October 1-2 2016 was the annual
World Maker Faire weekend at the New York Hall of Science. It was another great Maker Faire with robots, drones, 3D-printers, educational projets, desktop fabrication tools, microcontroller boards / single board computers, kinetic art and more. In this first post, I will share pictures of some of the robots and the desktop fabrication tools from the event.
There were many robots ranging from submersible vehicles to walking robots. There were also demos of robot construction platforms.
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KenRobot - robotic fish and construction platform |
There were automated machines intended for specific purposes such as the following personal writing and drawing machine,
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AxiDraw - personal writing and drawing machine |
and a grilled cheese sandwich machine...
It was great to see a number of desktop fabrication tools including a desktop waterjet, various CNC mills and laser cutters.
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Samples from the Wazer booth |
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Samples from the Tormach booth |
Furthermore, there was a desktop vacuum forming machine,
and PCB manufacturing machines.
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Voltera - all-in-one circuit prototyping machine |
The following robotic arm was designed as a machine with interchangeable toolsheads like ones for 3D-printing and milling.
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Makerarm - robotic arm with interchangeable
toolheads |
At the "3D Printer Village", there were a number of 3D-printers including this Prusa i3 MK2 with the quad multi-material upgrade.
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Prusa i3 MK2 with quad multi-material upgrade |
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Prusa i3 MK2 with quad multi-material upgrade |
There were many interesting and inspiring robotics projects as well as desktop fabrication tools at the event. The trend that more capable desktop fabrication tool options are made available to non-industrial settings is exciting. This coupled with ubiquitous easy-to-use microcontroller platforms / single-board-computers is enabling many creative and sophisticated hardware projects by students, hobbyists as well as professionals.
In the second post, I will cover more projects from the World Maker Faire including drones.