This is the Quantum ORD Bot. It is 3D printer mech platform made from MakerSlide linear bearing. It is extremly ridged and very easy to build. The design can easily be scaled in X,Y and/or Z by simply changing the Makerslide lengths plus belt and leadscrew lengths. This is the mini or 'Quantum' version. The parts other than MakerSlide are either off the shelf standard items or easily fabricate with a laser cutter, 3D printer or CNC router. There is a blog post giving a lot more detail.

buildlog.net/blog/2012/01/the-quantum-ord-bot/

As a reference point, this size uses less than $15 worth of Makerslide extrusion. You also need about $45 worth of MakerSlide wheels, spacers, etc. The Makerslide parts are available at the MakerSlide store. Be aware the rail is released in weekly 'production batches' and sells out very quickly. It is 'restocked' on weekly basis.

I have attached the complete 3D design in STEP format plus a DXF of the flat parts. If I can generate enough interest, I may have about 50 sets of parts fabricated and offer kits. That would be for the mechatronics platform only. The extruder, electronics, etc would not be included.

Why spend $200 for a set of printed parts when you can have everything you see here, including motors, belts, pulleys for about $200?

Planned changes.
1. I plan to change the crossbar handle thing to an extrusion to make it more scalable.
2. The 'quantum' design currently uses NEMA14 motors. I plan to tweak the parts to be compatible with NEMA17. This just adds a second pattern to some parts.

Update: Newer version with encoder schematics: thingiverse.com/thing:15081

This panels enable you to set parameters from the firmware (e.g. max-speeds, accelerations and such, and store the settings in eeprom).
You can choose file from the sd card, and print them.
Also, you can home, monitor temperature, and do other fancy stuff.

It requires my fork of the Marlin/reprap firmware:
github.com/bkubicek/Marlin
In the configuration, you have to enable ULTIPANEL

For true autonomous printing, you have to connect a 12V fan output to Vin pin on the Ultimaker PCB, so the arduino is powered by the 12V created from the 19V supply. Direct connection is not recommended, 12V is safer.


The design is rather bad, and a new panel is in nearly finished right now.
The large PCB are makes in unreasonable to produce.
Its a proof of concept mainly.

There are two single-sided PCBs, one carrying the LCD, the other the interactive parts.
The are videos of the whole thing in action:

Initially the menu used all available keys
youtube.com/watch?v=B9uFdrKghi0

Now marlin features a new menu system, that Joris helped design. Its only uses the encoder to turn, and one click button, that in the production version will an encoder-push-button.
youtu.be/4pL8Y0NA92c

After many little pieces, I am finally able to construct a delta robot that is mostly made of printed parts.

This thing is a delta robot frame. There is the basic frame, mounted motors, arms, tool holder, and the like. The arms closest to the motors are printed plastic notched spans. The longer arms are wood dowels, with tape on their ends to enhance the friction fit into their fittings.

Steel rods in this case are 5/16". The size doesn't really matter, you can select any size as long as the vertices match.

the size is 2' on edge. that's a pretty huge build area if you decided to use this robot as a 3D printer.

It's a good platform for experimenting with various delta robot ideas. The arms will be replaced with carbon fiber. The 'bearings' will be replaced with brash, with 1/4" axles, the motors will be replaced with servos, etc.

At any rate, at least a model can be built, with not too many different types of materials. There isn't a fastener on the whole thing. Of course if it were actually moving, you'd probably find places where you'd want some fasteners, but that's the whole point of the experiment anyway.

Some interesting aspects of the design:
This is an endoskeleton. It can take a 'skin', but it's not required for structural support.
The tetrahedron is a fairly stable self supporting structure.
No threaded fasteners, other than the threaded rods themselves
Use zip ties to hold the little motor board in place. That board could be gotten rid of entirely if the motors mounted to the rod instead

UPDATE: 05022011
Changed male and female clevis part counts. They were 24 ea, and they should have been 12.

UPDATE: 06022011
Created a page on RepRap as this is more of a development project than I think is appropriate for Thingiverse
reprap.org/wiki/PolyBot

UPDATE: 27022011
There have been many parts updates. I've included a new picture with the servos and new arms, as well as the base plate in place. I've added a video on YouTube of the thing in action: youtube.com/watch?v=VzWJDWvJvqo

Some weeks ago i found chris schaie's [1] iris on hackaday [2] and i was so amazed that i took a screenshot from the video and made my own iris based upon his design.
From there it was a long road but eventually my own design worked out and i managed to create a mechanical iris that can be opened with a stepper motor.
Now we have a welcoming system at the metalab [3]

[1] schaie.com
[2] hackaday.com
[3] metalab.at

An Arduino Shield with a Single 16-Channel CMOS multiplexer (DG406DJ) and custom output pin.
Single-sided pcb milled with Geil-o-mat using metaboard.sh script to convert .brd files to .ngc ready for CNC milling.

Used for Arduino Power Monitoring Impulses Purposes, 128inputs multiplexed to 8inputs over Arduino - ATMEGA328.
Actually running and monitoring ~100 active server racks with XML output on arduino ethernet shield

This is the skeleton for a basic pentapodal robot.

I'm currently using cheap HS-311 servos for all joints. These don't really provide enough torque for the up/down shoulder joints as currently designed. I plan to shorten those members, and get more powerful servos to support them.

