Category: News

News

Win $100,000 for your school or university … with a Makelangelo?

2016-03-15 Dan

http://robotart.org/ is a contest to give away $100,000 to the student team that makes art with a robot.

It’s crazy easy to make some quick cash. Andrew Conru says “The first five US-based teams that upload 6 unique artwork will receive a $2,500 donation to their school!”

The only other way to pull 2.5 gees that fast is in a jet, so unless your robot is a skywriting quadcopter (hmmm…), get our your robot and get in on this yesterday. If only you had a Makelangelo right now!

Registration must be by April 1st, 2016, so hurry!

Thanks to our facebook friends for the hot tip.

News

Jigsolve: Next up…

2016-03-01 Dan

Next up I have to rotate the center of the gantry so that the bars are one above the other. Two reasons:

1. They will keep the pulleys at either end from bending inwards, which loosens the belt and causes movement problems.

2. When the end effector in the center is vertical, it will be much easier to make a system for lifting the nozzle. My first two lifting systems were not good enough, so this change doesn’t create new work for me.

Edit:

News

Jisolve: Testing nozzle over IRC

2016-02-22 Dan

The nozzle works, the pump works, and it all moves via IRC. The new nozzles from @Aidan Leitch solve an earlier problem with hard plastic nozzles that had no grip or compliance. Yay! Great video, Aidan!

Of course the source of most problems is other solutions. With this new nozzle I’m forced to design a new method to raise and lower the nozzle onto the pieces. This first draft

was a strong start. Sadly it let air leak in from several places and over time it started to slouch on one side. Later it occured to me that if the nozzle tries to pick up a piece attached to other pieces, it would probably pick them ALL up. So there needs to be some kind of ring around the nozzle that keeps other pieces on the table. Maybe also a software rule that says sideways movements are forbidden when the nozzle is down.

News

Jigsolve: Silicone Suction Nozzles

2016-02-21 xyzaidanl

@Dan Royer enlisted my help in making a soft suction nozzle for the JigSolve. I utilized many of the same techniques and experiences from my soft robotics projects. The result was four nozzles with varying cup sizes. These were the outer diameters of the cups:

  • 7.5mm OD
  • 10mm OD
  • 12mm OD
  • 15mm OD

Each one was 20mm tall. They were casted in 3-part 3D printed molds with Ecoflex 00-50 silicone, but almost any RTV silicone would have worked. All nozzles came out quite nicely and the gripping strength scales roughly with the cup size. I made an Instructables guide and video detailing how I made the nozzles:

Instructables Guide: http://www.instructables.com/id/Silicone-Suction-Grippers/

Video: