Professional CNC Vacuum Table Holds Workpieces With Ease

April 12, 2016 by James Hobson 21 Comments

If you do a lot of one-off parts on your CNC machine you’ll know setup is the worst part of the process. Usually you’re using scrap material, you have to figure out how you’re going to clamp it, make sure the the piece is big enough to use, etc etc. Wouldn’t it be nice to just throw the material on the bed and start machining? Well, with a vacuum table as nice as this, you pretty much can!

[Jack Black] has an awesome CNC machine. As he’s been expanding his prototyping abilities, he decided he needed a better way of securing work pieces for machining, so he machined a two-piece aluminum vacuum table.
Continue reading “Professional CNC Vacuum Table Holds Workpieces With Ease” →

Robotic Vacuums Get Torn-down For Design Showdown.

April 8, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 7 Comments

Fictiv runs a 3D printing shop. They have a nice interface and an easy to understand pricing scheme. As community service, or just for fun, they decided to tear-down two robot vacuums and critique their construction while taking really nice pictures.

The first to go is the iRobot 650 model. For anyone who’s ever taken apart an iRobot product, you’ll be happy to know that it’s the same thousand-screws-and-bits-of-plastic ordeal that it always was. However, rather than continue their plague of the worst wire routing imaginable, they’ve switched to a hybrid of awfulness and a clever card edge system to connect the bits and pieces.

The other bot is the Neato XV-11. It has way fewer screws and plastic parts, and they even tear down the laser rangefinder module that’s captured many a hacker’s attention. The wire routing inside the Neato is very well done and nicely terminated in hard-to-confuse JST connectors. Every key failure point on the Neato, aside from the rangefinder, can be replaced without disassembling the whole robot. Interestingly, the wheels on both appear to be nearly identical.

In the end they rate the Neato a better robot, but the iRobot better engineered. Though this prize was given mostly for the cleverness of the card edge connectors.

DIY Vacuum Table Makes Lasering Even Easier

March 19, 2016 by James Hobson 13 Comments

If you’ve ever tried to laser flexible rolls of material you’ll know it can be really annoying to setup in the laser cutter.

Most of the time we use magnets, but then you have to make sure the magnets are clear of the work path — and then you end up wasting extra material… It’d be amazing to have a vacuum table that just sucks down your work piece to keep it in place! As it turns out, it’s not that hard to make!

After getting frustrated lasering warped material themselves, [Martin Raynsford] and the gang decided to make their very own vacuum table — using a laser cutter of course. Continue reading “DIY Vacuum Table Makes Lasering Even Easier” →

Hacklet 87 – Roomba Projects

December 5, 2015 by Adam Fabio 23 Comments

First introduced in 2002, The iRobot Roomba was conceived as a robotic vacuum cleaner. Just about every hacker, maker, and engineer out there immediately wanted one. The Roomba proved to be more than just a vacuum though; it was the perfect base for any household robotics project. Before long Roombas were being hacked to do way more than sweep your floor. iRobot recognized this, and added a hacker friendly serial port to later model Roombas. They even released a vacuumless version called the iRobot Create. Thousands of projects have literally ridden on the wheels of the Roomba. This week’s Hacklet is all about Roomba projects.

We start with [fuzzie360] and Poor Man’s Raspberry Pi Turtlebot. [Fuzzie360] has their Roomba running Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS actually is running on an on-board Raspberry Pi. While Willow Garage may be out of business, ROS lives on as an open source project run by Unbounded Robotics. Installing it can be a chore though. While [Fuzzie360] hasn’t given a full tutorial, they have offered to give advice if and when you get stuck.

A Raspberry Pi would be overkill for the simple suite of sensors built into the Roomba, but it’s perfect for [fuzzie3680’s] modified setup with a Microsoft Kinect. [Fuzzie360’s] goal is to have a robot that can vacuum the hostile territory of a university apartment.

Next up is [Sircut] who upgraded his Roomba’s power cell. Early Roombas were designed to use Nickle Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries. The individual cells are built into a proprietary iRobot battery pack. NiMH can’t hold a candle to Lithium Ion batteries though. Lithium Ion cells are very common these days in devices like cell phones and laptops. In fact, [Sircut] used 18650 sized laptop cells for this upgrade. [Sircut] also added the essential LiIon battery protection circuit to make sure those cells stay happy. A voltmeter provides a visual reference that the batteries aren’t becoming overcharged. An upgrade like this will likely double the Roomba’s runtime, but it does come at a cost. Roomba’s original charge dock can no longer be used as the on-board charge circuitry isn’t designed for LiIon battery charge algorithms.

