Todays sugru hacks

I often use a set of helping hands to grip a piece while I'm working on it but my set have always been a bit wobbly.  Not anymore, with their new Sugru feet!

I love my Blackrapid camera strap but the mount has one annoying flaw.  By mounting to the tripod socket it's impossible to put the camera down on a flat surface without scratching it.  Easily fixed with a little Sugru left over from the above hack.

I'm a big fan of Sugru.  Historically, silicone rubbers have been hard to work with and generally out of reach of makers.  Sugru changes all that.

ArduRoller back in business

ArduRoller is balancing again. Turned out to be a loose connection between my Arduino and Motor shield. Pushing it back together did the trick.

D'oh

So, I was trying to get my remote control working and ArduRoller crashed. Now it won't balance even with old code so something must've shorted or been damaged. Damn!

ArduRoller, now with Sugru bumper

Arduroller, enjoying its new Sugru bumper.

I haven't worked on ArduRoller much recently -- I've been distracted by other projects and moving house.  Just to get back into the swing of it, I decided to add a bumper.  Pretty essential in my new apartment, which has hardwood floors.

I used Sugru to form the bumper by hand.  I laid out some masking tape horizontally below where I wanted to put the bumper, just as a guide.  Then I rolled a sausage of Sugru and applied it in the gap.  I used my fingers and a clay cleanup tool to shape it and burnish it smooth.

The Sugru is still drying (it takes 24 hours to cure completely) so I haven't tried it out yet but it was a pleasure to work with.  A bit like soft bluetack, just a little bit of a chemical smell and just the right level of stickiness to stick to the piece and not to your hands.  Hope it stands up to the rigours of being a bumper, the ArduRoller tends to hit with a lot of force when it falls over!

My next planned mini-project is to add remote control to the bot.

The set is completed

The set of purple meeples I had made for Katie via Shapeways arrived.  I'm pretty pleased with them!

As before, the models are open source on Thingiverse and they're available from my Shapeways shop.

Completing the set

Since the small meeples were such a success, I decided to make matching pieces for the extensions that Katie and I play.  There's a barn, cart, large meeple, mayor, pig and builder.

They're available on Shapeways and Thingiverse.

Shapeways delivers

Meeples with heart, a photo by fasaxc on Flickr.

The set of 8 purple meeples with love hearts I ordered for Katie just arrived. She's thrilled with them and I'm very pleased at how they turned out.

The 3D model is open-source.  And I've made them available on Shapeways (for free).