Jon's Place

Friday, September 21, 2007

Printed Chest

So, we decided to try printing a new chest compartment for the next BrainBot*. It came out really nicely, and the parts fit perfectly. The main reason for printing the chest is to save a lot of manual labour. Even with the CNC mill, it takes 15-20 hours to build a BrainBot chest from Delrin. With a 3D printer, we can print a lightweight, very strong one-piece chest with all the holes pre-drilled, with virtually no labour from me past building the initial model.

We also printed a new camera mount for some lighter-weight Swann Blackhawk wireless cameras. Having two of those cameras versus two of the green cameras saves about 400 grams from the head, which is significant when trying to make a walking robot. Plus, since the mount is custom made for the specific camera, it is much more rigid, and thus more useful for doing stereo vision.

This chest also has the new wifi board mounted on the gumstix, which needed to get relocated sideways somewhat to fit the longer board with an ethernet plug on the end.

*The BrainBot project is directed and funded by the Brain Engineering Lab and Neukom Institute at Dartmouth

3 Comments:

  • Jon,

    Good to see some things never change... Project looks very interesting. Would love to catch up... been WAY too long.

    cheers,
    Etienne LaVallee

    By Blogger Jean-Etienne LaVallee, At September 27, 2007 at 4:14 PM  

  • Hi Jon,

    I am looking at replacing the CM5 with the following Gumstix boards:
    -Verdex XL6P
    -NetwifimicroSD
    -Audiostix 2

    And your IMU + Gyro board.

    I think this is your set up? Would you be willing to give\sell me the design for your printed BrainBot chest?

    Kind regards
    Rob

    By Blogger Rob, At April 7, 2008 at 8:09 AM  

  • Rob,

    Send me an email - jon@huv.com

    All the designs in the BrainBot project are open source...

    - Jon

    By Blogger Unknown, At April 7, 2008 at 8:40 AM  

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