One of my favorite projects in MAKE: Soft Robotics is the Kousa. It’s a soft sensor that uses water power to turn a simple force sensing resistor into a versatile sensor that can pick up squeezing, tapping, and pressing from any angle.
The Kousa
Year: 2018
MAKE: Soft Robotics is Here!
After years of building projects, testing designs, writing, and editing, MAKE: Soft Robotics is ready to hit shelves! It’s available on presale from Amazon and is scheduled to go live Dec 23. I can now officially say I’m an O’Reilly author, and that I literally wrote the book on soft robotics.
Continue readingAutomatic Origami
I’ve been playing with origami, lately. Specifically, I’ve been exploring how to simulate, model, and fold origami shapes in ways that could be automated to create useful mechanisms. The system I’ve come up with is designed to fold rip-stop nylon, a material I’ve worked with at both Makani Power and Super-Releaser.
After some experiments with programs designed specifically for generating origami patterns, I found I wasn’t able replicate the patterns I’d prototyped in paper. Since I wanted to start out with a paper prototype, do some bench tests, and move to CAD from there, I needed to consider other options. I also wasn’t able to convert the output into a format that would play with CAD for printing and prototyping the resulting forms. So, I fell back on my old standard: SolidWorks. If you’ve worked with me before or you’re a regular reader, you don’t get any bonus points for guessing I’d find a way to turn this into a SolidWorks project. This video was very helpful for understanding how to think about origami in a SW context.
Continue reading3D Printed Syringe Static Mixer
I developed this static mixer design to streamline casting demos. Often times, a casting demo can get bogged down with portioning, mixing, and degassing, especially when you’re trying to have a group of students get hands-on time with the casting materials.
Continue readingGrow Light Diffuser
Cheap grow lights are great – they’re energy efficient, ubiquitous, and the design pattern of the aluminum-backed PCB for dissipating heat is well chosen. However, unshielded high-output LED’s are a real pain on the eyes.
I bought a set of these grow lights to give the plants in my bedroom a little boost since their window faces a shaded courtyard in the center of my building. Rather than invest in something more expensive or put up with hot pinpoints of light stabbing my eyes every day, I designed a cheap printed diffuser to make the system more hospitable.
Continue readingFallout Ghoul Face Prosthesis
My partner Shayna and I decided to attend the NYC Resistor Halloween party as The Lone Wanderer and Hancock from Fallout 4. She went all-out to create an exceptional spandex costume, and I wanted to build something that would at least prevent me from looking like a schlub in comparison.
Metal Parts from 3D Prints
After testing the Flat-Pack Camera Arm, I was pretty happy with the results. Happy, except for one detail: the joint at the base of the arm would creep down over time. This wasn’t a problem while taking shots of projects at the bench, given how often I’d have to reposition it. The big pain was trying to capture time lapses. The creep was just too noticeable, and it would never stay in place long enough to keep the action of a day’s work in frame.
Printed Tensegrity Toy
I’ve been experimenting with printed flexures, and wanted to make a simple tensegrity toy to explore the concept. This design (which you can download on Thingiverse) features both printed tension and compression elements that all build together into a slightly bouncy tensegrity sculpture.
