Simplified Mechanical System Part 3

This is where it gets interesting. :)

We now have a shaft we can mount a bearing to and hold the bearing in place. Without any custom machining. But what holds the bearing? This does..

This is a bracket with a bearing placed in it. 

Here are two brackets capturing a bearing..

You then can hold the brackets with a stationary bracket..

But there's another type of bracket that is useful...

The axle bracket.

This bracket has the 8mm D-profile cut into the middle. This bracket can either hold a shaft stationary to your assembly. Or it can engage a shaft that is made to rotate smoothly by riding in a set of bearings..

Such as here in my trebuchet model. 

But either of these brackets can be used for yet another purpose. Given any gear or pulley. If you can center it up properly and drill your holes right. You can bolt any gear or pulley or sprocket to one of these brackets. 

The possibilities are endless. 

Simplified Mechanical System Part 2

Secondly we need a shaft/axle that will work for the following functions (as mentioned previously)..


1. They hold components where they need to be.  But they also need to be held in place on the shaft.
2. Shafts give various components a common rotational axis.
3. Shafts transmit motion from one component to another

Let's tackle number three first.

A D-profile shaft will allow components to spin on the shaft, as well as being able to transmit power. Also its easier to go from a store bought shaft to a d-profile, than it is to put a key slot into the shaft. 

But this still doesn't place a component somewhere along the length. 

This is where standards come in again. If your components could be a certain thickness, then maybe we can avoid making a custom shaft, a common design will do for many different setups. 

We can cut concentric slots in the axle of specified width with specific spacing, then we can make our component thickness match those measurements. 

Like this..

Then E-clips hold the components in place along the shaft. 

Kinda like this..

Simplified Mechanical System Part 1

I had an idea. 

I was talking to my brother and as I talked I was frustrated at how hard it was to build things. The biggest problem in my opinion is. Everytime I want to build something, it pretty much always involves some kind of shafts. 

Shafts have several functions: 

1. They hold components where they need to be.  But they also need to be held in place on the shaft.

2. Shafts give various components a common rotational axis. 

3. Shafts transmit motion from one component to another 

If you want to place a component on a shaft and have it perform reliably, it needs to be held in place on the shaft. If you want a component to spin smoothly, then you need a bearing placed on your shaft. The bearing needs to have the same inner diameter as the shaft's outer diameter, within a few thousandths, if not things will vibrate and wobble and all kinds of problems. Most shafts get stacked on with a different diameter for each component. Thats alot of custom machining. 

Borrow from: Wikipedia

I don't have the resources to machine custom shafts each time I have an idea, and I'm not alone in not having them.

Bearings are the next big problem. Some things need to free-spin on shafts and some things need to be engaged on the shaft. Again with each component needing a different inner and outer diameter. 

What's needed is a standard, a system. 

Kinda like the Arduino. Standard shields fit standard sockets with standard pinouts. It works for electronics, it works with Personal computers, PCI cards fit in PCI slots. Serial ATA drives plug into Serial ATA cables. Standards make building things (relatively) simple. (USB has got to be the best example Ever!) 

Then I realized. I've used skate bearings in several things. Skate bearings  are ubiquitous and standardized. Here you can get 100 for $35, $0.35 a piece! 

They have an exactly 8mm inner diameter and 22mm outer diameter, they are 7mm thick. But they don't come with any mounting help, no flange, no bearing block...

So an 8mm shaft will mesh up into a skate bearing exactly. 

Skate bearings are perfect for a simplified mechanical system...

Three Tips To Try From Lifehacker

Here's three tips from lifehacker, I want to share them in case anyone else needs them, and maybe try them myself one day..

Goto deepsurplus to get cheap chords and cables

I keep almost every chord I acquire, just because it sucks SO BAD to buy them. You buy a $10 network card and it comes with a 12ft Cat-6 cable. Goto bestbuy looking for the same cable $17 (IIRC). It's insane to buy cables...

Use coffee grounds to clean sticky/grimy tools

My wife loves coffee so I have as many coffee grounds as I could need...

Tweak Me! tweaks windows from a portable app

I will be trying this one sooner rather than later. It always annoyed me to actually have to install TweakUI

There that frees up 3 more tabs...now maybe my computer can actually run from the ram rather than the virtual memory (nah...it's windows it can't do that)

I'm dreaming right?

This can't be real...
The jetpack is finally becoming a reality...
This is just amazing..
Martin Jetpack Final Testing

Gotta say it looks pretty good too...

I hope next time I goto an airshow someone will be demonstrating one of these. :)

Another Video Game Replica

These replica guys really know how to make things look fantastic. This time its a Mass Effect assault rifle...