Next is [Marcel Varallo] with Robot Wars for the Commuter. How does the IT department blow off steam? Fighting robots of course! Unfortunately, [Marcel’s] coworkers aren’t all programming mavens. Hopefully some programming is in the cards for them down the road. For now though, [Marcel] has created a robot fighting league using nearly stock Roomba robots. Each bot gets a set of 3 balloons and 3 pins. A balloon represents a life. Once your lives are all popped, you’re dead! [Marcel] also created an upgrade system where winning ‘bots can move on to stronger weapons like flamethrowers. During his research, [Marcel] found out that the brushes in his Roomba are powerful enough to sweep dust and debris up without the vacuum enabled. So he’s disabled the vacuums for longer ~~cleaning~~ battle times.

Finally we have [Fredrik Markström] and ESP8266 controlled Roomba. [Fredrick] is hacking an ESP8266 module to be the main computer of this little Robot. Of course, a ‘8266 means it will be carrying WiFi, so this robot needs to have a web interface. [Fredrik’s] first problem was powering the ESP8266. The Roomba’s battery runs around 15 volts, which is definitely not friendly to the 3.3 volt ESP8266. A switching DC to DC converter was in order, and [Fredrik] found the perfect candidate on eBay. The ‘8266 will control the Roomba through the serial interface included on all the current models. [Fredrik] has big plans for this ‘bot, including navigation and advanced vacuuming algorithms.

If you want to see more Roomba projects, check out our new Roomba project list! If I missed your project, don’t be shy, just drop me a message on Hackaday.io. That’s it for this week’s Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!

Adventures With Vacuum Deposition Power Supplies

August 18, 2015 by Nava Whiteford 21 Comments

[macona] called this a “fail of the week”, but of course failure is just another part of the hacker adventure. Fail and fail often! He’s been slowly assembling a vacuum deposition system. These systems let you deposit thin films on a substrate. Vacuum deposition systems have all sorts of exciting applications, not only are they used in semiconductor manufacturing, but as [Ben Krasnow] has shown can create conductive transparent coatings. They’re even sometimes used for silvering mirrors.

A common feature of these systems is that they require high voltage, we’re not talking a few hundred volts or even a few thousand volts. But 10 to 20 kilovolts. You need such a high voltage in order to accelerate electrons and ions, which are used to eject atoms from a source and deposit them as a thin film on a substrate.

It was this HV supply [macona] was working on, cobbling the system together from parts found on eBay. Unfortunately he could only reach 9kv unloaded, which we’d expect to drop considerably under load. So [macona] has now found a different solution. But this teardown and write up still makes great reading.

We’re left to pondering on what projects the spare parts could be useful for: “I might be able to series the secondaries and get 30kv at 500ma! That would make one hell of a bug zapper! Actually these transformers scare the hell out of me….” me too Jerry! Me too!

Super Cheap Vac Attachment Helps Find Small Dropped Parts

June 10, 2015 by Rich Bremer 27 Comments

It’s pretty much guaranteed that when working with small parts, you will drop at least one. This phenomenon is just how the universe works, there is no avoiding it. Digging though a carpet or dirty shop floor usually results in frustration and subsequent scrambling for a replacement part. Tired of crawling around on his knees looking for runaway parts, [Frank] decided to do something about it. He made a vacuum attachment that helps with the search… and it’s made from stuff he had kicking around the house.

The idea here is to suck up and contain the part without having it making it’s way into the vacuum. To do this there would have to be an intermediate chamber. For this, [Frank] used a multi-pack CD container. This was a great choice because it is clear, allowing him to see what enters the container, and it unscrews quickly making it easy to retrieve the tiny part. The inlet and outlet connectors are made from PVC and are attached to the CD container’s base with adhesive. To keep the debris from getting past the CD container, an old kitchen strainer was cut up and the screen material was used to only let air pass. Once a shop-vac is connected to the outlet pipe, the sucking can begin. [Frank] shows that he has to sift through a bunch of shop-floor crud to find his dropped screw, but it works!

Vacuum Gauge Display; Arduino Replaces Industrial

May 14, 2015 by Bryan Cockfield 22 Comments

Arduinos! They’re a great tool that make the world of microcontrollers pretty easy, and in [cptlolalot]’s case, they also give us an alternative to buying expensive, proprietary parts. [cptlolalot] needed a gauge for an expensive vacuum pump, and rather than buying an expensive part, built a circuit around an Arduino to monitor the vacuum.

This project goes a little beyond simple Arduino programming though. A 12V to 5V power supply drives the device, which is laid out on a blank PCB. The display fits snugly over the circuit which reduces the footprint of the project, and the entire thing is housed in a custom-printed case with a custom-printed pushbutton. The device gets power and data over the RJ45 connection so no external power is needed. If you want to take a look at the code, it’s linked on [cptlolalot]’s reddit thread.

This project shows how much easier it can be to grab an Arduino off the shelf to solve a problem that would otherwise be very expensive. We’ve been seeing Arduinos in industrial applications at an increasing rate as well, which is promising not just because it’s cheap but because it’s a familiar platform that will make repairs and hacks in the future much easier for everyone.