Sunday, October 23, 2016

World Maker Faire 2016 (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second part of my post on projects from the annual World Maker Faire 2016. You can see the first post here.

Here are various projects around the Faire.

Tesla Instrument Family
A Project from the "Dark Room"
Arcade from the I Lug NY Booth
Lego projects from the I Lug NY Booth
Astromech.net R2-D2 Builders Club Exhibit
Commodore 64 at the Vintage Computer Federation Booth
Outside Sculpture
Sisyphus - The Kinetic Art Table

Sisyphus mechanism

Pictures and video from the Aerial Sports League Drone Racing area.




Aerial Sports League Drone Racing Area
Aerial Sports League Drone Racing Area
Aerial Sports League Drone Racing Area
Drone racing in progress

Concluding with pictures of the NY Hall of Science.

Inside the Great Hall at the NY Hall of Science
Outside view of the NY Hall of Science

It was yet another great World Maker Faire...




Tuesday, October 11, 2016

World Maker Faire 2016 (Part 1 of 2)

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.

AscendTech 4-H Robotics Underwater ROV

Robots from the NYC FIRST exhibit

Makeblock - robot construction platform

KenRobot - robotic fish and construction platform

ZeGoBeast - wooden walking robot
There were automated machines intended for specific purposes such as the following personal writing and drawing machine,

AxiDraw - personal writing and drawing machine
and a grilled cheese sandwich machine...

Mr. Goodwich - 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.

Wazer - desktop waterjet

Samples from the Wazer booth

Tormach PCNC 440

Samples from the Tormach booth

Epilog laser cutter

Epilog laser cutter

Mr Beam laser cutter

Handibot - portable CNC

Handibot - portable CNC

Shaper Origin - hand-held CNC

Craft CNC - personal CNC
Furthermore, there was a desktop vacuum forming machine,

Mayku FormBox - desktop vacuum forming machine 
and PCB manufacturing machines.

Chipsetter One - pick-and-place machine

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.

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.

Prusa i3 MK2 with quad multi-material upgrade
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.