pbproject - Tumblr blog

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I machined these aluminum ash trays several years back but have held onto a few blanks to engrave as gifts. Only one left now.

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My little “Build it yourself” guillotine kit assembled. Fits a standard square razor blade for all your tiny revolutionary needs.

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Orbital clock

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https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1999706

A little P5 looker made for a short class assignment. The ellipse effect took only a tiny amount of effort but made a huge difference IMO!

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Little attiny line maker/follower bugbot- the line is created with a purple led on a surface painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. Two light dependent resistors are used to sense the line and follow it, lighting up when they do. Im hoping with a few of these lil guys I can get some emergent ant-foraging behavior!

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Tests for inflatable geometry made out of fabric laminated to recycled plastic bags. The toroid is sewn on a conventional sewing machine and the arc on a computer controlled quilting machine.

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A wifi and EMF dowsing rod I built for my Internet of Things final project. The board can sense the strength of either wifi signals or sources of general electromagnetic fields which is translated into powering two small vibration motors in the handles. With this project I wanted to tie in the connection between the actual science of EMF used in communication technologies and IOT with the abundance of psuedoscientific paranoia around EMF as well as the very real history of early inventors/scientists like Newton, Tesla and Edison being involved in occult practice.

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A short video project for my Inquiry into Computational Design course - the task was to use a motion capture system to transform a real movement into a digital artifact. I went a little on the nose with the module theme of "hybrid bodies" taking a capture of an attempt to balance a wooden pole in one hand and then using the scripts I have for programming industrial robots to "program" the robot to follow the same balancing motion. I also did some experiments with smoothing out the robot arm mesh to make it truly transhumanist body horror :))

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Wireless motor controllers put together in about a week for a neighboring shop’s project. The project ended up being abandoned as the mechanical design had significant issues but I got a lot done in a short time.

The client wanted to run four independent motor systems synced to different video displays but didnt want to use wifi and wanted to remotely update and sync the motion pattern for the motors. I ended up having to write my own stepper library to allow fine control via time intervals at extremely fast step rates. Under such a tight time frame I used a google sheet for user input on when they wanted the motor system at different states.

The controllers are driven on 12 or 24 v dc and can accomodate two limit switches and an extra stepper driver as another motor was added after i build the boards.

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A tool/parts chest built around steel boxes I found in a dumpster and cnc cut scrap ply. The frame is stiff and lightweight but the boxes are so robust it makes the final chest hella heavy.

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A little 1.5” vise I made as a prototype student project for teaching intro to manual machining. The current project checks all the boxes on different manual operations but I feel fails to introduce students to key concepts of working with part assemblies that require different tolerances, finishes and materials. Plus this little vise offers a lot of opportunity for students to customize their parts if they want and make something they are really proud of!

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The start of a huge print for a gown designed by our research partner from FIT. Material is recycled polypropylene and carbon fiber extruder through the pellet extruder I setup. The material prints remarkably well but needed some help from a few toe screws to keep it attached to the improvised print bed. Sadly we don’t have a 4x4’ heated build plate….

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3d printing project with a graduate researcher from FIT. the extrusion on this one is just a regular 3d pen strapped to the robot- starting simple first to get the kinks worked out in the scanning and toolpathing process

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Some prints I made in the fall with my extruder from 3d scanned artifacts from online museum collections. I only chose artifacts whose origins were local to the museum.

Grecian Urn

Hallstatt Moon Idol

Peruvian Soursop Bottle

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Untested prototype circuit i schemed up a bit ago to use an attiny85 as a standalone stepper controller that can interface with the robot and operate as an i2c sub.

It can read pulses over a single io signal from the robot as well as be swapped between i2c and manual control (knob for speed, dip switches for enable, direction and microstepping) I was able to open up a free gpio by using the reset pin to read the robot signal - which ~theoretically~ is wired so it won’t trip the reset

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Another pen tool design with a focus on quick prototyping. Previous ones at my work were mostly 3d printed with a lot of parts and hardware- ultimately making revisions or a new one took way too much time. The little flexure clamp on this is the longest to produce at a 40 minute print (which would be shorter if the printer didn’t misbehave). Everything else takes about 15 minutes from stock to assembly.

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Old detail shots of some of parts I designed and built as part of the robotic IOT garden project. 1: A terminal block for the robotic IOs, protoboard setup and enclosure allowing robot to chat with an ESP32 microcontroller. 2/3: Very DIY tool changing system via pneumatic gripper with a little springy electrical connectors to pass signal and power to devices on the different tools including a water pump and webcam.