Richlite Cutting Boards
When my personal cutting boards began to show their age this fall I began to search for good replacements. After talking to my wife about my research she asked why I would want to buy cutting boards when I’ve engraved...
When my personal cutting boards began to show their age this fall I began to search for good replacements. After talking to my wife about my research she asked why I would want to buy cutting boards when I’ve engraved...
I decided to build a miniature 2′ x 2′ version of the clock before beginning the final 4′ x 4′ version. This let me test out the different methods and processes used before a lot of material was on the...
I spend a lot of time in the summer swimming and floating with friends and family in the lake down the hill from my house. It is easy to lose track of time while relaxing, and I don’t bring a...
Turning a tablature file into a set of physical motions on the robot involves a lot of software work: parsing a GuitarPro file, considering potential fingerings for each note, planning the transitions between those fingerings, and optimizing the solution around...
The general architecture of a robot guitar will obviously share similarities with the way humans interact with the guitar: a set of actuators for plucking and a set of actuators for fretting. However, the complexity of some of those actuators...
While it is tempting to jump right into prototype design, the first step in any project should be translating the project goals into technical requirements. The two main categories of requirements for this project are picking and fretting, but there...
I’ve been thinking about how to build a good robot guitar off and on for the past 15 years. My interest in musical robots started when I joined the RobOrchestra project at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club in college. After...
There is a lot of tweaking that needs to be done once a machine is assembled in order to ensure that it is accurate, reliable, and repeatable. All of the wiring, inputs, and outputs need to be checked, control parameters...
Over a year ago I picked up a 55W CO2 laser to help with cutting templates and other practical parts. However, I decided to explore the world of laser engraving over the holidays and ended up with plenty of fun...
Building an electrical panel involves a ton of point-to-point wiring across a large quantity and variety of components. Even with the guidance of a detailed electrical diagram, the tedious work requires a lot of diligence to get right the first...