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

Our June 2018 Hacker of the Month is a 14-year previous pupil who attends the Nueva College in San Mateo. The Nueva College is an internationally-recognized impartial PreK-12 faculty, serving gifted learners since 1967. They use a dynamic instructional mannequin to allow gifted college students to learn to make decisions that may profit the world.

Sean Cheong has been working with 3D printers and design since he was in center faculty. After getting a style of the probabilities of what he may 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 known as Mission ‘Bot 44.

In The Starting

In center faculty, Sean was first uncovered to 3D printing in his mannequin rocket constructing endeavors. Because the workforce captain for the Woodland Rocketeers, he realized that he may use Fusion 360 to mannequin fins for his rocket that had good symmetry. Along with saving his workforce a ton of labor in slicing and sanding picket fins, he was extra precisely in a position to embrace 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 faculty science honest! Utilizing 3D printed components instead of conventional picket elements, just like the nostril cone and fins, helped his workforce’s rockets fly straighter and higher.

Greater and Higher

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

Sean at the moment 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 sometimes makes use of PLA and ABS for his 3d printed robotic components.

Sean just isn’t solely good at getting nice 3D prints, he’s additionally adept at repairing 3D printers. His faculty printing I-Lab had two Makerbot Replicators that had been out of fee when he began highschool. Sean identified the issues that had been retaining the 3D printers from working. He then discovered tips on how 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 stop axis skips whereas printing!

Sean’s Final Imaginative and prescient

All of this work and expertise in 3D printing led Sean to his final purpose; to create a life-size, 3D printed robotic. Sean’s imaginative and prescient is known as Mission ‘Bot 44. Mission ‘Bot 44 began with the concept 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 sequence. Robotic 44 rescues Missile Mouse from seize, they develop into pals, and collectively they save the world. Mission ‘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 Mission ‘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)

Among the challenges that Sean had with 3D printing the arm had been that 3D printed components skilled extra friction. The friction prompted the joint to require extra vitality to show and diminished the effectivity of the servos. Sanding the print and including lubricant has helped mitigate this downside.

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

From this, he discovered that as a substitute of utilizing a guess and check strategy in geometry and dimensions, designing prematurely and making certain dimensions are appropriate considerably diminished the variety of revision prints.

One of many main classes that Sean has discovered from all of his design work is that failure is part of attending to a last resolution. Numerous hours of analysis, iteration, design, testing, and doing this strategy over and over are the arduous 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. Just 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 Mission Bot ’44, he traded away a number of prizes to get a second Logitech joystick to manage a second robotic arm!

For the longer term, we will not wait to see the progress that Sean makes on Mission ‘Bot 44! He has numerous work forward of him, however he’s keen and excited to deliver his imaginative and prescient to life to assist different folks.

For extra data on Sean’s Mission ‘Bot 44, you possibly can 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 prospect to shock Sean at school to award him with three spools of MatterHackers PRO PLA! The Nueva College sits immediately 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 thing prepared so we may shock Sean. Large due to 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 internal highschool geek was extraordinarily excited to go to. Throughout the go to, we had been in a position to meet wonderful instructors, see the very sturdy gear out there to the scholars, and get a first-hand have a look at how the Nueva College is inspiring a future technology 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 e-newsletter. Hacker of the Month wins 3 free spools of PRO Sequence PLA or ABS filament to additional their pursuit of 3D printing greatness!