3d printable robot gripper – Version 2.83

29.12.2011
New version of my 3d printable robot gripper project.
Just got the stepper mount finnished. Tried printing out a test, and adjusted some bugs, and test number two is in the printer right now.
I am very happy with how the flange mount for the gripper came out.
The flange is there to support the weight the gripper will be carying when it lifts something so not all the weight will come on the threaded rod directly. Also the flange will make sure the hand will not move forwards and backwards. New pictures!

Here is the previous post with some more pictures.
http://vegardpaulsen.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/3d-printable-robot-gripper-version-2/

I need to source some 5mm lock nuts with 2mm threading because that what the Sparkfun linear stepper motor uses. !! Hard to find. Tips will be appreciated!!

Here is some links to the components im using besides the printed plastic:
Sparkfun NEMA 17 stepper motor

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9238

Sparkfun easydriver stepper motor driver

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10267

Sparkfun Linear stepper motor (hard to find and essential for this kind of motorized gripper)

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10848

The plan is to make this design availiable for free on the website

http://www.thingiverse.com

along with complete building instructions and link to sparkfun parts for both stepper motors and stepper motor controllers so you could print this at home!

You will find me on Twitter @vegardpaulsen as well if you want to contact me!
Shout out if you can help me find 2mm thread size nuts for the linear stepper!

3d printable robot gripper – Version 2.7

Updated design and some more pictures again today. 28.12.2011

So what is this?
This is my design of a robot gripper claw like hand that you can print if you have access to a cheap 3d printer like a Makerbot, Ultimaker, Reprap or other 3d printers.

My first version of the robot gripper (the black gripper on the pictures) was meant for grabbing things like bottles, handles and such, and this alternative version is more for picking small objects and do some more precise work.

I have done some re-engineering on the mount for the two gripper hands and made it smaller, more robust and it now folds together with just pushing the two mounts together using lock pins.

I have made some spur gears with a involute gears script from OhYeahCad plugin for Google Sketchup that i havent printed out yet. Some new design pictures is now uploaded.
http://www.ohyeahcad.com/download/index.php

I still need to design a dual steppermotor mount for the two steppermotors.

I also need to source some 5mm lock nuts with 2mm threading because that what the Sparkfun linear stepper motor uses. Hard tofind. Tips will be appreciated!

Here is some links to the components im using besides the printed plastic:
Sparkfun NEMA 17 stepper motor
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9238
Sparkfun easydriver stepper motor driver
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10267
Sparkfun Linear stepper motor (hard to find and essential for this kind of motorized gripper)
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10848

The version 1 gripper claws(black gripper) will fit right onto the version 2, so you could print both and have 2 types of robot grippers at the same time.

The plan is to make this design availiable for free on the website
http://www.thingiverse.com
along with complete building instructions and link to sparkfun parts for both stepper motors and stepper motor controllers so you could print this at home!

You will find me on Twitter @vegardpaulsen as well if you want to contact me!
Shout out if you can help me find 2mm thread size nuts for the linear stepper!

See version 1 pictures on my blog here.

Choosing the right development platform for your prototype

So your little bright idea just went from your mind, through some brainstorming and to starting out with some kind of electronics platform, and now you need to choose the microcontroller enviroment for your prototype.

Who?
Alot of people love the Arduino platform. Opensource enviroment with cheap and slow electronics.

Some prefer the faster types of PIC like Fez.

My two cents comes down to this.

Need a slow PIC with easy coding?
Arduino One 30$
arduino pro mini 22$

need a faster PIC with the same form factor as a arduino, but with .net codin enviroment?
Fez panda 2 30$

You need ethernet connection for your project?

Arduino ethernet pro 59$
X-board 30$

pictures below

UGV fitted with Pololu motor shield

Some new pictures of my UGV project. Just got the Pololu motor shield working on the dual 55t brushed motors from Novak! The pololu shield is running on a Arduino duemilanove. Now its time to get it wired up with everything else and start programming the wireless link and the autonomous mode.

So why did my Bonzai tree almost die?

We have had a nice big Bonsai tree for a year or so, and we recently moved into a new appartment about 3 months ago. The tree has been all good since we got it, but recently it suddenly, a few weeks back started to drop all of the leaves and started dying.

I looked into every possible solution and first i thought i might have over-watered or under-watered it. After thinking about possible solutions I looked around the livingroom and asked myself. What have changed?

LED lightbulbs?

Some weeks ago we took a trip to Ikea and invested in new LED lamps for the living-room to be enviromental-friendly and save some power. The lights worked like a charm and uses about 7 watts instead of the regular 35 watt in 230V halogen spots. But there was a big drawback i did not think of!

What about the plants?

There is not enough enough natural light coming into our livingroom in the winter because Norway is a dark dark place in that season. So my Bonzai tree and the other plants rely on the energy and UV light from the halogen and other light bulbs. When you choose LED, you will at the same time cutoff the plants only source to light (and life) as the energy and UV coming from LED is not nearly enough for a plant.

Saving a Bonsai !

