George W. Hart is a professor at Stony Brook and is one of our favorite artists, making a wide variety of stunning geometric sculptures. On his of his many works that has particularly captivated us for some time is a sculpture called Frabjous.
When we realized that George had posted a template for this sculpture we dropped everything, grabbed the cardboard and hot glue, and raced to build our own.
You’ll need papercraft type building materials: Paper, cardstock, or cardboard, and tape or glue. Also good scissors and/or a hobby knife with sharp blades. You can also build this with wood, plastic, or other materials, of course, but cardstock and cardboard are inexpensive and effective. Hot glue also proved to be excellent, providing sufficient strength and flexibility, and good working time.
You can download the PDF template for Frabjous on its web page.
I have one of those USB-based logic analyzers that needs Windows software to make it go. I had been doing Windows-in-a-window with VMWare, but it’s kind of a pain. If I were to use a real Windows laptop, I’d need a shelf or something for it. I wanted it above my oscilloscope, which meant a laptop stand that was taller and wider than most. Time for the laser cutter!
What you see here is Beta 1 of the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 8 legs and scuttles similar to a crab walking sideways. The brain is a Arduino, and the legs are powered by 2 micro-servos modified for continuous rotation. This project is heavily influenced by Theo Jansen’s natural gearing mechanism, it’s a very efficient mechanical leg design for converting rotary motion into leg movements, and is very elegant in my opinion.
The basis is the relative distance of the 12 joins, Jansen calls them “The 12 Holy Numbers”. The numbers were developed with a genetic algorithm. In a couple of interviews that he wrote the evolver on a Atari STe computer and it took literally months of 1990’s processing power to find the solution (files on Thingiverse).
Not too long ago there was an xkcd comic featuring the Kindle, we knew someone would eventually laser etch a new Kindle 2 but we didn’t expect it to be us! Here’s the first ever laser etched Kindle 2! Sean brought his over to the shop today and we “experimented”. We used 80% power and 100% speed on our Epliog 35W laser, the laser burned off a thin layer of metal and the results look great.
Blue wire? Green wire? All wires? Once you figure all that stuff out you’ll want to carry around a pocket bomb defusing tool. Where to get such a thing? Well, you are in luck! We have them in stock right now at the Adafruit webshop
Check out the new Laser Information pages for all of your $20K laser cutter setup needs!
Its another Wiki embedded page: it looks like a normal web page but if you click the link at the top it will take you to the Wiki where the data is kept. That way, the 99% of people who just want the info don’t have to deal with the strange look of a wiki.
Wired: Your custom artwork permanently laser-etched!
I’ve just started a new service under the Adafruit Industries umbrella: Adafruit Laser Services. Its like a tattoo parlor, but for your gear. Customize your goods with your artwork, not stock images, not some lame character-limited engraving. We can do just about everything, including every sort of iPod, laptop, cellphone, PDA, game console, etc.
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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