Monthly Archives: April 2011

Confluence

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With my MK6 disassembled1 and work projects stacking up, I tend to become more prolific in writing and designing. 2

Whenever my ‘bot is in need of repair, my mind goes back to all of the projects and things I keep meaning to print…  but never find the time for.  I also think back to design problems I was having… and sometimes come up with solutions!

Take, for instance, the puzzle box from The Mummy.  I’ve been meaning to get back to this for more than six months.  Well, an idea for a way to make it spring open just occurred to me.  I could put another octagon shaped box inside of the puzzle box and a flatish spring underneath it, squished between the two boxes.  If the top of the box is released, the spring would force the inner box up – and against the lid components and the entire lid open.  It would also potentially work well with little spring loaded pins just under each of the lid pieces.  I’m thinking something like a piece of filament forced upwards by the spring from a retractable ball point pen.  Or, if your spring was good enough, the spring could be under just one of the lid pieces – with the other lid pieces laying on top of it.  As that one pieces is forced up, it could force the others out.

Without the benefit of my printer running, I’m also putting a few extra brain cells3 on my clockwork spider project.  I was inspired by several things recently.  First is the video of how a mechanical clock works I had posted earlier.  As you’ll recall from Skimbal’s Rubber Band Gear Mechanism/Engine, a wound spring engine will want to expend all of its energy all at once.

That video describing the inner workings of a clock demonstrates a little regular that only lets it unwind a little bit at a time, so it can expend its energy over a longer time period.  Secondly was Erik’s pick-n-place tape feeder.  This design uses an interesting spring/gear/ratchet wheel.  Skip to 1:25 for a demonstration of the mechanism in question.

Now, in the instance of Erik’s device, it is the ratchet that moves back and forth – rather than the wheel turning at a constant rate.  However, this gave me an idea.  It should be feasible to create a similar spring/ratchet combination to prevent a wound device from expelling it’s energy at once.  Last, but by no means least, is Dna’s rubber band ratchet engine designed to power a clockwork spider.

In pondering my attempt at an open source disc launcher, I’ve been trying to think of the best way to pull back the spring.  If the firing pin/slider is going to be powered by a rubber band, it’s going to need to be a decently sturdy mechanism.  I keep thinking back to a rack and pinion set up.  There could be a notch in the bottom of the firing pin/slider, a peg in the flat side of a rack, and a small gear run off of a big gear, with the trigger on the big gear.

What else?  Um, I think the tank by mraiser could make a good platform for a larger clockwork spider.  Also, I would like to see a version of the tank that’s run off of clockwork/gears/regulators/rubber band/springs.

  1. More on this later [↩]
  2. I didn’t say better, mind. [↩]
  3. Both of them! [↩]

Oh Adobe, you so silly

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I just updated my Adobe Reader.  The only reason I do it is to patch vulnerabilities in their crappy ubiquitous system.

And, with the update it installs a shortcut to Adobe Reader on my desktop.

Seriously, now, why the hell would I want that?  How could this possibly be useful to anyone?  If I click on a PDF, it opens with Adobe.  If I click on the Adobe link, I still have to go find the PDF that I need to open.  Has anyone, ever, found a use for opening Adobe Reader directly and often enough to justify a shortcut on the desktop?!

It’s the little things in life

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I’ve got a funny day job.  Some days I’m out and about at meetings.  That’s where I was for the last three days.  Some days I sit at a desk.  Today was one of those days.

I spent basically the entire day wrestling with a HUGE spreadsheet made by someone else who just doesn’t understand the concept of elegance.  Seriously?  A spreadsheet of 400,000 rows to perform one calculation?  That’s just insane.  In the time it took for me to understand what they had done, I am pretty sure I could have mocked up about 85% of a PHP script to knock the answer right out of the park.

I don’t do these kinds of calculations often.  I’d say that on average most people in my industry never do a single calculation like this – leaving to others who are more interested in doing so. 1  There were several false starts with me basically finishing the calculations, doing a write up… and then realizing that I had forgotten something.  It’s taken me about two days worth of work to iron this thing out.  And, quite frankly, I loved every minute of it.  Of the very few people in my industry who actually bother to run these numbers, most just shoot for an approximation. 2  And of those very few people, no one really runs these calculations all that often.

Having just experienced the WORST way to run these calculations, I’m ready to build the best way to run these calculations.

  1. Such as, yours truly [↩]
  2. Approximately???  What do you mean “Approximately”? [↩]

Microcontrollers?

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Recently more than one person has suggested I try my hand at an Arduino.  I’ve got a spare Extruder Controller which happens to include an Arduino.