Found via: Hardocp

Rustic Mallet How-To

We recently stayed in a very rustic log cabin for our vacation. It was great. But I don't necessarily really  "Get" the rustic thing, the mindset. Doesn't particularly appeal to me, in and of itself.
This does though..

This mallet is a pretty cool little project that I would like to undertake..

Problem is logs of these hardwoods aren't just laying around everywhere in lower alabama like they are most places. Here everything EVERYTHING is Pine. I think my best bet would be to find some hardwood pallets and carve some mallets out of that material. I think I will get some branches/logs and stow them in the top of my shed to let them dry then maybe attempt this....

Found Via Make:Online

I also found another neat little workshop project on her site. Non-skid boosters..

CNC Hacking

Thats hacking, as in building things...

Peter who works with Reprap has had two blog posts come across my screen lately...

First his entirely laser cut rack and pinion cnc axis.

Although having something cut with a laser cutter or cnc'd is still out of my reach (not by much). This does lower the bar for making a repeatable cnc machine significantly..

But there are still cheaper/easier options... And thats what his more recent post shows..

Reciprocating Laser Cutter

There's two innovations here. The use of Optical disk drive carriages makes for a low power and small scale axis. This uses three. 

Secondly he's using a low power (for a cutter) laser. It's a 1watt unit. He's reciprocating the laser on the Z axis to move the focal point through the material. Giving just enough heat to melt some plastic and cut a part. 

If Peter gets a chance to read this. I'd just like him to know I'm impressed and I have plenty of old cd-roms if he needs more. 

Robot Arm Turned Into F1 Ferrari Simulator

Robot Arm F1 Simulator

Via: Hackedgadgets

This is a very complicated hack, looking into simulating the extreme acceleration of an F1 car. Looks like the ULTIMATE video game console to me!

My cousin was designing his own motion sim but somehow I dont think a KUKA robot arm would fit in his budget (or his garage). But I do think this one has the heave axis covered. :)

Hidden Home Theater Computers

A while back I was reading Computer Power User (I think) and they had a little sideboard about Orange Amps. An old company from the UK that makes guitar amps. They had a new product that meshed a computer into the back of a guitar amp. Here look, it's genius...

Orange Amps PC division website

This is a really really good idea. My friends in production tell me its pretty hard to get a computer hardy enough to meet the demands of stage and recording. Even after you've picked a PC then it needs a case that is ok with being kicked and generally abused. Most choose the hardened but limited choice of using a laptop.

So the orange amps pc is a great solution.

This got me to thinking...they are just putting a PC in a big speaker box. What if I did the same. Maybe I could get an old busted amp and place a PC inside. It would look better than most other solutions for the living room or what not.

Which made me think of an even better idea...

Home theaters need subwoofers. Subwoofers are usually in big wooden boxes and made to look good for the living room/media room. What about getting an old sub and using the box. With smaller computers you could even place another..smaller sub inside the old sub box and have a Sub+HTPC.

Well...of course, before I could get all this written down and posted (or built then posted would have been even better) someone built almost the same thing..!

Hidden Home Theater PC from Lifehacker

This is a really good implementation.

I would like build something a little more space efficient, and in a subwoofer

...one day... 

Sketchup Ruby Scripts

I've been designing some things in sketchup...
It's been a struggle at times.

Today my friend Ben told me how he was getting a ruby script to add-on to sketchup.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go through the trouble.. Then I find this..

The Engineering Toolbox

This plugin adds standard and custom parametric components that you can add to your sketchup models. Things like piping, I-beams, standard bulding lumber and so on...

I found that plugin Via Ruby Library Depot. Which literally has hundreds of sketchup ruby plugins...

Two of note to me are Tomatoes and Woodwork both of which should make designing cabinets and desks and other such furniture and fixtures MUCH easier in sketchup. :)

Fallout 3 replica weapons

Fallout 3 replica weapons


These video game replica guns look fantastic! Now if they only worked.

Via Make:Online

What does it Do!?

A while back I had an idea for greatly simplifying mechanical design, but everyone I told about it (with 2 exceptions) just said "What does it do though?" to which I said "Anything!". Which didn't make sense. So then I set out to draw this idea in sketchup and to make an assembly that can "do" something.

I finally completed that model.

Here's a pic.

Come to think of it, it was December when I had the idea. 8months is WAY too long for something like this.

I will be detailing the how's what's and why's of this system here in my blog in coming weeks.

Stay Tuned...

R/C Wipeout

As usual this is something I've often wanted to build. But someone beat me to it with a couple of really cool twists.

