Clocks are a popular project around here, and with good reason. There’s a ton of options, and there’s always a new take on ways to tell time. Clocks using lasers, words, or even ball bearings are all atypical ways of displaying time, but like a mathematician looking for a general proof of a long-understood idea this clock from [Julldozer] shows us a way to turn any object into a clock.

His build uses AA-powered clock movements that you would find on any typical wall clock, rather than reaching for his go-to solution of an Arduino and a stepper motor. The motors that drive the hands in these movements are extremely low-torque and low-power which is what allows them to last for so long with such a small power source. He uses two of them, one for hours and one for minutes, to which he attaches a custom-built lazy Suzan. The turntable needs to be extremely low-friction so as to avoid a situation where he has to change batteries every day, so after some 3D printing he has two rotating plates which can hold any object in order to tell him the current time.

While he didn’t design a clock from scratch or reinvent any other wheels, the part of this project that shines is the way he was able to utilize such a low-power motor to turn something so much heavier. This could have uses well outside the realm of timekeeping, and reminds us of this 3D-printed gear set from last year’s Hackaday prize.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/anything-becomes-a-clock/

It’s not uncommon to happen across vintage measurement equipment at the local flea market or garage sale. Often with an irresistible aesthetic, and built to last decades, these tools nonetheless tend to be sidelined when modern multimeters are available. [Build Comics] had just such a piece on hand, and decided to repurpose it with some modern hardware instead.

The build begins with a Hartmann & Braun 60 amp ammeter. Replete in a nice wooden box, it’s the perfect candidate for a modern refit. The device uses an indicator of the moving iron type. Intending to turn the device into a soil moisture monitor, [Build Comics] began by removing the original heavy-wound coil. In its place, a custom coil was installed instead, wound on a 3D printed bobbin using a modified sewing machine. This allows the meter to be easily driven by an Arduino with little more than a transistor on a GPIO pin. To detect moisture, a Iduino ME110 moisture probe was used. Complete with cloth-covered wire to maintain the vintage look. The original meter plate was also photographed, modified, and reprinted, to read moisture levels instead of current.

If you’re interested in these gauge restoration techniques but don’t have a green thumb, no worries. [Build Comics] used similar tricks to put together a gorgeous weather station that would look great on your desk.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/vintage-ammeter-becomes-plant-moisture-gauge/

With bright colors and often intricate designs, after the physical shape of a keyboard the most conspicuous elements are surely the keycaps. Historically dictated by the stem of the key switch it attaches to, keycaps come in a variety of sizes, colors, profiles, and designs. As they necessarily include small features with tight tolerances to fit the stem of their key switch, injection molding is the classic manufacturing technique for a keycap. But as hobbyist 3D printing matures and resin printers become more accessible, home keycap manufacturing is increasingly good option. Instead of designing each cap by hand, consider trying [rsheldiii]’s KeyV2 OpenSCAD script to create custom caps with ease.

To cover the basics, KeyV2 can generate full keycap sets with Cherry or Alps stems, in the SA, DSA, DCS profiles (and more!) for any typically sized keyboard. Generating a particular cap of arbitrary profile, position, and size is just a short chain of function calls away. But standard keycap sets aren’t the highlight of this toolset.

If you’re not an OpenSCAD aficionado yet, visit [Brian Benchoffs] great getting-started guide or our other coverage to get a feel for what the tool can do. Part of OpenSCAD’s attraction is that it is the the paragon of parametric modeling. It’s declarative part files ensure that no parameter goes undefined, which is a perfect fit for KeyV2.

The root file upon which all caps are based on has about 150 keycap parameters which can be tweaked, and that’s before more elaborate customization. Making simple “artisan” caps is a snap, as the magic of OpenSCAD means the user can perform any Boolean operations they need on top of the fully parameterized keycap. Combining an arbitrary model with a keycap is one union() away. See the README for examples.

For the prospective user of KeyV2 worried about complexity; don’t be, the documentation is a treat. Basic use to generate standard keycaps is simple, and there are plenty of commented source files and examples to make more complex usage easy. Thinking about a new keyboard? Check out our recent spike in clacky coverage.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/keycap-customizer-brings-all-your-caps-to-the-board/

People sometimes say “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” as if that were a bad thing. Hitting up Wikipedia, they’re calling it the Law of the Instrument or Maslow’s Hammer and calling it a cognitive bias. But I like hammers…

I’m working on a new tool, a four-axis hot-wire foam cutter based roughly on this design, but built out of stuff in my basement so far. I want it primarily to turn out wings for RC airplanes so that I can play around with airfoils and construction methods and so on. But halfway through building this new “hammer”, I’m already getting funny ideas of other projects that could be built with it. Classic nail-seeking behavior.