I rarely bother learning something new if I can help it. 1  And, I’ll actively avoid trying to learn something new if there’s not a need to learn it.

I have no doubt that once I figure out how to use an Arduino I’d enjoy it.  However, I just don’t have any ideas of what I’d want to use a microcontroller for at this time.  And, really, none of the projects I’ve seen is particularly compelling.  And, without an end goal I’m shooting for, this would just be learning something for learning’s sake.

So, here’s the question I pose to you, gentle reader:

What would you design/build if you had access to an Arduino, a Thing-O-Matic, a Cupcake, an Egg-Bot, and lots of plastic?

  1. I remember in high school that it was so much easier for me to derive Tan, Sin, Cos, rather than to actually remember the values around the unit circle.  And really, if you can derive that information quickly, why bother committing it to memory? [↩]

This is #650

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This is the 650th post on this blog in the 18 or so months since its launch.  As of this moment, very early on Monday morning, there’s 283 posts over at the MakerBot blog authored by yours truly.  That’s 933 posts in the 497 days since I started blogging here on 11/23/2009.  That’s about 1.88 posts a day, every day, on average.  Some of it is even about 3D printing stuff.  ;)

I wonder what a pie chart of this website’s content would look like?  Probably something like:

[pdrpiechart data=”Random nonsense=68|Doctor Who, sonic screwdrivers, and daleks =18|DIY 3D Printing=27″]

Is this irony?

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I don’t actually remember the definition of irony.  I do, however, remember the scene from Reality Bites that highlights the importance of knowing the definition. 1

Uh, my point.  Yes.  My point.

I’ve got a song stuck in my head and I cannot stop listening to it.  Just Can’t Get Enough by the Black Eyed Peas.

  1. Also, I have a friend who refers to things as ironic, when they’re clearly not.  I suspect he might be confusing irony with coincidence.  “Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife” – now THAT is irony. [↩]

Fumigation

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Yesterday I was busy cranking out printed parts and soldering some of the components of my MakerBot interface kit.  I’ve printed 60 of these parts so far.  What I did was organize the letter bracelet sections into plates of 10 parts each, in a Scrabble tile letter distribution.  I’m not sure why, except that it seemed like a good way to get a good vowel to consonant ratio.  In any case, I’ve printed up 6 of these plates so far, with 4 more to go. 1  I’ll need to upload these plates as a derivative.

The room smelled of ABS fumes and solder basically all day.

On the plus side, these heady vapors made me believe I had super powers for a short time.

  1. 100 tiles, 98 letters and two blanks – which I’m printing with stars on them, rather than actual blanks. [↩]

Shark + Tank – Lasers

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I watched a show called Shark Tank on the recommendations of a friend.  It’s basically this – an inventor or business person pitches their idea to and answers questions from four or five potential investors who are using their own money.  These investors will either decline or make an offer – combinations of cash, equity demands, business concessions, etc.

I had watched a TV show about inventors a few years ago.  The stories were varied.  From people who spent years of their lives, all the money they had, all the money they could borrow, and squandered it all for lack of just a little bit of market research. 1  Others were people who had pushed their ideas as far as they could go by themselves but couldn’t move them any farther without additional backing, marketing, or connections.

Tonight there was this guy who had raised $600k from friends, family, and an undisclosed angel investor. 2  He had no patent, his now ex-CEO didn’t even try to get him a deal with a major company, and he refused to answer a single yes-or-no question in a straightforward manner.  The best offer he got was to be bought out for about $250k, he would be fired, and he would have a 7% royalty in perpetuity.  He turned it down and was offended.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned about business.  If you’re running a business, you do what’s best for the business.  I rather like my other business.  That said, if I believed the best thing for that business was to cash out and toss the keys to a new owner, I’d do it.  In the words of a famous businessman, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”  True business, the exchange of goods and services for money, has almost nothing to do with ego.

Um, I wasn’t really going anywhere with this.  I guess I was just really shocked this guy would turn down that offer.  I was surprised that he’d put his ego ahead of his business and business interests.  But, hey, it’s good TV, right?

  1. Seriously.  There was one guy who was pitching this coffee mug that you put grounds into the cap, poured boiling water into, and had instant fresh coffee.  He spent years of his life, thousands and thousands of dollars…  and then was told by a potential investor – on the show – that they thought the idea was brilliant!  And, they thought it was brilliant the first time they saw it years ago in some cold environment where it was literally commonplace. [↩]
  2. I’ve got $5 that says it was his wife. [↩]