I've always wanted to build an remote control car with a camera mounted on top. But I never thought to build a cardboard clone of a Wipeout (video racing game) track to race the car on. And I never thought to hook up the controls to an arcade style cockpit and drivers seat. This is genius!

Make sure you don't miss the video! (love the music)

I think maybe I should find an art grant somewhere and really start building things...

You can now actually build a UAV!

This is a incredible project, maybe even a little scary.

Its a processor and peripheral board that can control a remote control plane. Same as the military has. But this board and its software are open source and available for a rather low price (for what it is).

Also: I've bought some things from Sparkfun before, their service was really good!

Open Source Graphing Calculator

Really less of a dedicated calculator platform and more of a handheld linux computer with a touchscreen interface.

This graphing calculator is built using a beagle board a particularly well apportioned open-source single board computing platform.

I personally wish for a calculator with gigahertz class processing (like the beagle board) and easy to use software (like the ti-89).

Not that a format like a kindle or i-pad wouldn't work just fin. It's simply a matter of the software.

This is Amazing

A few days ago I read an article (on Make: then by the builder: Achim Sack )

Detailing how to build the world's smallest intervalometer.

In that article he used a microprocessor from MicroChip the Pic10F222 in a 6-Pin SOT-23 package.

Look at this picture..

This is a picture I staged for size comparison. The little graphic next to the arrow is the same size as the SOT-23 package from MicroChip!!! The vertical line next to the chip diagram is one inch in length. (sketchup wouldn't let me scale it properly so the chip is actually 0.008mm smaller than it should be :P)

Now lets look at some specs for this chip this is so amazing (to me)!

TABLE 1-1: PIC10F222 DEVICES

PIC10F222

Clock Maximum Frequency of Operation (MHz) 8

Memory Flash Program Memory 512

Data Memory (bytes) 23

Peripherals Timer Module(s) TMR0

Analog inputs 2

Features I/O Pins 3

Input Only Pins 1

In-Circuit Serial Programming™ Yes

Packages 6-pin SOT-23,

Operating Voltage Range (V)• Operating Current:- <>

Note 1: The PIC10F222 devices have Power-on Reset, selectable Watchdog Timer, selectable code-protect, high I/O

(copied from Microchip's datasheet(pdf) )

Yes...8mhz!! From a chip that you could reasonably accidentally swallow (without being TOO painful).

Additionally, this chip executes all instructions (except program branches) in a single cycle. So it can achieve up to 2MIPS (reference).

Furthermore it can run at 4mhz on 2volts and 170 microvolts!! That's 0.000170volts !! Standby adds three more zeros!!

I went digging around the internet to find out what the old school equivalent would be in terms of math ability.

I found the venerable Intel 286 chip can also achieve about 2MIPS (depending on clock speed). I haven't been able to find size specifications, but I remember the 286 being about an inch square. I did manage to find the power specs though. 3.3 watts at 5volts so current draw of about 660milliamps. Or about 66 MILLION times the current the microchip part draws.

The 286 was state of the art in 1982. I knew we had made progress but this is a real eye opener.

The cost is also interesting. Microchip describes the Pic10f222 as being "So inexpensive its practically disposable". It's available for less than 50 cents.

When I see spy gear on movies and tv. My mind usually responds with "they cant really do that" but I had no idea such a capable chip was available down at this size. Some of the spy gear is possible. Without even building custom chips for everything. This chip was available to the general public in 2008 and I'm sure there are things in development and secret that are even more miniaturized now.

I showed this to one friend this week and he said "You'd have to be a magician to solder that". I would say you would have to be a robot. I can barely see it.

I know what your thinking...what can you do with it. Well you can make an intervalometer (camera timer) like the guy who turned me on to it. Or you could do one of the projects on this page, or you could use it to blink leds, like so many people use their Arduinos for, the pic would be MUCH smaller and use alot less power too. Or you could use it for embedding intelligence in far flung systems (I'm thinking car door actuators and switches or similar applications). It would also be good or running servos or steppers (through an amplifier circuit). I would like to build a remote receiver/motor to turn the volume up and down on my stereo (or maybe use a digital resistor chip hacked in place of the volume knob). The 222 should be just right for that...

I also took a look at some other options in very small/cheap/low power processors while preparing for this.

I like the Texas Instruments MSP430. The usb part of the stick is the programmer. You enter your program in the IDE and send it to that little stick. It programs the very end piece. The processor is 16mhz and there are 14 user assignable pins. The great thing is the programmer (usb stick) is only $20 and then the target boards are only $3 a piece. The programmer for the PIC processors is $70. Not quite as easy to write programs for as an arduino but much more economical.