The Klann Lego Spider is a LEGO compatible prototype of the Klann linkage (see mechanicalspider.com).

Video clips of the spider are available at:
youtube.com/watch?v=Bl_5wCbvxMU and
youtube.com/watch?v=hz4mflE2foM

Update to v1.1 at:
tinyurl.com/y8lhcr3

The legs for the vehicle were milled from 3/8" plastic sheet stock. All the rest of the components are from LEGO Mindstorms (see tinyurl.com/6nj6w), which we use to introduce first year students to robotic concepts.

The project evolved somewhat during the build, as can be seen in the videos and pictures. The turning video shows a simple timed turn where the vehicle moves forward for five seconds, reverses the direction of the left legs for five seconds, then moves both sides forward again for five seconds. The forward motion video shows a skinny version of the vehicle that had to be widened when turning was added, since the skinny version simply fell over on its side instead of making a turn.

Perhaps one of the funnest projects we have attempted around the .:oomlout:. offices. A five degrees of freedom robotic arm. While we have spent many hours twisting knobs to move pop cans from one point on our desk to another sadly it has not progressed much further.
The main reason for this is the sum total of math knowledge around the oomlout.com offices is about 4 (don't ask us to show our work on how we calculated this) so inverse kinematics is well beyond our reach.

We are releasing it in an imperfect form in the hope that the clever Thingiverse denizens will be able to make it better.

Why this isn't quite ready for sale:
-We lack any inverse kinematics program which makes moving the arm intelligently nearly impossible.
-Without software limits on the servos it is capable of stripping the low cost hobby servo motors (this is alright for testing as they are only five dollars) (we have stripped two in the life of our arm and both happened when we were asking it to do silly things) (this can be fixed by upgrading the servos)
-We haven't completed the 3d model or assembly instructions just yet, but by studying the photos it is possible to assemble. (think more jigsaw puzzle than lego set)
-The gripper, lets just say the gripper needs a little work.

That said it is an amazingly fun toy to play around with, and a good starting point if anyone has ever had a desire to make the perfect robotic arm (it is open source so you'd be free to make and sell your own)

(shameless plug)

For more details about becoming a Robotic Arm Developer visit our blog
(http://www.oomlout.com/blog)

An openly designed Creative Commons Licensed robot.

Note: New Version (Beta 2.1) posted 06/05/2009

New features: 12 legs instead of 8, "drop-in" center platform, 1:1.8 ratio gears, many small changes.

I only update this listing for major revisions of the walker, it's possible there's a minor revision posted at my site that is not here: 4volt.com/projects/jansen/

What you see here is the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 12 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.

For more info on Theo Jansen as well as some video and pictures see strandbeest.com.

I've marked this as non-commercial creative commons licensed, but it would be very easy for anyone get me to license a commercial version to almost anyone. For the most part I would just like to make sure I agree with the usage, and make sure I am aware of it.

See vimeo.com/4221721 for a video of the motion.
The home for this project is 4volt.com/Projects/Jansen/

Also, if you don't have a laser cutter, but would like a set of laser cut parts for this project see: 4volt.com/donate.aspx#jansen

Articulated modules for building modular robots. It is the repraped version of the Y1 modules that I have created for my PhD.
iearobotics.com/personal/juan/doctorado/Modulos-Y1/modulos-y1.html
Version 1.0 is the first one. It works and it is 3D printable, but the design should be improved in order to obtain a better printing quality.

UPDATE: 09/Nov/2011
A new version has been released: thingiverse.com/thing:13442

here's a flickr set for this bot
flickr.com/photos/sixmilliondollardan/sets/72157616240288122/

the zip file is a bunch of solidworks files. SW2006 i think. but i can't remember exactly. i will try to find my parts spreadsheet and toss that up as well.

Spring 2008.
I designed and built a simple torso for a Go playing(manipulation driven, not strategy) robot for Prof Rod Brooks at MIT CSAIL. Postdoc Eduardo Torres-Jara works on the motor drivers, control, and hand design. Josh Kargas did some of the electronics mounting and routing.

Robot has 6 Series Elastic Actuator degrees of freedom. But waist is locked out and shoulder joints have the spring shorted out.

DOFS:
waist yaw
shoulder x 2
elbow x 2
wrist vertical axis x 1
wrist rotation axis x 1
neck pitch x 1
head tilt x 1
head pan x 1

yes analog sensors. potentiometers are awesome.

This is an OpenSCAD Model of minds SpiderBot. The servo positions are design parameters. So you can change them and watch the SpiderBot moving. There is also some infrastructure to animate the spiderbot using OpenSCADs animate view mode.

The most recent version of this model can be checked out from the svn repository:
svn.clifford.at/handicraft/2010/spiderbot/

an improved version of random's sphere thingi. I've cleaned up the code to use csg for creating the rings and added colors because random mentioned in his thingis description that the original part had each spehere in a different color.

A python script to generate OpenSCAD models to generate two parts of a box that screw together and snap fit if you find your way through the maze :)

UPDATE: because I got so many requests from people I now offer printed versions for sale at: hackerspaceshop.com/3dprinting/a-mazing-box.html
contact me for custom mazes :)