Come and join the Open Street Map meetup on the Tuesday 13th September 2011 at the Guildford Arms 7:00pm. Beside the chance to learn a lot from each other, we would like to discuss at that meeting further ideas for workshops and OSM events. Maybe you have already some some ideas of Open Street Map Read more about Open Street Map meetup[…]
One of the cooler projects undertaken at the Hacklab has just come to fruition. Martin was working under the microscope for some time to create a masterpiece of minaturization: a wireless camera for insertion into a prosthetic eye (look Mom, no PCB!). The project seems to have caught the eye of the media, starting with Read more about Eyeborg goes mainstream[…]
Sacrificial wood clamps the piece so the cutter doesn't hit the steel vice. We have a new cutting lubricant in the bottom of the photo. A bottle of red helps the time pass.
Maria and I were working last week fabricating four identical complex pieces out of ABS plastic. Initially we though a lowish feed rate combined with a fast cutting speed would give the best results but actually that’s not true. ABS suffers from the material melting and reattaching tangental to the circular cutter, so the effect is that when you cut, you end up drawing frayed lines over the surface. This is particularly noticeable on 90 degree corners and in deep pockets (concave regions). The first fix we tried was running the same program a second time. This did improve the situation but not enough to give it a finished look.
Make search go mega fast! O(log(n)) inserts and deletes on ordered lists, but with the twist that the original list before modification remains intact! Implemented by using path-copying as per “Making Data Structures Persistent” Driscoll, Sarnak, Sleator and Tarjan. PersistentRedBlackTreeSet This was quite tricky to implement, because you are not allowed parent pointers, so you Read more about A Java implementation of persistent red-black trees open sourced[…]
New Oldham couplings for the Z and Y axis have been fitted. The X axis has not been replaced but it has also never been broken. We have the bits to fit the X axis, we can do it next round of breakages :p Slop and backlash have been greatly reduced, and the machine sounds Read more about CNC working again[…]
Meet Arnie Android (rev0) !! Based on a desk toy from Dealextreme he as 2 servo driven arms,a buzzer two flashy eyes and a PIR sensor in the head. Those foolish enough to approach within 10 M of my desk can now be detected ans suitably “processed” by Arnie 😉 http://www.dealextreme.com/p/android-mini-collectible-series-action-figure-doll-android-09-yellow-51733 Designed by yours truly Read more about Android androids[…]
So the mill has been working nicely since last week, until the ‘temporary’ bodged z-axis coupler gave in. I ordered proper Oldham couplings for all axis last week, but forgot to take them to the lab this evening (doh). However, I took the free time to take apart the machine and gave it a clean Read more about CNC mill conversion update[…]
Following the success of last months talks, this month we have a selection of Scotland’s ambitious tech start-ups talking about their areas. Anarkik3D — develops software applications using virtual 3D touch, with a haptic device taking the place of the standard mouse to provide more natural and familiar 3D interactions. Robomotic — develops embedded wireless sensor platforms. Read more about Talks at the lab on Sunday 17th July[…]
A rather amusing way of preparing ham by one of our regulars John Alexander http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpZLOCNfrI
Martin and I worked more on the Mill->CNC project. “We tried to get the Linux-based CNC software EMC2 running with the mill. The initial idea had been to use Jay’s ITX machine for this, but it turns out this won’t run the necessary realtime kernel due to not having a working local APIC. We had a dig through the Read more about Mill->CNC project[…]