Why we should keep going to space

This video was just posted on Make: today.

This demonstrates how little we know about the universe and how much going to space teaches us.

It may seem uselessly stupid to study alka seltzer in micro-gravity. But many things that seemed pointless to study at the time ended up being useful.

It looks like space exploration (as we have known it in the past) is mostly dead in America and around the world. But I still believe there are many benefits to a vibrant space program.

Daily Reading

There are some sites I read daily. Because I am continuously entranced and fascinated by technology and wanting to possibly build something cool or useful for myself, most of these links are focused on DIY and technologies...

Hackaday.com

Makezine Blog

Lifehacker.com (I especially like the featured workspaces and workspace organization tips)

/. (of course) (I've gotta actually admit I have no idea what slashdot means (oh wait wikipedia knows )

Toolmonger A blog all about tools.

CNCCookBook A blog about CNC

DPCars Cars documented from concept to building and testing (I've been reading this one since about 2002, I think)

If you watch these sites most of what I post will be ancient news to you. But maybe I can offer another perspective or help aggregate from these sources.

Is there anything cooler?

This video (youtube) is one of the coolest ideas I've seen anywhere (aside from the whole wasting one of my favorite foods aspect).

Who knew throwing 10,000 volts through a watermelon makes a simple gourd into a bomb!!

via: Makezine blog

Btw: Your probably wondering why I didn't embed the video. It's because I don't believe in embedding dozens of videos. I have to operate from a slower/older laptop and embedding dozens of videos on a blog or a website slows my computer to a crawl. Its very frustrating. If I can figure out how to make blogger build in a break maybe I will embed videos in the future. But for now my website is usable for those on older/slower hardware and slower connections...

I'm back..

It's been almost two years since I posted.

There's lotsa reasons why, and I'll probably get into some of the reasons later.

I am gonna get back to writing and linking more in this space.

I'm also going to get over my fear of short posts (starting now) even ones mostly linking cool things going on around the net.

Hopefully I can engage your interest and show you some of the things that are possible and inspire you to what may be possible.

Had to stop and take a picture....

I know it's been a long time since I updated. There's been alot going on in my life (that I could blog about if I had the time... :P ). Also I had an image hosting problem (putfile doesn't work anymore), I finally decided to use picasa. It may be temporary or maybe permanent. At first I was thrown off by the 1-gigabyte free storage limit. Then I started uploading and realized the full size pics weren't being stored so I can actually fit Hundreds of pictures.

Here's a couple.

From Blog Sep 1

From Blog Sep 1

I was driving to go pick some stuff up at my friend's house earlier today and this vista just opened up in front of me and I realized where I was, was gonna be the best unblocked perspective, so I pulled off for two minutes and snapped a few shots.

Sand and Plans

July 4th was pretty awesome.

First we went biking in Chickasabogue park. But I didn't take any pictures. But if you know me, you know I LOVE to bike!!

Then in the evening went with some friends to the Battleship to see the Mobile City fireworks show. Several friends and my sisters got to come it was a rather fun night. :D









Here's my sisters Red, White, Blue...

This was not intentional but makes a great picture of us anyways.

On Saturday Here was "Plan A"
- Goto Pensacola to Weatherford's Outback in the morning
- Climb their rock wall
- Goto beach? Maybe. Maybe play some volleyball...
- Come back by 5 to Mobile to play Ultimate frisbee

By 8pm we were on "Plan H". Which involved
- Goto Weatherfords and find out the rock wall hours are 3pm to 9pm (it was 11am).
- Goto "Shiny Diny" for lunch and wait an hour to get food (sitdown to eating 1hr), but admittedly everyone thought it was Excellent!
- Take Nearly an hour to get to the beach (arrived at ~2pm) drive around for 30min and NOT find a parking spot.
- Continue EAST on hwy 399 till there were no more buildings and FINALLY find somewhere to park (along the road).
- Play some volleyball, hang out on the beach, 4pm time to go.
- Art and Amy arrive as we are walking out (I was NO help in getting them there sooner).
- Decide we really don't need to go back to Mobile so soon, Go back to the beach.
- Swim/Float/Frisbee/Sand Castles
- Theres suddenly a storm rolling, in take a picture, its time to Go.
- Go back to the pavilion/public safety building to change and watch the pandemonium as 5000 beach goers are trying to scurry out of the rain, and get clean, and in their normal clothes, same as us.
- Start driving to Mobile only to get separated from Art and Amy again.
- We're hungry where do we eat? Malbis Ma Bella's ...ok.
- Arrive in Malbis only to find ALLL the power is out and the Jubilee center is a ghost town with no lights on at all and no cars around. Daphne too, WEIRD!
- Continue to Mobile and eat at Logan's.
- Disband for the night....