And some of these thoughts are making me reconsider the design of my hammer. I originally wanted to build it low, because it’s not likely that I’ll ever want to cut wing sections taller than 50 mm or so. But as soon as cutting out giant letters to decorate my son’s room, or maybe parts for a boat hull enter my mind, that means a significantly taller cutter, with ensuing complications.

So here I am suffering simultaneously from Maslow’s Hammer and scope creep, but I’m not sad about either of these “ills”. Playing with a couple manual prototypes for the CNC hot-wire cutter has expanded my design vocabulary; I’ve thought of a couple cool projects that I simply wouldn’t have had the mental map for before. Having tools expands the possible ways you can build, cognitive bias or not.

One person’s scope creep is another’s “fully realizing the potential of a project”. I’m pretty sure that I’ll build a version two of this machine anyway, so maybe it’s not a big deal if the first draft were height-limited, but the process of thinking through the height problem has actually lead me to a better design even for the short cutter. (Tension provided by an external bow instead of born by the vertical CNC towers. I’ll write the project up when I’m done. But that’s not the point.)

Maybe instead of lamenting Maslow’s cognitive bias, we should be celebrating the other side of the same coin: that nails are tremendously useful, and that the simple fact of having a hammer can lead you to fully appreciate them, and in turn expand what you’re capable of. As for scope creep? As long as I get the project done over my vacation next week, all’s well, right?

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/hammer-seeks-nail/

Sometimes, economies of scale don’t work in our favor. While guitarists and singers will find themselves well catered to by the accessories market, players of fancier, less popular instruments will often have to dig deeper in their pockets to get what they need. [Henry Goh] found himself in need of a saxophone mic. However, off-the-shelf solutions were a touch expensive, and thus he decided he could probably whip something up himself.  (Video, embedded below.)

It’s a simple solution, one that we could imagine any maker quickly whipping up with junkbox parts. Not one to skimp on quality, [Henry] picked a Rode Wireless Go paired with a lavalier mic for a quality wireless microphone solution. The real problem would be mounting the device, intended to be worn on a shirt, to the right position in front of the saxophone’s bell.

To achieve this, most dedicated sax mics used a bendable arm to allow the position to be readily changed. Instead, [Henry] whipped up some mounts on the 3D printer that would allow him to mount the Rode wireless mic hardware on an bendy Energizer LED torch. The torch even comes with a clamp allowing it to be easily attached to the instrument, making fitment a cinch.

[Henry] estimates the solution saved him up to $800 SGD. The final result is cost effective, and gives quality easily good enough for amateur and community performances. As a bonus, the hack is non-destructive, meaning you can repurpose the lavalier mic for other work as needed.

We love a good hack on the cheap, and it’s something we see all the time in the music scene. This guitar build is a great example of the form.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/wireless-sax-mic-done-on-the-cheap/

Sometimes, economies of scale don’t work in our favor. While guitarists and singers will find themselves well catered to by the accessories market, players of fancier, less popular instruments will often have to dig deeper in their pockets to get what they need. [Henry Goh] found himself in need of a saxophone mic. However, off-the-shelf solutions were a touch expensive, and thus he decided he could probably whip something up himself.  (Video, embedded below.)

It’s a simple solution, one that we could imagine any maker quickly whipping up with junkbox parts. Not one to skimp on quality, [Henry] picked a Rode Wireless Go paired with a lavalier mic for a quality wireless microphone solution. The real problem would be mounting the device, intended to be worn on a shirt, to the right position in front of the saxophone’s bell.

To achieve this, most dedicated sax mics used a bendable arm to allow the position to be readily changed. Instead, [Henry] whipped up some mounts on the 3D printer that would allow him to mount the Rode wireless mic hardware on an bendy Energizer LED torch. The torch even comes with a clamp allowing it to be easily attached to the instrument, making fitment a cinch.