So there it is. My Bonsai almost died because we tried to save the enviroment. At the current time it is getting emergency light from a 35W light bulb placed very close, 18 hours a day to get some life back. It has only 3-4 leaves left, but it has after 3 days started shooting out new spires, so there is hope!

Nice to concider your plants, the next time you want to switch from regular light bulbs to LED !

Link to Wikipedia about Bonsai

Creating a printable robot gripper

So this is an early prototype of my 3d printable robot gripper.
The point behind this project is to give a nice robot gripper design to people that want to print it out with their 3d printers like the low cost Makerbot, Ultimaker and Reprap.
Here is the first pictures of the prototype.
I choose an linear motion stepper motor for the gripper to be able to twist the gripper around itself without getting cables tangled up. Still have some motor mounts, and some spur gears to build for the twisting motion.

Here is some pictures from the printed design from my Makerbot Thing-O-Matic.

Happy birthday, microcontrollers around the world

So the day is here.
4 decades of integrated circuit processing power in everything with electronic control around the world.

There has been over forthy years since some dudes in an old garage not far away from Steve Jobs house found out that their calculator needed some new components to work properly without alot of external components.

A small calculator company called Busicom that intended to create and sell these calculators needed someone to produce their IC and went to a small company called Intel.

After some production runs, the engineers at Intel found out that this little chip called
4004 did alot more than first thought, the engineers convinced Intel to make a deal with Busicom and own the rights from for the microprocessor.
A few years later Busicom wanished and if you look back today, the deal made by Intel is probably one of the best in history.

Forthy years have passed since the Intel 4004 microprocessor was first published 15. november 1971. and since then everything from washingmachines to supercomputers, from manned spacewalks on the moon to arduinos benefit from one of the golden ages biggest inventions.

Quote wikipedia
- “The chief designers of the chip were Federico Faggin and Ted Hoff of Intel, and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom”

Thank you!

The new Sony F65 is awesome

We have a working prototype of the new 4k Film-camera from Sony in the offices today and i must say, the images are incredible.

It records 16bit linear F65 RAW and have PL mount for prime lenses. The recorder is storing the video onto SR memorycards with up to 5.5gbit speed.
The SR cards come in 3 types and the cards are colourcoded to easilly recognize the speed of the cards.

S15 (orange), S25(blue) and S55(black) comes in 256GB, 512GB, and the 1TB version.

You could use the S25 for up to 30p recordings in raw mode, but i would recomend using the S55 cards for all F65 related recordings due to the datarate you would need when shooting higher speeds than 30p.
The camera itself shoots 24,25,30,50,60 and 120p.

Imagine how easy it is to take the wrong card with you out in the field when shooting, realising that you will need to cancel the high framerate shot because you have the wrong memorycard with you.
I would stick to the S55 (Black) ones do be able do both record all types, and quicker move the data to a storagesupply.

The F65 kit ships a viewfinder, camerahousing, recorder and with a S55 card & 256GB disk space. This will give you about 15 minutes recording time in F65 16bit linear RAW mode. Should be enough for a days shoot, especially if you offload the shots at lunch-time Your productionmanager will probably want you to do that anyways as he/she is nervous about you formatting the card after a day of shooting.

Want to know more about the F65?
call me at +47 56904227 or drop me an email at vegard@video4.no

Testing the new Sony F65 4k film-camera tomorrow

Im getting hands on on the new F65 filmcamera from Sony tomorrow at work.
There is some special butterflyes in my stomach waiting for the camera to arrive at work tomorrow with the Sony engineers. The company i work will be a scandinavian distributor for the F65 and we get the Sony Engineers from Asia tomorrow, teaching us the new awesomness of a filmcamera.

With its 8k imagesensor and 4k recorder this will be a huge competitor to the Arri Alexa and the Red Epic. Introduction price from us is about 75000 euro including recorder, memorycard and camera without lenses.
Image like no other!

Seminar for the University of Agder

I was contacted by a nice man from Coventure on tuesday that asked me if i could take my Makerbot Thing-o-matic 3d printer with me and demo it and talk some about it as a part of an open hardware seminar yesterday (wednesday 20.10.2011).
The reason for this was that i found my blog (this one) and hoped i could step in for some people that had to forfeit the seminar on short notice.

So i i took out a day of from work and drove down the 350km to Kristiansand from Oslo at 4am wednesday morning. When i arrived there was a nice man from Tinkercad that was talking about their open source web interface cad software. They have developed an exciting free cad tool that lets you draw directly into your web browser (with google framework) and export out an stl file ready for 3d printing without the need of any installed cad software. He had some interesting points on how people personalize with objects around them. One good example was that Ikea found out people would appreciate more and get more in love with the furnitures put together on their own as this would make the person feel like they mastered the prosess and let them connect with the furniture. I liked the thought of this and i can relate to it.

Read up on Tinkercad here (its still in early beta)

The founder of FabLab in Tromsø was there and talked about the FabLab concept wich i like alot! Lets hope they get settled in Oslo soon!
Read up on Fablab Norway here

If you want to know more about the people from Digin that arranged the seminar you can read more about that on the link below.

link to the hardware seminar invitation