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Bitbeam at the Open Hardware Summit (or, Robots that Play Angry Birds)
I’m off to NYC today for the Open Hardware Summit. Yeah! I just submitted (5 minutes before the deadline! Phew!) my entry to the Open Hardware scholarship contest. Here’s the description I included in the contest entry: Project Description: Bitbea… Continue reading
The Next Step
Time for an update of the goings-on in the Bitbeam Basement. Last week, I purchased some stepper motors from Jameco (Part #: 155460). I went with bipolar instead of unipolar based on what I read on the RepRap wiki page about steppers — bipolar st… Continue reading
Octagony (or, Reinventing the Wheel)
In the “Things That Could’ve Been Brought To My Attention Yesterday” Department, I just found a huge time saver in OpenSCAD — the scale function. By default, OpenSCAD’s built-in circle and cylinder functions are fine. However, for small circles o… Continue reading
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Tagged octagony, openscad, thingthatcouldhavebeenbroughttomyattentionyesterday
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Ready for Main Street
If you stop and think about it, grid beam is ready for Main Street. (Photo taken a few blocks from my house in Oak Park, Illinois.) Continue reading
Bitbeam Cube
Ingredients: 12 1×27 beams 24 #3 and #4 Lego Technic axles 48 Lego Technic bushings or half-bushings There were no nuts or bolts involved, and it assembles in a few minutes! It could use a couple of cross braces for stability, and I could upgrade … Continue reading
Code Your CAD with OpenSCAD
OpenSCAD is an excellent prototyping tool for creating 3D and 2D designs. OpenSCAD’s killer feature is parametric design. With a few simple shapes and a short script, you can create intricate designs that would have taken hours to create manually … Continue reading
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Lessons Learned from Customer Development with a 5 year old
Over the weekend, I watched my two sons play with the existing batch of Bitbeam beams. They kept trying to connect the beams to their existing Lego bricks, but couldn’t, since the Bitbeam’s through holes were too small. With that wee bit of custom… Continue reading
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BitbeamCNC (first prototype)
Here’s a prototype X-axis for a Bitbeam-based CNC machine. Okay, it’s pretty far from being fully armed and operational, but I hope you can see where this is going. Continue reading
Bitbeam: Grid Beam + Lego Technic
Bitbeam is an experiment to combine my two favorite prototyping tools: balsa/basswood and Lego. The idea is to miniaturize Grid Beam and make it Lego Technic compatible. Bitbeam height and width is 5/16 inches, and each hole is 8mm apart — just l… Continue reading
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