[Henry] estimates the solution saved him up to $800 SGD. The final result is cost effective, and gives quality easily good enough for amateur and community performances. As a bonus, the hack is non-destructive, meaning you can repurpose the lavalier mic for other work as needed.

We love a good hack on the cheap, and it’s something we see all the time in the music scene. This guitar build is a great example of the form.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/wireless-sax-mic-done-on-the-cheap/

Sometimes, economies of scale don’t work in our favor. While guitarists and singers will find themselves well catered to by the accessories market, players of fancier, less popular instruments will often have to dig deeper in their pockets to get what they need. [Henry Goh] found himself in need of a saxophone mic. However, off-the-shelf solutions were a touch expensive, and thus he decided he could probably whip something up himself.  (Video, embedded below.)

It’s a simple solution, one that we could imagine any maker quickly whipping up with junkbox parts. Not one to skimp on quality, [Henry] picked a Rode Wireless Go paired with a lavalier mic for a quality wireless microphone solution. The real problem would be mounting the device, intended to be worn on a shirt, to the right position in front of the saxophone’s bell.

To achieve this, most dedicated sax mics used a bendable arm to allow the position to be readily changed. Instead, [Henry] whipped up some mounts on the 3D printer that would allow him to mount the Rode wireless mic hardware on an bendy Energizer LED torch. The torch even comes with a clamp allowing it to be easily attached to the instrument, making fitment a cinch.

[Henry] estimates the solution saved him up to $800 SGD. The final result is cost effective, and gives quality easily good enough for amateur and community performances. As a bonus, the hack is non-destructive, meaning you can repurpose the lavalier mic for other work as needed.

We love a good hack on the cheap, and it’s something we see all the time in the music scene. This guitar build is a great example of the form.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/wireless-sax-mic-done-on-the-cheap/

Any owner of a budget 3D printer will tell you that they can be pretty noisy devices, due to their combinations of stepper motors and drives chosen for cost rather than quiet. But what if the noise were an asset, could the annoying stepper sound be used as a musical instrument? It’s a question [David Scholten] has answered with the Stepper Synth, a device that takes an Arduino Uno and four stepper motors to create a four-voice MIDI synthesiser.

Hardware-wise it’s as simple as you’d expect, a box with four stepper motors each with a red 3D-printed flag on its shaft to show rotation. Underneath there is the Arduino, plus a robot control shield and a set of stepper driver boards. On the software side it uses MIDI-over-serial, so as a Windows user his instructions for the host are for that operating system only. The Arduino makes use of the Arduino MIDI library, and he shares tips on disabling the unused motors to stop overheating.

You can hear it in action in the video below the break, and we’re surprised to say it doesn’t sound too bad. There’s something almost reminiscent of a church organ in there somewhere, it would be interesting to refine it with an acoustic enclosure of some kind.

This isn’t the first such instrument we’ve brought you, for a particularly impressive example take a look at the Floppotron.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/15/four-steppers-make-a-four-voice-midi-instrument/

You know how it is. You’re working on a project that needs to move air or water, or move through air or water, but your 3D design chops and/or your aerodynamics knowledge hold you back from doing the right thing? If you use OpenSCAD, you have no excuse for creating unnecessary turbulence: just click on your favorite foil and paste it right in. [Benjamin]’s web-based utility has scraped the fantastic UIUC airfoil database and does the hard work for you.

While he originally wrote the utility to make the blades for a blower for a foundry, he’s also got plans to try out some 3D printed wind turbines, and naturally has a nice collection of turbine airfoils as well.

If your needs aren’t very fancy, and you just want something with less drag, you might also consider [ErroneousBosch]’s very simple airfoil generator, also for OpenSCAD. Making a NACA-profile wing that’s 120 mm wide and 250 mm long is as simple as airfoil_simple_wing([120, 0030], wing_length=250);

If you have more elaborate needs, or want to design the foil yourself, you can always plot out the points, convert it to a DXF and extrude. Indeed, this is what we’d do if we weren’t modelling in OpenSCAD anyway. But who wants to do all that manual labor?

Between open-source simulators, modelling tools, and 3D printable parts, there’s no excuse for sub-par aerodynamics these days. If you’re going to make a wind turbine, do it right! (And sound off on your favorite aerodynamics design tools in the comments. We’re in the market.)

