Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Home in a Maker State

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/27/2006
in I Make Things
. 3 Comments

Yesterday I was up for many many hours travelling across the world. I’m not very good at sleeping on planes. I can’t hold my posture while I’m asleep and it hurts. Instead, I’ve been slipping into lucid half dreams. In my semi-slumber, I keep transporting myself to a place where I am cutting metal. I’m either watching a 1/2 piece of steel get cut in a mill or I’m cutting up lengths of aluminum. There is a patience that goes along with cutting metal. I have to pay attention and yet it is an important time to imagine the project as a whole and imagine the pieces fitting together, and imagining it working.

Hephaestus, Greek God of the forge must have had a brain that worked like that al the time. I can see him in his workshop under the Earth hammering his amazing, magical creations having the same daydreams. Imagining, planning, and fitting it all together in his head. I must dig up some good Haphaestus mythology.

Travelling with a Drawing Robot.

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/27/2006
in I Make Things
. 2 Comments

So as I got on the Eurostar yesterday bound for Brussels, the helpful security guard helped me put the drawing robot up on the conveyor belt xray machine. I calmly confided in him, “There is a drawing robot in this box.”

As I waited for it to come through I heard another guard, the xray monitor watching security guard exclaim, “What’s this?”

To which the helpful security guard matter-of-factly answered, “it’s a drawing robot.”

“A drawing robot, what’s that?” replied the monitor watching guard.

The helpful security guard put on his most patronizing voice and said, “It’s a robot that draws! (Duh!)” At which point I picked up the box and walked away.

Over The Puddle Update

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/24/2006
in I Make Things
. 0 Comments

drawbot.jpgEurooscon was great. The Make:: Drawbot did it’s job. An interesting topic emerged. What is a robot? Flickr Photos of the Make Fest here.
 My other massive writeups of the event and the drawbot here and here, including it’s latest video.

brugge.jpg
Then I went to brugge with Dale and Nancy and had great conversation with beautiful scenery. Brugge photos here.

hey gravity

Then I got bored and so I popped over to London to see my friends Jo Twist and Kosso and we went out and went bowling with the band Hey Gravity. Hey Gravity rules. They’re made up of a bunch of members of M.A.S.S. which I saw last year, and they’ve added the adorable and fierce Anna on guitar. Here’s their latest music video.


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Update: I had a great time hanging out with Kosso and Dr. Jo Twist!

This is a crosspost from bloghud!

Published
by
bre
on 9/23/2006
in I Make Things
. 0 Comments

 
posted by Bre Petty on Webworm using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Make:: Drawbot

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/17/2006
in I Make Things
. 4 Comments

drawbotpacked.jpg

The Make:: Drawbot is finished and ready to go to Brussels for Euroscon 4 hours before I have to go to the airport.

245253847_5d7704b649.jpg

That’s me, Melvin, Adam, 3ric, and Brian. Choong, Divide, and Choong not pictured. Rock.

Some scans here.

Workshop Egg Scrambler

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/17/2006
in I Make Things
. 0 Comments

I set up a makeshift kitchen in the workshop today to make breakfast.


There is now only one way to make scrambled eggs in the workshop, with a drill and a plastic fork!

Another post that I authored on the Make blog

Make Podcast: Building the Make:: Drawbot

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/17/2006
in I Make Things
. 1 Comment

When I saw the scribbler robot article in Make: 07, I had to make one. At first I thought it would be easy to get some steppers and boss them around with some software. Well that’s what needed to be done, but it wasn’t easy. Luckily I got a lot of the hardware issues out of the way by finding a medical robot that organized vials of blood off ebay to convert into my robot.

Make

It came without any controllers so we slapped the Make: Controller on there and since the stepper motors were rated at 1.2 amps and the Make: Controller can only output 1 amp, I bought some Interinar microstepping drivers with very attractive heatsinks.

Then I needed help. I’ve never worked with robots and I could grok the hardware, but the software My friend 3ric held a robot-making get together and we recruited friends to help. Divide, Choong, Melvin, and Brian came onboard to help deal with the software issue. It turns out that it is really hard to get an image to turn into an outline that can get turned into code for the microcontroller to boss around the motors. We’re still working on this problem, right now we can get it to draw a star, but we’ve got a ways to go to get it to drawing faces.

Click here to get the video (MP4) delivered automatically with iTunes. This video will play on PC/Mac/Linux/PSPs and iPod video devices. Also for your viewing pleasure - HD, 3gp, 3g2, and Blip.

Posted to the Make Blog

Making a Drawbot

Published
by
bre pettis
on 9/17/2006
in I Make Things
. 0 Comments

I am a beginning robot enthusiast. I got hooked looking at the article in Make: 07 about the scribbler. Robotics is a bigger project than a weekend. If you are looking for something simple, you could mess about with a kit or reverse engineer this.

I got lucky and found the chassis and motors for my drawbot on ebay. Another starting point would be to start with some printer motors and build up from there.

Plotter

You could make a drum plotter. I like the way that this plotter’s y axis is on the tube.

Fischer

or make up your own like this fischertechnik model. I bet you could make something very similar out of lego.

There are a lot of issues involved in building a robot, if I didn’t have friends who have healthy robot building obsessions, I would have sent Egor to go extract the brains from Dorkbot and my local Seattle Robotics Society.

You’ve got to have tools to work on robots. Here’s my list of tools that I recently got to make my shop more robot friendly.

You’ve also got to have materials on hand. You can scavenge most everything if you’re willing to be a packrat and have the time to take things apart. I got a bunch of aluminum stock so that I would have a lot of material on hand to build things. A lot of industry is still rooted in the paper catalog, but I like to either scavenge my materials, go to the store, or order them online and have them delivered.

Onlinemetals

Recently I stopped by OnlineMetals here in Seattle to check out their warehouse and pick up an order. They are rad. It’s on my list to make a list of good tools and materials that would be good to have in my workshop.

What are your favorite robot making tools? What materials do you have on hand? People who knit tend to hoard yarn. Do you hoard aluminum and fasteners? Even if you don’t build robots, if you’ve got a stash of material, take a picture of it and upload it to the make flickr pool. If you’re an experienced robot maker, what advice do you have for someone who is getting obsessed with robotics?

This pdf is a copy of all the messy notes that we made, plus you can see the stars that we’ve gotten the drawbot to draw so far. We’re on the brink of being able to draw something like this.

Adam

My friends and I are making this up as we go along, if you’ve got ideas, feedback, questions, leave a note in the comments.

posted to makezine