What's Next 9/24/2015

What's Next: A quick look into future technology news

Today we have great innovations and developments in ease of use in the small CNC industry.

Printrbot Releases the New Crawlbot:

This new CNC router from printrbot does not include a table! Instead you attach it to the plywood or sheet material you are cutting (or alternatively it is sized large enough to build a table bigger than a sheet). But at its core it's "the size of a golf bag", so it can easily be transported to a site or the material. As opposed to other full sheet machines, that need a crane to be delivered.

I've had my eye on printrbot since they first debuted, they seem like an exemplary company from what I've seen.

Image Credit; Makezine Review;

GlowForge Looks to Revolutionize Laser Cutting:




Using advanced sensors and software (why has no one done this yet?) and even more advanced software, the Glowforge laser cutter takes the user interface completely out of using a cutter. Just draw a design, the cameras inside record the design and convert it to laser motions. Then hit go, basically. There's no CAD, no drivers, no illustrations,

Additionally no privacy, but quick don't think about that (every design goes into "the cloud" for the magic image processing and other mysterious things).

It looks like an amazing machine, the bigger one with an included pass through, (use any length material as long as it's no wider than 20in) the machine tracks the material as its pulled through.

More: Here; Here; and Here.

Free Software helped me make a business card

I've got a brand new business card

Being that I'm not quite willing to publish my info free an clear on the internet.. here's a privacy minded version..

In making this card I used all Free and Open source software and fonts!

I used the Linux operating system (Mint standard install).

http://www.linuxmint.com/

Within linux I used the VERY Excellent Inkscape software (fully free and open source)

But: If you want to follow in my footsteps, you don't need Linux, Inkscape is available in all the major operating systems, it even works nearly identically. In my experience its also very solid and hard to crash/mess up. I really cannot say enough good things about Inkscape, if it does the task you need, it should be the first choice!

https://inkscape.org/

The font is Open Sans, which some friends of mine with lots more design experience recommended. It is provided free from Google.

https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans

The graphic is a video card I scanned years ago for another project.

Thanks to my various friends and family that helped with the design decisions, you know who you are (I'm ok at design on a good day).


If you want to make high quality graphics, but don't want to talk to a banker first, Inkscape should be your first stop.

As another bonus:
Many Maker types are using inkscape as a lightweight CAD, they make the designs in inkscape then publish them to the laser cutter at home or the local makerspace.

CNC Camera Scanner

Tormach has developed hardware/software to scan a part with high accuracy with your CNC milling machine..

Tormach is a company that makes on of the most prominent CAM software packages around, Mach3.

CAM stands for Computer Aided Manufacturing. The CAM software is what sends the commands to a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine.

Tormach has built a milling machine attachment and a software package. At the end of the attachment is a microscope USB camera.

The CNC machine (commanded by the CAM software (Mach3)) moves the camera around over a part that you want scanned. While commanding the camera to take a series of pictures which are then stitched together and entered into another plugin that helps you to draw that part in your CAD software with a large amount of accuracy. Build Log claims accuracy down to a few thousands.

This is reverse engineering and copying to the N-th level.

Simplified Mechanical System Part 4

There is one more important component.

What to bolt the brackets to?
How about a standardized grid of holes, of specified diameter...

Like this...

There is one more component I came up with early on. 

A cam arm. Cams are used to do lots of things and it seemed like it would be easy to model so...

So there you have it. The Simplified Mechanical System... 

I will soon send these models to Google's 3d Warehouse, and also post them here as well. 

I would love to build some of these components, but I haven't gotten a chance yet. 

This system would be particularly useful if you wanted to prototype something (much like the arduino). You could prototype in wood or plastic, then for final assembly build it in metal. 

It shares alot in common with Makerbeam and Contraptor and MicroRax and Vex and of course where I got my start mechanically... Lego Technics