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/quick-3d-printed-airfoils-with-these-openscad-helpers/

Making full use of the capabilities and advantages of 3D printing requires a very different way of thinking compared to more traditional manufacturing methods. Often we see designs that do not really take these advantages into account, so we’re always on the lookout for interesting designs that embrace the nature of 3D-printed parts in interesting ways. [joopjoop]’s spring-loaded PCB vice is one such ingenious design that incorporates the spring action into the print itself.

This vice is designed to be printed as a single piece, with very little post-processing required if your printer is dialed in. There is a small gap between the base plate and the springs and clamping surfaces that need to be separated with a painters knife or putty knife. Two “handles” have contours for your fingers to operate the clamping surfaces. It opens quickly for inserting your latest custom PCB.

PLA can be surprisingly flexible if the right geometry is used, and these springs are an excellent example of this. In the video below [Chuck Hellebuyck] does a test and review of the design, and it looks like it works well for hand soldering (though it probably won’t hold up well with a hot air station). Last month our own [Tom Nardi] recently reviewed a similar concept that used spiral springs designed into the printed part. While these both get the job done, [Tom’s] overall verdict is that a design like this rubber-band actuated PCB vise is a better long-term option.

It takes some creativity to get right, but printing complete assemblies as a single part, is a very useful feature of 3D printing. Just be careful of trying to make it the solution for every mechanical problem.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/single-piece-3d-printed-pcb-vice/

We all know that there’s not much to do with an old hard drive. Once you render the platters unreadable and perhaps harvest those powerful magnets, there’s not much left of interest. Unless, of course, you turn the whole thing into a persistence-of-vision clock.

At least that’s what [Leo] did when he created “PendoLux”. The clock itself is pretty simple; like any POV project, it just requires a way to move an array of flashing LEDs back and forth rapidly enough that they can trick the eye into seeing a solid image. [Leo] put the read head mechanism of an old HDD into use for that, after stripping the platters and motor out of it first.

The voice coil and magnet of the head arm are left intact, while a 3D-printed arm carrying seven RGB LEDs replaces the old heads. [Leo] added a small spring to return the arm to a neutral position, and used an Arduino to drive the coil and flash the LEDs. Getting the timing just right was a matter of trial and error; he also needed to eschew the standard LED libraries because of his heavy use of interrupts and used direct addressing instead.

POV clocks may have dropped out of style lately — this hard drive POV clock and a CD-ROM version were posted years ago. But [Leo]’s clock is pretty good looking even for a work in progress, so maybe the style will be making a comeback.

[via Hackaday.io]

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/abused-hard-drive-becomes-pov-clock/

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys flip through the index of great hacks. This week we learn of a co-existence attack on WiFi and Bluetooth radios called Spectra. The craftsmanship in a pneumatic drone is so awesome we don’t care that it doesn’t fly. Building a powerful TEA laser is partly a lesson in capacitor design. And join us in geeking out at the prospect of big rigs getting their juice from miles of overhead wires.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (~65 MB)

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

• Google Play
• iTunes
• Soundcloud
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• RSS

Episode 080 Show Notes:

New This Week:

• Six New HackadayU Courses Announced for Fall 2020
• Hackaday U Course: Ghidra with [wrongbaud] (video)
• 2020 Hackaday Prize

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Acoustic Camera Uses Many, Many Microphones
• True Craftsmanship: Pneumatic Powered Drone Wasn’t Made To Fly
• How About A Nice Cuppa TEA Laser?
  • Legit Hack Creates TEA Laser Power By Mr. Wimshurst
• HAWT Wind Turbine Is Mostly 3D Printed
  • WinDIY’s hub – Oh my god mechanics
  • UIUC Airfoil Coordinates Database for OpenSCAD
  • NACA Airfoils – 4 digit fully parametric OpenSCAD library by Parkinbot – Thingiverse
• Separation Between WiFi And Bluetooth Broken By The Spectra Co-Existence Attack
• Official Arduboy Upgrade Module Nears Competition
  • 3D Printing For Wire Paths Yields An Arduboy Minus The PCB
  • The Arduboy Gets A Crank Mod

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Glasgow Uses An FPGA As An Embedded Systems Multitool
  • Print With Plasma!
  • ESPFLIX Brings Streaming Video To The World Of Microcontrollers
• Mike’s Picks:
  • Wood-Fired Hot Tub For The End Of The World
  • Breathtaking Alarm Clock Looks Like It Came From A 1960 Fallout Shelter
  • Unique Instrument Plucks Out Notes On A Ruler

