Miscellaneous

New Warehouse, who dis?

Moving to a new home is always a challenge. Here’s the current progress on getting set up, with notes about what’s left to do.

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Welcome! This garage is too small for my car, but plenty for making stuff.

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Welcome to my office, which apparently is turning into some kind of man cave. As I set out these chairs I couldn’t help but imagine running DND campaigns out here.

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Half of this is exclusively Makelangelo parts. The bottom half is stuff I want to make leave.

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My 2013 G Weike 60W C02 laser cutter, and some wood. The plan is to hook this up with a portable air filter. Until then I have to rely on third party suppliers for my laser cutting.

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Reachable tools available immediately, and less available tools below. I’ve managed to get rid of that griding wheel already. The big fan is part of the laser cutter.

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None of this is staying here. The entire shelf has to be torn out. The right hand side will be for the filter system, on wheels, so I can push it out the door to the right when I’m using it.

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This is where the laser cutter will live when these shelves come out, too. The chiller for the laser cutter is on the bottom shelf.

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Almost all of this is packing material I don’t need any more (wrong box size), and two SIXI 2 robots in the back. I plan to disassemble at least one of them for reuse. SIXI 2 was my fourth attempt at an arm. In the back on top is SIXI 3, my *fifth* attempt at an arm.

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Bars, tubes, screw thread, rods (all in bucket), continuous servos, various SIXI 2 parts – at least enough to build a new robot arm. Bearings, more robots, and some misc boxes I don’t even know how to start sorting. A lot of parts built up from… well let’s call them tests that didn’t give me the results I wanted. The blue arm is my second attempt.

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Even less sorted stuff. Hog drive robot, line followers, 3 stewart platforms in two types.

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I was thinking about having this shelf be the trophy case where I put all the robots I want to keep. The only problem there is that PLA, in the sun, will probably get soft. So I might go one shelf over. The red arm is my third attempt.

You’ll notice there’s no workbench but there is a pile of bench parts. The plan is that when the shelves come out there should be just enough room to set up one bench here. In the meantime I’m doing all my assembly in the home office. I am getting a lot of steps in a day traveling between the two…

Final thoughts

My next step is to sell enough that I can empty the white shelves; take down the shelves and sell them; install the laser cutter; and finally get back to producing my own parts. It’s a process that will take some time so I tackle a bit more every day and try to find satisfaction in the incremental improvements.

Send me your kindest thoughts. I have so many NEMA17 stepper motors and servos for sale. Don’t be shy, hmu.

Miscellaneous

Quadcopter update

I’ve been on Vacation in Puerto Vallarta the last week and now I’m working my way home. I’m kicking myself for not bringing a quadcopter and filming a few aerial shots of the beach, the zipline tour, or the turtles laying eggs outside our hotel. Not that I’m unhappy – while I was gone a total of EIGHTEEN people signed up for the quadcopter build night at the VHS, eight more than we expected. Fantastic! Now we’re working on getting all the parts. Apparently shipping one box with 18 copies of parts is a LOT more than 18x shipping one kit, even if we ship it as 18 separate boxes. Weird, huh? So we’re on the phone with them trying to sort this out and make is come in on budget.

I really just want to let you know I’m not dead and I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything lately.

Please don’t feel bad that you’re not on vacation. Take a break and watch this, instead.

Miscellaneous

Build a Quadcopter at the Vancouver Hack Space

quadcopter

Give the gift of making this winter

Marginally Clever is underwriting a Build your own Quadcopter event at the Vancouver Hack Space this winter. With the help of the prodigious Jon Grieman we’ve designed a custom frame that’s easy to put together and built an list of tested parts. You have until November 13th to put $250 to get in on the group buy. This machine measures ~50cm across and is strong enough to carry a GoPro. It even comes with an extra battery and spare propellors.

Get all the details and sign up right here!

click for a detailed picture