NYC Resistor

I do all of my hacking at the NYC Resistor hacker space, and I’m proud to announce the most recent fruit of my labors: the Sanguino. This board is an Arduino-compatible board that boasts 4x the memory (64K!) 4x the RAM (4K!) and 12 more pins (32 IO pins!) Its all open source and you can get one from the RepRap Research Foundation for only $25. Sweet!

Oh, and I managed to get this footage last night. Check it out.

Sanguino: Arduino’s Big Brother from Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken on Vimeo.

We’re not always hacking at NYC Resistor: sometimes we play with exothermic reactions that turn liquids into solids! Here is a timelapse of me casting some RepRap Extruder MKII parts to play with.

Smooth-on Timelapse from Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken on Vimeo.

Play or Die

So here’s a quick preview of the LED Array Jacket. I’m pretty excited it’s managed to light. Currently I am redesigning the driver circuit and boarduino to work with non-solid core wiring and to be more elegant and clean. But I thought this might wet your appetites.

Heres the first of many timelapses of my RepRap machine printing. I’ll be working on the quality and lighting. If anyone wants to give me a hand, let me know!

RepRap Print Timelapse from Zach ‘Iowa’ Hoeken on Vimeo.

NYC Resistor Timelapse from Zach ‘Iowa’ Hoeken on Vimeo.

The first of many timelapse videos of cool stuff happening at the space. Someone get me better music. =)

I moved all my robots into the space this previous weekend, and it took much less time than I thought. This was great because it left me with 2 more days to code and work on my robot. You see, I’ve been participating in the RepRap open source project to create a self-copying 3D printer for quite a while. I finally found enough time to fix some bugs that were preventing me from printing.

If you’re interested, read more on the RepRap Builders blog entry.

I have an idea I want to try out involving sintering (melting) powdered plastic with a laser as an alternative to extruding plastic from a nozzle.  To do this, I need some sort of plastic, ideally ABS plastic that is powdered and will absorb the laser light.  I’m guessing it will be an IR laser, but I figure black plastic would be a good bet for this.

Any ideas?

okay, so i hit up the lab to see if my cheap dc motor controller board could also be used to drive a stepper motor. verdict: absolutely, but it doesn’t like large steppers, and it’s not nearly as smooth as a chopper based stepper drive.

DC Motor Driver Hack from Zach ‘Iowa’ Hoeken on Vimeo.

Watching this amazing video over at Wired is pretty much guaranteed to blow your mind. Dr. Atala is printing body parts using a setup not unlike RepRap.

He’s using a modified HP printer with an elevator plate added to allow the device to day down multiple layers of organic cells and cross-linkers. He’s had enormous successes and has produced working bladders as well as heart constructs that actually begin beating within hours of being printed.

I’m curious whether Dr. Atala utilizes the bubblejet’s ability to spray precise patterns, or if he’s simply laying down stripes of material with each pass. If the latter is the case, I don’t see any reason why, once perfected and refined, RepRap wouldn’t be able to produce similar results, and possibly on a much larger scale.

Hey all, I’m going to be in my lab pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday this weekend. I’m going to be working on my project, and you are all invited to come hang out, hack on your own project,  help with mine, or whatever. I have a couple of tables for workspace, and lots of random tools if you need them. I think Bre and Eric are coming out on Sunday, but I’ll be there both days. Consider this a bit of a teaser / makeshift space until we can get our actual NYC Resistor clubhouse. The workshop is located in Williamsburg near Kent and S 1st st. Call my phone at 347.244.3219 or email me at hoeken@rrrf.org if you are interested and I can give you the full directions.

As you may know from the meeting last night, I’m working on a fun open source project called RepRap. To summarize, its essentially an open source 3D printer that we’re building from scratch. I’ve been working on it for a while, and even though I’m close to having my first version up and running, I could still definitely use some help. Bre thought it would be a good idea to go over the main areas where I need help in the hopes that some of our smart friends could help!

Host Software

The biggest area where I need help is writing the host software. I have a solid programming background on the web, but I haven’t done much with client applications. I’m planning on using Processing and making a rad host control software. Ideally if you could help me with stuff like GUI interfaces, menus, and possibly serial communication, that would be awesome. If you have a java background, or even a programming background, I’d love to chat with you.

Graphic Design

I’d like the host software interface to look amazing as well as be amazing, and in order to do that, I need some pretty pictures made! I have some ideas for what i’d like for the host interface, specifically that it would be freaking awesome if it looked steampunk. Other than that, I would just generally love some help. It really shouldn’t be too hard, and I think it would be a fun project to work on.

Firmware

The robot itself is run off a single Arduino. I’ve started writing the code, and I think its coming along nicely. I would definitely love to have some help with it, or even just have a couple people run their eyeballs over it. A couple areas I could use help on are the serial comms, and the stepper algorithm. Someone with a good grasp of geometry could really help out here.

Mechanics

The mechanics are mostly done, but I’m always down for suggestions and improvements. I think Bre and I have really nailed it so far, and the axes really glide smoothly. If you’re a mechanically minded person (or even if you’re not!) feel free to come check it out.

Mostly there is just alot to be done. None of it is super hard, but the project is rather large and there is plenty to do. If anyone is interested in the project and/or helping out, I’m sure I could help you find something that you could do. Since the project spans all sorts of areas from software to firmware to electronics to mechanical, if you have skills in even one of those areas you can get started. If you don’t have skills in those areas, but are interested in learning… there are so many cool things here to learn about. When I started out with this project a year ago, I didn’t know anything about it. I just knew that it sounded awesome and that I wanted to do something cool. I still don’t know everything about it, and I’ve failed often in my quest, but I’ve learned a ton and had lots of fun along the way. Hopefully you will too!

~Zach Hoeken