Bringing a Life-Dimension, 3D Printed Robotic to Life

Our June 2018 Hacker of the Month is a 14-year outdated scholar who attends the Nueva College in San Mateo. The Nueva College is an internationally-recognized unbiased PreK-12 college, serving gifted learners since 1967. They use a dynamic academic mannequin to allow gifted college students to learn to make selections that can profit the world.

Sean Cheong has been working with 3D printers and design since he was in center college. After getting a style of the chances of what he might do with 3D printing, Sean determined to embark on an epic quest to design, fabricate and construct a life-size, 3D printed robotic. His imaginative and prescient is named Venture ‘Bot 44.

In The Starting

In center college, Sean was first uncovered to 3D printing in his mannequin rocket constructing endeavors. Because the staff captain for the Woodland Rocketeers, he realized that he might use Fusion 360 to mannequin fins for his rocket that had excellent symmetry. Along with saving his staff a ton of labor in reducing and sanding wood fins, he was extra precisely in a position to embody spin tabs on the fins to supply spin stabilization – these enable their rocket to fly straight up, even in windy situations, that are typically prevalent within the Bay Space.

Sean then translated his work on mannequin rockets with 3D printing right into a 1st place win at his college science honest! Utilizing 3D printed components rather than conventional wood elements, just like the nostril cone and fins, helped his staff’s rockets fly straighter and higher.

Larger and Higher

After getting a small style of what 3D printing might do, Sean needed to do greater, extra complicated tasks. For that, he wanted extra 3D printers! 

Sean presently has three, 3D printers at residence, together with a Flashforge Creator Professional (his first), a Robo R2, and a Creality CR-10. He enjoys beginning a print earlier than mattress and waking as much as a brand new, 3D printed piece. Getting a fast turnaround on his components permits him to revise errors, make modifications to the components, and to get constant outcomes on a number of iterations of the identical components. Sean usually makes use of PLA and ABS for his 3d printed robotic components.

Sean shouldn’t be solely good at getting nice 3D prints, he’s additionally adept at repairing 3D printers. His college printing I-Lab had two Makerbot Replicators that have been out of fee when he began highschool. Sean recognized the issues that have been holding the 3D printers from working. He then realized the way to change the extruder and clear a blockage in one of many nozzles. As soon as he affected these repairs, he additionally tuned the Makerbots by tightening the stepper motor belts to forestall axis skips whereas printing!

Sean’s Final Imaginative and prescient

All of this work and expertise in 3D printing led Sean to his final aim; to create a life-size, 3D printed robotic. Sean’s imaginative and prescient is named Venture ‘Bot 44. Venture ‘Bot 44 began with the thought of constructing a Kinect-controlled full-body robotic arms, torso, head, hip, and legs that mimics the movement of its human operator. The bodily look of ‘Bot 44 is impressed by a robotic agent character from the Missile Mouse journey collection. Robotic 44 rescues Missile Mouse from seize, they change into buddies, and collectively they save the world. Venture ‘Bot 44 is constructed with open supply applied sciences like Raspberry Pi, makes use of off-the-shelf elements, and is totally 3D-printable.

Sean designed the primary a part of Venture ‘Bot 44 in Autodesk Fusion 360; the robotic arm. He has spent over seven months designing, fabricating, testing and redesigning his robotic arm.

It’s a 6-DOF robotic arm powered by six servos, managed utilizing an Arduino Mega 2560, and human-operated with a Logitech Excessive 3D Professional joystick. He modeled the arm utilizing Fusion 360 and printed it with MatterHacker and Solutech filament.

The six servos powering the arms (from small to giant):

JX CLS-HV7346MG Excessive Voltage Coreless Steel Gear Servo x 3 (2 for shoulder and 1 for elbow)

BMS-390DMH Excessive Efficiency Digital Servo x 1 (for tilting wrist)

Corona DS-236MG Steel Gear Servo x 1 (for twisting wrist)

TowerPro MG90S x 1 (for claw)

A number of the challenges that Sean had with 3D printing the arm have been that 3D printed components skilled extra friction. The friction brought about the joint to require extra vitality to show and lowered the effectivity of the servos. Sanding the print and including lubricant has helped mitigate this drawback.

The 3D prints additionally had some tolerance points which brought about jerky and imprecise actions. Throughout printing, expansions and contractions of the print brought about house between every joint permitting for wiggle room to maneuver.

From this, he realized that as a substitute of utilizing a guess and take a look at strategy in geometry and dimensions, designing upfront and guaranteeing dimensions are appropriate considerably lowered the variety of revision prints.

One of many main classes that Sean has realized from all of his design work is that failure is part of attending to a closing answer. Numerous hours of analysis, iteration, design, testing, and doing this strategy again and again are the exhausting means, however the precise means, to get a tremendous, working design.

HackaThon Victory

Along with his 3D printing endeavors, Sean can also be an adept coder. Lately, he competed within the GunnHacks 4.0 HackaThon at Gunn Excessive College in Palo Alto. In October 2017, this Hackathon was the primary of the season, and was attended by roughly 100 college students from the Bay Space. After a marathon coding session and solely three hours of sleep, Sean introduced residence a third place total prize for his ‘BladeChat’ entry. To additional his Venture Bot ’44, he traded away a number of prizes to get a second Logitech joystick to manage a second robotic arm!

For the long run, we will not wait to see the progress that Sean makes on Venture ‘Bot 44! He has a variety of work forward of him, however he’s keen and excited to convey his imaginative and prescient to life to assist different folks.

For extra data on Sean’s Venture ‘Bot 44, you may go to his web site right here: https://x.twobit.co/

For extra details about the Nueva College, go to the web site right here: http://www.nuevaschool.org/

The Large Shock

One of many highlights of my time right here at MatterHackers was the possibility to shock Sean in school to award him with three spools of MatterHackers PRO PLA! The Nueva College sits instantly adjoining to the Maker Faire Bay Space grounds, so a fast stroll across the nook was all it took to get there.

The workers was extraordinarily accommodating and useful in getting every part prepared so we might shock Sean. Large because of Scott Swaaley, Desiree Viray, Diane Rosenberg, and Meghan Riehl of the Nueva College, and to Sean’s dad, John for being in on the shock! The Nueva College is actually a incredible facility – my inside highschool geek was extraordinarily excited to go to. Throughout the go to, we have been in a position to meet wonderful instructors, see the very sturdy tools out there to the scholars, and get a first-hand have a look at how the Nueva College is inspiring a future era of scientists, artists, and creators.

Wish to be our subsequent Hacker of the Month? E mail chris.morgan@matterhackers.com, and inform us about your 3D printed creations – you can be featured in our subsequent publication. Hacker of the Month wins 3 free spools of PRO Sequence PLA or ABS filament to additional their pursuit of 3D printing greatness!