Fidgety Clicky Button Box
Monday, January 4th, 2021
Small button box, milled wooden housing, acrylic control panel, and 10 “clicky” buttons. It doesn’t actually do too much, but is surprisingly fun to play with.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Wooden Car
Monday, January 4th, 2021
Another CNC’d wooden car with some pink acrylic sides.
Vacuum Former/CNC Mill
Sunday, December 6th, 2020
I’ve been working on combining a vacuum former and a CNC. The goal is that the machine can mill the buck, form the plastic shell, and then mill the shell — all in one. The hope is that some interesting parts can be created with the machine.
I’m still in early stages and the rig is basically a Frankenstein build of various kits, but I think it’s starting to go somewhere.
Wheels Out
Sunday, December 6th, 2020
Mocked up a quick proof of concept for a kinetic piece. Mostly milled delrin, steel, and a stepper motor.
Canlactus
Sunday, December 6th, 2020
Canlactus, devourer of worlds.
CNC Jig for Slots
Sunday, December 6th, 2020
My latest tin can toy is based on Galactus. The main feature are the antennas on the side of the helmet. And the parts that connect the antenna fins to the head turned out to be the trickiest pieces. I made a jig for the mill so I could slot the aluminum. Then I turned them to the correct size on the lathe.
More WOODEN DOLL PEG EXPERIMENTS
Thursday, November 19th, 2020Still experimenting with these simple wooden peg dolls.
4 BAR LINKAGE: PART 2
Thursday, November 19th, 20204 Bar Linkage: Part 1
Monday, July 27th, 2020
Linkages are hard. I think they are powerful mechanisms, I just find them difficult to visualize and time consuming to iterate. I’ve been thinking about a device that could turn and push a small wooden block over and over again, and I fear a four bar linkage may be the answer.
I saw a great video from Disney Research on creating animated mechanical characters. Their software appears to be proprietary, but it was a great starting point. Then I found an incredibly useful 4 bar linkage simulator from Mechanical Expressions. Thanks to this simulator, I quickly dialed in the desired motion and got my linkage dimensions.
Drew up some designs.
And milled some parts.
The first prototype is a hand cranked 4 bar linkage built from aluminum and delrin parts. Linkages need to be built well in order to operate correctly. There can’t be too much slop in the mechanism and precision counts. Hopefully, the second prototype will actually move a block around.
Donut Controller
Friday, April 17th, 2020
Almost done. I’ve been working on a game controller for the 9 year old daughter of a friend of mine. She programmed a donut video game in Scratch. You press the “B” key and the background changes. The “D” the donut flavor changes. “S” for sprinkles. “F” for frosting.
The game is awesome and so is she. Hope she likes it.