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• HOPE 2020 Delivers Historic Marathon Of Hacking
  • HOPE 2020 UPDATE
• Our Trucks Won’t Need No Batteries! Electric Trucks Look To Overhead Wires For Power

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/hackaday-podcast-080-trucks-on-a-wire-seeing-sounds-flightless-drone-and-tea-laser-strike/

Video conferencing is nothing new, but the recent world events have made it much more mainstream than it has been in the past. Luckily, web camera technology is nothing new and most software can also show your screen. But what about your paper documents? Turns out that [John Nelson] can show you how to spend $5 for an old laptop camera module and put your documents center stage on your next Zoom, Skype or other video conferences.

This is especially good for things that would be hard to draw in real time during a conference like a quick sketch, a schematic, or as you can see in the post and the video demo below, chemical molecule diagrams.

It isn’t hard to imagine how this works, but getting a steady holder for the laptop does take a little workshop effort. There’s also an earlier version made to work with a desktop computer and has a few more dollars tied up in more substantial base.

We might have been tempted to make an Elmo clone by taking a nice desk lamp and just strapping the camera to it. However, that would cost a lot more than $5 unless you are good at shopping thrift stores.

We have seen a few projects using these laptop cameras lately. They are cheap, easy to stick into things and work with normal USB connections. Of course, conferencing also involves audio, so you might want to think about adding a mute switch.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/5-lets-your-documents-go-virtual/

Last weekend, DEF CON held their “SAFE MODE” conference: instead of meeting at a physical venue, the entire conference was held online. All the presentations are available on the official DEF CON YouTube channel. We’ll cover a few of the presentations here, and watch out for other articles on HaD with details on the other talks that we found interesting.

Lock Picking

We don’t often dabble with physical security in our weekly roundup, but the lockpicking track is a big part of DEF CON. It’s a perfect excuse. So first up is a presentation about safe-cracking by [Jared Dygert]. You know the scene in the movie where the super thief cracks the safe by listening to it as he spins the dial? Yeah, forget that. The real technique doesn’t have anything to do with sound. A typical three-number combination safe has a trio of wheels inside the locking mechanism. Each of these wheels have a narrow slot, or gate, cut into them. When the three gates are lined up, the locking bar can fall into the slots, and a fourth wheel pulls the lock open.

That fourth wheel is the key to cracking a safe, as the locking bar rides directly on the outer surface of that wheel. The gate there is shaped differently from the others, with a curved edge on one side. It’s possible to feel exactly when the locking bar begins to drop into that gate. Because of the shape of that special fourth gate, it’s possible to measure the width, and by extension discover how far the locking bar has dropped. As the three wheels with unknown gates aren’t perfectly the same size, it’s possible to map the surface of the largest wheel and discover where the gate is. For a demonstration, watch the video linked above.

It’s hard to mention lock pickers without giving a shout-out to a pair of YouTubers, [Bosnianbill] and [LockPickingLawyer]. I came across a video this week from the lawyer of this dynamic duo, and it’s the most polite-yet-savage burn I’ve seen in a long while. Before you watch, know that the tool he uses is the Sparrows Disk Pick, and he and [Bosnianbill] worked together to design and beta test the tool.

A Dragon’s Achilles Heel

Snapdragon processors are quite popular in high end Android devices. These processors are packaged in a System on a Chip (SoC), which really contains a number of processors and devices. A Snapdragon SoC has a processor, GPU, Wifi modem, Image Signal Processor, and Digital Signal Processor. We talk a lot about security vulnerabilities in the software that runs on the CPU. What if I told you there were vulnerabilities in software running on those other processor cores, too? Well yeah, there will obviously be poorly written code there too. What hasn’t been obvious is how to find those vulnerabilities, and then how to attack them. Now, thanks to the researchers at Checkpoint Security, and their work on Achilles, we know a way to attack the dragon’s heel.

When an app needs to use the Snapdragon DSP, it invokes a serialization library, referred to as a stub.so file. Once the data is serialized, it is transferred to the DSP over shared memory, using the DSRPC driver. Along with the data to be processed, the application also sends along the processing library. This library is essentially the program that will run on the DSP. There is a code signing requirement. The DSP will only run code that has been signed by Qualcomm, but there is no version checking or revocation mechanism. In essence, any DSP library Qualcomm has ever signed is allowed to run on every DSP. To make matters worse, an Android app can access the DSP with no special permissions. Even if only one vulnerable DSP library were created, the weak code-signing scheme means that every Qualcomm DSP is vulnerable.

