWrencherThe project featured in this post is an entry in The Hackaday Prize. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes.

Entry Is Easy: The Hackaday Prize

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1N5oM4hmw8&w=580]

 

Failing to submit an entry for The Hackaday Prize is a big mistake. The worst you can do is make an awesome contribution to Open Hardware, but you could win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes. It’s simple to get started:

  1. Sign up for an account on Hackaday.io
  2. Start documenting your project with the tag #TheHackadayPrize
  3. Click the “Submit project to…” button to make it official

Not simple enough? We even made some screenshots to prove how easy it is. Check them out after the break.

Make it connected, make it open, make it awesome, and you could win!

Continue reading “Entry Is Easy: The Hackaday Prize”

THP Judge: Ian From Dangerous Prototypes

ian-dangerous-prototypesAs we start to get into the swing of The Hackaday Prize we want to take some time to talk to the judges.

[Ian Lesnet] is an accomplished hardware developer. He is, of course, near and dear to our hearts as a Hackaday writer emeritus.

During his time here he came up with an idea for an amazing tool that would let you work with components using a multitude of protocols before heading off to write your firmware. The tool was called the Bus Pirate and [Ian] built an formidable Open Hardware community up around this and several other tools and unique ideas.

[Hackaday] Why do you think people should put together an entry for The Hackaday Prize?

[Ian] There’s never a bad time to hack something together, but with an incentive like SPACE!!! how can you refuse?

[Hackaday] If you could enter, what style of project would you build and where would you try to go with the idea?

[Ian] We like to make electronics hardware that helps debug stuff, but lately we’re rocking more potentially deadly machines that do things. I’d finish up our death chomp robot that slices and dices reels of components into handy kit-sized lengths, while printing values and part numbers on the back paper. Definitely not a winner, but it looks great when it’s chewing parts!

[Hackaday] Is there anything that participants can do with their project write-ups to make your life easier as an adjudicator?

[Ian] Writing and English classes are a special hell for me, but there are some good tips for clear communication. I always start with an overview – “tell them what you’re going to tell them”. This usually means a description of the hack, the major components used, and how they work together. The introduction should have enough info that another hacker can piece everything together without digging through the whole writeup. An overview illustration or hand drawing explaining the methodology is really helpful for visualizing a complex hack.

[Hackaday] You have vast experience with Open Hardware projects. I think one of the tough things for beginners is navigating the Open Hardware licenses available. Do you have any advice for noobs to learn more about licenses and perhaps on narrowing them down?

[Ian] If you want the world to be a better place put all your work in the Public Domain (Creative Commons Zero) for anyone to use however they want. That’s the license with the least bullshit attached. If you have a billion dollar secret idea by all means keep it in your closet and show it to no one, because that’s about the only thing that will protect it from innovators and imitators. Other licenses fall somewhere in the middle, but for our stuff we’ve decided to go Public Domain wherever possible.

[Hackaday] We’ve seen a lot of collaborative projects come out of DP. Do you have any advice you can share for finding collaborators for a hardware project?

[Ian] The best advise I’ve heard (not mine) is to wait until a project is done to decide ownership share. Hackers are quick to settle on equal ownership, but during the project (or the long haul support period) collaborators may loose interest or be unable to continue as planned. With equal ownership remaining team members must finish the whole project just get a portion of the future gains. It demotivates the remaining team members and kills momentum. By waiting to see how things play out you’ll have a much better idea how to divide ownership for a successful long term collaboration.

[Hackaday] Can you name a favorite piece of bench equipment and tell us why it is at the top of your list?

[Ian] For years I used $10 “fire starter” soldering irons, even for surface mount soldering. An adjustable iron is a nice thing to have though, along with a bright light and head magnifier. A hot air rework station is the tool I can’t live without. It’s for fixing mistakes, which I make constantly, and when it dies everything crashes to a halt.

[Hackaday] What do you think of the evolution of the kit and small-run electronics industry over the last decade? Where would you like to see it go, and do you have any insights about what will get it there, or possible barriers that stand in the way?

[Ian] It’s huge now. Crowd source funding sites alone have become home to how many cool hacks, designs, and projects? Local, short-run assembly houses using a fairly standard set of components would make it a lot easier to get into hardware without 1337 soldering skillz.


SpaceWrencherThe Hackaday Prize challenges you to build the future of connected devices. Build the best and claim a trip into space or one of hundreds of other prizes.

The Hackaday Prize: A Ternary Computer

Bender: Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere… and I thought I saw a two.
Fry: It was just a dream, Bender. There’s no such thing as two.

– Futurama: A Head In The Polls, S02E07

The computer you’re using right now is simply just a highly organized state of electrons, commonly expressed in states of zero and one. Two? What is two? A ternary, or base-3, computer would be odd, disturbing, but nevertheless extremely interesting, making it a great candidate for The Hackaday Prize.

A base-3 computer isn’t a new thing, despite how odd it sounds. Moscow State University built a few dozen ternary computers named Setun back in the late 50s, and some research is being done using quantum computers and ternary arithmetic. Still, building a ternary computer from first principles – gates, truth tables, and transistors – isn’t something that’s done nowadays.

[ThunderSqueak] has been hard at work over the last few months working out the basic building blocks of her ternary computer project. She’s already figured out the basic NAND, NOR, and inverter structure that could be easily translated into assemblies made of discrete components or an IC mask.

A iDevice app, iCircuit, is being used to test out some larger circuits, using +5, -5, and 0 Volts to represent 1, -1, and 0. Going further, there are a few academic resources for constructing a ternary ALU and even ternary SRAM. While a homebrew ternary computer has little practical use, it’s an awesome example of the, ‘because it’s there’ engineering we’re looking for in a great Hackaday Prize entry.


SpaceWrencherThe project featured in this post is an entry in The Hackaday Prize. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes.

Get Your Uni, School Or College Involved In The Hackaday Prize

We’ve been busy contacting design tech and electrical engineering education departments to tell them about The Hackaday Prize, but there are only so many of us and we could do with your help to get the word out.

Are you excited about The Hackaday Prize? Do you think more people at your school should know about it so they can take part? Either way, please help us help them by emailing prize@hackaday.com to let us know what program coordinators, student group, or other people we should contact. If appropriate, we have a bunch of promotional materials we would like to send out to some of these awesome hackers.

You can also help us by telling your hacker designer friends, posting about The Hackaday Prize on college social media (#HackadayPrize), or letting the student newspaper know. We want to get as many universities, colleges and high schools involved as possible. Many senior year project ideas would make great starting points for THP entries, and we want to make sure students take up this opportunity to show off what they can do (and hopefully win some stuff in the process). This makes a great summer project, and looks great when applying for colleges or jobs in the future.

Remember you have until August to get your entry in, but the sooner you post it on Hackaday Projects, the sooner you can potentially start winning rewards. We have hundreds of tshirts, stickers, patches, posters and other swag up for grabs on the way to winning The Hackaday Prize.