‘Homemade’ 3d Printer

Coffman High School teacher, Jim Roscoe, with the help of students, built a 3D printer last spring and is now turning out plastic items that can be used in a number of scenarios. The machine melts plastic from a spool to make 3D items. “All the information for this is open source,” Roscoe said. “The … Read more

Arduino “Counter Intelligence” II

Arduino project for catching my cats on the kitchen counter, while they’re up there doing food intelligence work πŸ™‚ Arduino nano in iPod Touch box. Switch arms toy gun, Knob controls trigger distance. Opto-isolators fire toy gun. Maxbotic ultrasonic rangefinder senses distance and determines if sonar field has been interrupted ( by cat). The gun … Read more

Getting Into Robotics

The Open Source Robotics Foundation, Inc. is an independent non-profit organization founded by members of the global robotics community. The mission of the OSR Foundation is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development. One major project is ROS (Robot Operating System) which … Read more

James Bond Theme by Robot Quadrotors

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this “couch guitar” by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire … Read more

Consumer Sovereignty at Work

Bedding retailers Sleep Train and Sleep Number have pulled their ads from the Rush Limbaugh show due to his impetuous slurs against a young woman attending the Georgetown University Law School. Quicken Loans and Auto Zone withdrew shortly thereafter. The Republican-controlled House had rejected the request of Democrats for Sandra Fluke to testify on the … Read more

The Decline of Manufacturing β€” A Chain Reaction

β€œOnce manufacturing is outsourced, process-engineering expertise can’t be maintained, since it depends on daily interactions with manufacturing. Without process-engineering capabilities, companies find it increasingly difficult to conduct advanced research on next-generation process technologies. Without the ability to develop such new processes, they find they can no longer develop new products. In the long term, then, … Read more

The Lightest Material on Earth

The material has been dubbed “ultralight metallic microlattice,” and according to a news release sent out by UC Irvine, it consists of 99.99% air thanks to its “microlattice” cellular architecture. It is so lightweight that the research team consisting of scientists at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and Caltech say in the peer-reviewed Nov. 18 issue … Read more