Weatherford's Outback is a pretty cool store on highway 90 in pensacola. It sits right across from the water and just down the street from the shiny diny. They have all manner of backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, skiing, and climbing gear and clothing. They also have a really cool Golden Labrador dog. This is the Weatherford's Outdoor Climbing wall..


This is two pictures of the indoor. I plan to climb this one.

Not this part..

I felt it necessary to show these because in all my searching I couldn't find a single picture of the rock wall or the store. I will take more when we go and actually climb.


This is our group at the beach. This picture confirms several things for me. We actually did get Marshall to goto the beach (weird). We were all there and had a good time. Thusly today really did happen and some of our plans actually (Eventually) worked out.

The beach we found at the end of the buildings in Pensacola was actually pretty cool. It wasn't totally secluded, but there weren't a thousand people to get around either (and not alot of retirees like on gulf shores).

On the ride to Pensacola, Marshall was talking about "living in the moment" and how that somehow enhanced life. :) Then later when Weatherford's didn't work out Cherold mentioned how you make plans and hope they work, but when they don't you have something to swing from. Then on the way back to Mobile Marshall kept saying that he felt "Existential" this evening and how time seemed to be standing still.

I should tell you more about this, scenario. I told you about the plans, but as we were driving back it was raining and the rain was sheeting off the windshield. The sun was going down in front of us (we were heading west), but behind the clouds. Making everything a pale orange and blue. :)





It did seem time was at a standstill and very much like we didn't know anything about the next moment (except maybe that I would somehow mention Mutemath again). It was overall VERY VERY surreal. Then we arrive in Malbis, and there are no electric lights on AT ALL.

Once we got to Logan's I was talking to Marshall and managed to sum it up like this.. .
It's like looking at a waterfall and each moment is a little water drop and they just keep flowing and falling down. But looked at wider the water seems almost not to move as if time were at a standstill and nothing was happening.

Before today I was really worried the plan wasn't gonna work out, for a while I thought only me and Marshall were gonna climb and going to Pensacola just for that wouldn't be worthwhile. Additionally neither of us is really a climber (I don't like the hieghts personally). But in the end it worked out in spite of my inability to connect and communicate with Art in operational matters (sorry we left you behind twice). But in the end very glad everyone came and I think we all will have great memories of this adventure of a day.

It's often said it's not the destination but the ride. But I would interject that it is usually the destination, but you probably won't find what you expected once you get there, so you better appreciate the ride as well.

Tigers and Friends

This week the exploreum brought in a small bengal tiger exhibition (the exhibition's small not the tigers).

Naomi and I went with our friends Charles, Natalie, and Nathan.

Nathan was SO HAPPY to be going to see tigers, he talked about it the whole way there, so I took a little video of him talking about it.

Nathan-Tigers - Hosted by Putfile.com

Here's a few of the better pictures I took of the big cats.





























And a Short Video, here they were telling us the trainer was getting the tiger riled up to hunt him.

Tigers-58 - Hosted by Putfile.com

They made a big deal of not making the tigers do anything they wouldn't normally do, so the tricks were kind of basic but still better than just watching cats laze around.

About half way through the presentation I noticed two of my friends sitting on the other side, then I noticed a third as well. It was Cale, Ben and Amanda.



(He asked me to post this picture)

Mass Tram America

This Article introduces a new proposal for a tram/monorail system. It uses an elevated monorail and old 747 airplane bodies to achieve a small footprint and efficient operation. I am only writing this because after I read the following

"Fixed routes and tracks means that there’s little to no crossing traffic and high speeds can be maintained (estimated at between 100 and 200 miles per hour average speeds)."

The first thing I thought was...I hope it has a large windshield washer tank to get all those dead bugs off the front. :)

Unreal Tournament 3 Demo Torrent

The Unreal Tournament Demo was released today.

I would like to say its awesome, but on my computer it pretty much sucks. :P But thats just because I only get 30fps with it set at minimal detail 640x480.

Anyways heres the torrent
Instructions:
1. If you are using IE go download a real browser (ostensibly Opera)
2. Click the download torrent link on the torrent page.
3. Opera will download the torrent and then the demo for you (should be plenty of peers for the next couple days)
4. Double click the demo installer.
You can handle the rest (Ashley)

Hopefully it runs better on your system than mine.