A few articles are suggesting that a malicious video or audio file downloaded from the net can trigger the vulnerability. This is incorrect. So far, only an application with direct access to the DSP can launch the attack. During the virtual press conference on Thursday, this was addressed by a Checkpoint researcher. While it’s theoretically possible for a video file to trigger a yet-to-be-found vulnerability, the flaw they found is a deserialization bug that is only triggered by a malicious serialization process. This means data processed using the official serialization process can’t trigger this vulnerability. The deserialization bug is actually rooted in the Software Development Kit that is distributed to OEMs and used to build the individual libraries. To put it simply, it’s not just one or two DSP library that is vulnerable, but all of them, which is where the “400 vulnerabilities” comes from.

Once a malicious application uses the vulnerability to break the deserialization routine and achieve code execution, what’s next? Qualcomm did at least do proper user/kernel separation, and an additional vulnerability is needed to escalate privilege up to full compromise. Once there, the primary threat is data leakage. The malware on the DSP can examine all the data that other applications share for processing. This likely means full access to the device’s microphone, and potentially camera when it is use. I was able to ask Checkpoint if they had managed to permanently modify the DSP’s firmware, as this sort of modification could survive through even a full factory reset. Their response is that they had investigated this question, and had been unable to make a permanent modification. This isn’t surprising as firmware of this nature is often not stored on the SoC itself, but is loaded from the main system flash memory as a part of the boot process.

So far, this set of vulnerabilities doesn’t pose a huge risk to the everyday user. The normal advice of not installing untrusted applications is still the best solution. The major danger here is that DSP malware could be used by an installed application to access the microphone audio without having any permissions. The process of fixing this set of vulnerabilities will be a headache for years to come. Not only will the individual vulnerable libraries need to be updated, the signing problems will need to be addressed so vulnerable libraries can’t be trivially executed. It does not appear that any fixes are available at this time.

For your viewing pleasure, one of the other excellent talks from DEF CON is below, where [Christopher Wade] dives deeply into firmware hacking, primarily on Android devices.

Intel Leaks 20 GB

A very large dump of Intel code and documentation was made public last week. The official Intel explanation a partner or customer must have abused their access to Intel’s “Resource and Design Center”, and leaked the documents from there. According to ZDnet’s coverage, though, the leaker claims to have found the documentation on a CDN server that wasn’t properly configured.

Regardless, the leak seems to be genuine. Time will tell what interesting tidbits are contained in the 20 GB that were just released. As the information is all marked confidential, there is a bit of a legal grey area as to what programmers are allowed to do with the information.

Robot Exorcist?

And finally, just for fun, researchers at McAfee found a set of vulnerabilities in the “temi” teleconference robot. In a surprisingly detailed write-up, they describe how an attacker can possess the robot without any valid credentials, use it to drive the robot around and spy on whatever is nearby. McAfee researchers have shared all their findings with temi’s vendor, and fixes are already available.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/this-week-in-security-def-con-intel-leaks-snapdragon-and-a-robot-possessed/

[Petar Crnjak]’s Faze4 is a open source robotic arm with 3D printable parts, inspired in part by the design of industrial robot arms. In particular, [Petar] aimed to hide wiring and cables inside the arm as much as possible, and the results look great! Just watch it move in the video below.

Cycloidal gearboxes have been showing up in robotic arm projects more and more, and Faze4 makes good use of them. Why cycloidal gears? They are readily 3D printed and offer low backlash, which makes them attractive for robotic applications. There’s no need to design cycloidal gears from scratch, either. [Petar] found this cycloidal gear generator in OnShape extremely useful when designing Faze4.

The project’s GitHub repository has all the design files, as well as some video demonstrations and a link to assembly documentation for anyone who would like to make their own. Watch Faze4 go through some test movements in the video embedded below.

Cycloidal gearboxes, which have similarities to both planetary gearing and strain-wave gears, can be mesmerizing to watch. Check out our previous coverage for more information on what they are and how they work.

source https://hackaday.com/2020/08/14/robotic-arm-sports-industrial-design-3d-printed-cycloidal-gears/